The story of Ruth is short and you can see why it is such a favorite with so many. It’s about love, faithfulness, devotion, kindness and many other things. The passage about “your people will be my people…” is famous and rightly so. As I look at this story and think about how to preach it for Sunday I find myself drawn to several things. Here are a couple.
One is the treatment of strangers. Naomi and her husband travel to Moab. They are strangers, yet seem to make a life for themselves there. The boys find wives and they live. It sounds like there was some level of acceptance of the Moabites of this family of strangers. Naomi looses to death her husband and sons and hears that there is food again back home so she returns. She entreats her daughter’s in law to remain, but Ruth decides to return with Naomi. So now it’s Ruth’s turn to be the stranger.
How we treat strangers is important in the Bible. Hebrews 13:1-2 is one admonition. The Israelites are reminded that they were strangers in Egypt and that they should treat strangers well when they are among them. What ideas can you see for preaching this? How important is this in our lives today?
Does something like this have any bearing on immigration? This has definitely been in the news with Donald Trump’s comments.
How do we encounter strangers today or do we completely keep our lives in a bubble so that we do not have to encounter them.
How does our treatment of strangers say something about us?
Should I just leave this approach to Ruth alone and try this one?
As I have been reading through Joshua, Judges and Ruth I noticed this about the story. Joshua and Judges are about what happens at the top. These are stories about the movers and shakers: the leaders. the obvious ones. Ruth shifts our focus to something more mundane but at the same time just as important. How God is at work in ways we never see. Joshua tells the people that God will do amazing things. With Gideon God goes out of His way to make sure everyone knows who won that battle. Here in this story it starts out looking like God is not doing much. In fact, Naomi feels like God has caused her misery. She now wants to be called Mara or bitter. Yet we can see because of our hindsight that God was at work and that through Ruth God brings David and Jesus into the world. God is at work with the “important” in our world and culture and He is at work among the least and seemingly least important.
Is this the better way to go?
Tharsei 
At the end of Judges, it lets us know about what the times were like in Israel. It was a period of time when Israel had no king. No rules-Do as you want. Elimelech and Naomi followed that path. But, it never works. The story of Old Testament peoples leaving God, finding out it never works, and returning for His blessings are many. They always found that away from God, on their own, never proved fruitful. With God-blessings. Without God-trials and misfortune.
Don’t we think of “strangers” as the least important in our society/culture? I see similarities in both angles to the story…I know, it’s probably too much to handle in one sermon. You are so good to keep it focused!