Ruth Chapter 4

Notes:

Ruth Chapter 4. Questions for Reflection

• A note from last week’s discussion about the language around Ruth’s encounter with Boaz on the threshing floor from Sex Texts from the Bible, translated and annotated by Teresa J. Hornsby. 1. Page 8. “Ruth comes out from hiding and stealthily uncovers his “feet.” Bible scholar Amy-Jill Levine makes a strong case that Ruth seduces Boaz here. She hides until the time is right, approaches him when he has reclined and is a bit tipsey, exposes his genitals, and then lies back and waits for him.” 2. Page 8 “ This is an odd euphemism that is not clear to translators. Some interpret “un/covering his feet” as urinating while others think he could be masturbating, defecating, or having sex.

Questions for Reflection

Set 1.

1. What in your life humbles you?

2. Do you embrace what lowers you or do you often find yourself trying to “fix” or “raise” the things in your life that you deem lowly, broken, weak?

3. What do you think of the seemingly contradictory messages to Israel about their relationship to foreigners?

4. What do you think of the urge to choose one or the other?

5. Why is it so difficult to hold the two in balance and approach life on a case by case basis? And how can God guide us in this, rather, how can we take our guidance from God? Does it require simplifying? Slowing down? Lowering expectations? Or…other ideas?

6. Judah did Tamar wrong by not allowing her to marry her deceased husband’s son and he himself ended up as her “husband.” Perez is the child of this coupling. Think about the other ancestors in the lineage of David and Jesus. What do they have in common with your own lineage?

Set 2.

1. Have you ever heard the story of Jephthah? You can read it in Judges chapter 11 and 12.

2. Do you think the story of Jephthah a caution against being too proud to “break a vow?”

3. Have you been in a situation in which doing the right thing by the “letter” was a betrayal of life and love?

4. Is there such a thing as being “too” good or “too” observant or “too” conscientious?

5. What do you make of the disappearance of the line of Jephthah and the fruitfulness of the line of Perez?

Set 3. One big question: When we experience the fallible and fragile in our lives, it can make the heart quiver. When we are found wanting, sinful, overly emotional, hard hearted, difficult, distant, “broken” in any number of ways it is hard not to feel so bad that we just want to FIX it.

Conversely, it can be so painful to SEE ourselves in these conditions that we simply fall into denial.

HOW can we hold ourselves open to God’s grace and God’s love so that God’s love and redemption can shine against the backdrop of our lives as they are?

Ruth Chapter 3

Ruth Chapter 2

Notes:

Reflection Questions

1st Set. Questions -

How do you find your heart closing and becoming hard in times of difficulty?

Does the current news cycle frighten you and challenge your sense of peace in God?

What ways have you found to assert yourself in gentleness and strength of faith?

What daily practices help keep your heart open to God’s healing power for you and for the world?

2nd Set. Questions -

What does it take for you to live life abundant?

Are there ways that you participate in gleaning?

Would you like to participate more?

Are there ways you have received through others: gleaning, family sharing, scholarships, community sharing or other?

3rd Set.Questions-

In what ways do you feel stuck?

Is there a way you can step out today, just one action and wait for God to reveal the next step?

Can you sit with the tension of not knowing what to do, yet believing all the while that God loves you and is walking with you?

In what ways do you feel God’s power alive in your life?

Or have you known men and women who exhibit this to you?

Ruth Chapter 1

Notes:

Study questions can be found below.

1st set

The stories of the Bible go for a kind of honesty that we do not often see in historical accounts.

The mothers and fathers of our faith grappled with personal flaws and inner darkness that we often forget about.

What is the price we pay when we gloss over their personal and historical struggles?

How can we see ourselves as living through a history much like theirs?

How can we be as honest as the Bible about our social location and personal flaws?

What do you do when you are faced with a troubling truth about yourself, your community, your nation or human nature?

How can you use this troubling truth to draw closer to the God who knows and loves you?

2nd set

When have you seen Christian values exhibited more by people who are not Christian?

What do you think Mahatma Gandhi meant in his interview with Dr. J.H. Holmes when he said "I like your Christ, but not your Christianity.”?

How do you limit the action of God outside Christianity?

What benefit do you see in limiting God to Christian beliefs, doctrines, and believers?

3rd set

How can you take the story of Ruth personally, for your life and for the world in which we live? Where in your life has one loss or trouble followed another? That is the place where the Spirit is walking with you through dark. Where are your creative ideas coming from? Where is your heart opening in compassion regardless of what the law books say? Regardless of what your tradition has said, where is your caring heart insisting on the power of God’s love in the face of indifference, despair and division? The Holy Spirit is breathing into this hope and pain with you. Stay with it. Where are you the one who is the outcast? The illegal one the disapproved of one? The Spirit is with you there, as you struggle to find a way forward, the Spirit is there at your back. As close as your breath. The Spirit is here.