I have spent a lot of time in the last month reading and re-reading an odd, short book in the Hebrew Scriptures. Ruth is just 85 verses long, spread over 4 chapters. On the surface it tells a fable so familiar, Netflix could adapt it and market it as a rom-com – it’s a story of a family devastated by death, a daughter-in-law’s loyalty to her husband’s mother, and how they all find redemption through encountering a good man who truly sees them and welcomes them into his family as if they are gifts given by God.
This is one of two books in the bible named after women. And God barely features at all (though in fact, that is quite the point – even unbidden and unseen, God is always active). But what has caught my attention is how the eponymous star of the story – Ruth – is not an Israelite. She is in fact born and raised a Moabite, a great historic enemy of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For a text traditionally thought to be 3000 years old, Ruth is remarkably accessible – a child could read it and enjoy it. But beneath the surface of a story of romance and tragedy turned to joy is a text that is perpetually exposing the little borders we establish to mark out decent from indecent, welcome from unwelcome, and ultimately it challenges us to consider what is a good life.
Ruth, the enemy, crosses borders and finds belonging among people who are strangers and, by rights, should reject her. She arrives in Israel unvetted, with no claim for asylum besides the tragedy of losing a husband young, the ache of having no children, and the strange attachment she has to this bitter Israelite woman named Naomi. Instead of jeers and cold shoulders, she meets a welcome. People are impressed by her loyalty to her mother-in-law. They want to see both of them survive, even to see them thrive. And that good man, Boaz, recognises her virtue, welcomes her forward advances, and marries her, at considerable risk to his own good name.
It is never mentioned in the text, but Boaz’ mother is a foreigner, a famous one at that: Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who was centrally influential in the Israelites settling in the Promised Land. The text leaves you to work out the connections but it clearly punctures that seemingly undying myth of racial or tribal or religious purity. Hospitality to the foreigner is a biblical law but the story that the people in the bible so often fall back on is one where they keep themselves pure by keeping the foreigner’s influence out. As the poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama puts it, “in the theatre of Ruth, a nation is asked to consider itself by its recognition of the power of kindness; not by its repetition of a stereotype.”
However seriously you take the rise of racist language and politics in our society, Christians must be clear that their religion cannot be appropriated for this message. Our Scriptures testify again and again to the common brotherhood of all humanity, the fact that every person reflects the divine image and that God himself, when he became human, experienced the displacement of the refugee. This seam in our story cannot be forgotten; it must be strengthened. Resources like ‘From Every Nation’ produced by the Irish Council of Churches might support a congregation in building the confidence to be witness to this truth and publicly oppose the dark voices of hate that increasingly fill out streets with profanity.
I have been reading Ruth and this tantalising invitation to kindness as the European and Local elections have unfolded. So many of the candidates talk about something like “Irish Christian culture” but the content and tone of their words suggest they are entirely ignorant of texts like Ruth. In the biblical text, Israel is just recovering from a devastating famine. The people of Bethlehem might well have been tempted to say “the town is full”. We have to take care of our own first! Instead, they say, come and harvest with us, drink our water, and, ultimately, settle down, start a family, and become as one of us.
Kindness can be under-estimated. It has been sloganized – I think my baby daughter has a sweater that reads “Be Kind”! – but it is in fact a potent social reality. Writing about Ruth back in 2021, Ó Tuama and his collaborator, the late Glenn Jordan put it well:
To ignore the political importance of kindness or to dismiss it as insubstantial or peripheral in our current difficulties is to open the door to all manner of malign forces and to contribute to the rot in our civic discourse. Without the presence of grace and kindness we risk the public square being overrun by conflict.
Kindness is not a weak refusal to speak truth boldly. It is the sacrificial commitment to welcome difference, to be open to encounter, to recognise that the stranger is a neighbour and could become your kin. One thing is certain in the aftermath of these elections: Irish society needs a church who is capable of embodying this radical kindness.
