THE COMMUNAL RE-FORMATION OF NAOMI.
David Weber
11-2-10
 No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD's hand has gone out
against me!"
1.
Intro: The righteous live by faith in God’s righteousness.
1.1.
What is God’s righteousness? The way the he makes what’s wrong in the world, in our selves right.
What it means to believe that God’s way of making right the things that are wrong with me and the world is
evident in the events of Ruth and Naomi’s relationship which shows the both the gritty truth of how wrong the world
can be and how God uses Ruth to make right what went wrong in Naomi’s life.
1.2.
2.
What’s wrong with Naomi’s world? Her 4 Stages of despair.
The first misfortune: Famine: When the principle of growth in nature no longer happens naturally. Famine as
extended winter – the season of death and dying.
2.1.
2.2.
Moving to Moab, they experience a brief reprieve that turns out to be the calm before the greater storm.
2.3.
The second misfortune: Death
2.4.
i.
Husband – Elimelech
ii.
Barren marriages
iii.
Sons’ deaths ten years after husband.
Final stage: Radical alienation from God, others, and self.
i.

Naomi is nearly tempted by the 8th deadly thought that what’s wrong with the world is greater
than the possibility of salvation.
“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life
very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi?
The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
20
ii.
Angry agency of one in deep despair.
 Naomi concludes that she hates the life God has given her, and she would rather have the husband and sons God has
taken, than be with the 2 daughters’ in law God has given.
 If God is the author of misfortune then at least Naomi will have some say by rejecting the persons God has given
and changing her name to better reflect her view that she has only a bitter past with no possibility of restoration.
3.
Part 2 The Vicarious Re–formation of Naomi.
3.1.
Ruth has a foreigners authentic appreciation for Naomi’s faith in God’s faithfulness.
i.
People are joined together in community by God’s promise and not by blood, or tribe, nation,
race, class or gender
ii.
Believing in this promise, Ruth rejects Naomi’s rejection with a promise that imitates God’s
promise.
 "For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my
people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried" (1:16).ii
iii.
The promise tethers her to some gloomy conditions of her new vocation.

3.2.
3.3.
But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to
have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too
old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a
husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you
remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the
LORD’s hand has turned against me!”
11
Naomi’s life was “solitary, poor, nasty and brutish, but not Ruth–less. Ruth reverses the stages of Naomi’s loss.
i.
Ruth and Naomi return home.
ii.
The famine has given way to plenty so that Ruth saves the two from destitution by gathering the
plentiful leftovers.
iii.
Boaz, having heard of Ruth’s commitment to Naomi marries Ruth, thus reversing Naomi’s
widowhood.
iv.
She bears the son and sustains the messianic lineage.
The beautiful confusion of a vicarious community
i.
Community means that Ruth would first participate in Naomi’s descent so that Naomi, by
observing the God’s mercy in Ruth’s life, could again believe in God’s means of righting a wrong
world.
 When Ruth returns home and tells Naomi of her good fortune, Naomi responds in ecstatic
jubilation: "Blessed be the name of the Lord who has not failed in His kindness to the living or
to the dead! (2:20).
ii.
Ruth, though barren for 10 years. When Naomi takes the child into her arms the women of
Bethlehem exclaim – "A son is born to Naomi!" (4:17)
Ruth’s relationship, begun with a promise, proved to be God’s means to restore Mara to Naomi, who thereby was
capable of praising God for his way of setting right what’s wrong.
3.4.