One thing I have found in a life of discovery is once you see something you can’t unsee it. It can be something you weren’t supposed to see but can’t get it out of your mind. Or something you weren’t really looking for, but it was “awakened” in you. Two of those things for me are feet and Ultimate Reconciliation in the Bible.
I hate feet. I wear socks all the time. When I was playing basketball, my feet would get sweaty gross and needed to breathe. I didn’t care, I wore my socks to bed. Looking back, I know why my feet hurt. By the end of the season, they looked like swiss cheese. Hating feet sounds anti-gospel since we’re called to “wash each other’s feet.” Sorry, give me garbage, a scrub brush, anything but feet.
Ruth is a story about feet, some of it anyways. A story where a young woman, far from home, caught the attention of the owner of the property she was working on. She was kind to her mother-in-law Naomi (husband was dead) and word spread throughout the camp. Boaz, the owner of the field, made notice. If I can be somewhat politically incorrect, I’m guessing it wasn’t just her kindness that caught his attention. You get it, don’t cancel me, please.
When Naomi finds out Ruth has caught his attention, she devises a plan. Ruth is to go to the threshing floor and lay at Boaz’s (gulp) feet. Gross. She listens to the advice of her mother and in the middle of the night lays down to warm his feet. The same way my wife puts her ice-cold feet on me to warm up. Not my thing, but Boaz dug it.
He wakes up, makes a vow that he will redeem her if he can’t find anyone else willing to do so. He was an older man, so maybe his insecurities were sprouting up, who knows. What we know is redeeming her meant buying her. Taking her from her current situation of slavery and bringing her into his home at a price. What does she have to do? Nothing, just believe he has paid for her freedom. Sound familiar?
He goes to town but nobody thought she was “worth” the money so he did what he said. Paid full price for her, paraded her around as his bride, had children with her, and they lived happily ever after. That’s it, cool story, I guess. Just wait.
The thing that I couldn’t unsee, besides disgusting feet, was something Naomi said to her while giving her the game plan:
Ruth 2:20 “Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed of the Lord who has not withdrawn His kindness from the living and from the dead.”
Notice, “living and the dead.” Like those who are on the other side of the great chasm that separates us? Like his mercy that never ends, in this age or the next? I get it, some might say that’s a stretch. She was clearly referring to her dead husband and two sons we read about in the beginning. That’s true, but do the scriptures not reach into every age? Could there be a message behind the message?
The great Church Father Origen thought so!
“If you try to reduce the divine meaning to the purely external signification of the words, the Word will have no reason to come down to you. It will return to its secret dwelling, which is contemplation that is worthy of it. For it has wings, this divine meaning, given to it by the Holy Spirit who is its guide ... But to be unwilling ever to rise above the letter, never to give up feeding on the literal sense, is the mark of a life of falsehood.”
Ouch.
Here is why I believe this story is worthy of the “hope” of Ultimate Reconciliation. Ruth was a Moabite who married into a Jewish family. The “chosen” ones. Where did the Moabites come from? I won’t get too graphic since maybe you don’t want images you can’t unsee yourself, but you can read it in Genesis 19. The short story: Ruth was a byproduct of an incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters. One daughter had a son from a booze-filled night and named him Moab. Good luck with that.
Ruth was an enemy of God since she was an enemy of Israel. She was lucky to be married into the family to be “saved.” Then she finds herself unworthy again, and in that culture, if you were an unmarried women life was pretty much over. Dead. Then her redeemer stepped up and paid for it all bringing her, even in death, into the fold once again. Will Jesus stop doing this, even after death?
Once you get the lens of ultimate reconciliation, the lens that God’s kindness never runs out, these passages pop off the page. The same way I can go into a room and instantly see if someone doesn’t have their shoes on. It’s hard not to see it once you see it. Both the Moabite and the Jew needed saving. Both needed grace and both got it at the threshing floor which was symbolic of redemption.
Ruth and Boaz did have a child named Obed. Guess where? Bethlehem where Jesus was born too! Obed gave birth to David who would become the king of Israel and of course go way down the line, and Mary would have Jesus, who would eventually have his feet pierced so we may have peace. It’s what he does. Why? Because he is kind to both the living and the dead.
This passage, in the spiritual realm, speaks to this matter. Jesus has even redeemed my feet. Across the top, I have tattooed “blessed are the feet that bring good news.” I took something ugly, to me anyway, and made it hopeful. Should we not hope the same from our redeemer? Can you see it?
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