Welcome to the Churchyard
Welcome to the Churchyard
Ruth 2:4
And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The LORD be with you!” And they answered, “The LORD bless you.”
In its wider, uninterrupted narrative context, this imperative, “Behold” can be translated with shock and awe as if to say, “Pay attention, reader—you can’t make this stuff up!”, because it connects the previous action of Ruth happening to enter Boaz’s field with the corresponding action of Boaz happening to arrive at the exact same moment.
But, yet again, I’m stopped dead in my tracks by that little word, “Bethlehem.” It’s becoming a repeated theme in only the first two chapters of Ruth, as if the broad lens of biblical history is narrowing down now. The drone camera is hovering over this little dot on the horizon of earth, this tiny speck in an unending cosmos, focusing our eyes on the bread now rising from it while fading everything else out around it. And if we listen closely, we might even hear the faint sound of a baby crying, and we might see the fleeting silhouette of a manger, and we might feel the rumble of angel choirs singing in the skies—not so much as prophetic hints of a Salvation to come, but rather as imprints of a Salvation already carved into the soil of this sanctum sanctorum: a signature that God effectively placed into the foundation when He built the world.
Don’t you see Jesus in Boaz’s benevolence here, friend? Don’t you hear Immanuel’s voice in this benediction, “The LORD be with you!”? This is Bethlehem—the House of Bread—a place where hungry children are satisfied and where weary pilgrims are revived and where foreigners are welcomed as natives. Yes, and this is Boaz’s field. These are hisassets, his lucrative heads of grain, his stocks and bonds, his livelihood, his inheritance, his blood, sweat, and tears; yet, he gives freely to all. There’s a sign somewhere on the border of his field that reads, “Come, all you who are weary and hungry, and rest here!” Isn’t this a foretaste of a coming spiritual harvest? Isn’t this a hint of a heavenly feast to come, where One will give of His bounty for our need and of His toil for our rest and of His wealth for our poverty?
The church can glean in Redemption’s fields because a Redeemer has opened the storehouse.