RUTH chapter 3 I want to share my three R’s with you. Not the three R’s of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, but using Dr Rachel Starr’s headings in her notes on the Methodist Bible month: Resisting, Redeeming and Restoring. RESISTING Chapter 3 begins with Naomi scheming and planning a way of obtaining a greater degree of security for her daughter in law Ruth. Some of the events recorded in the Book of Ruth probably make us feel rather uncomfortable. There are issues here about seduction and abuse and certainly degrees of sexual inappropriateness. Naomi suggests Ruth bathes, anoints and adorns herself then goes to Boaz at night while he is sleeping and lies down next to him. There appears to be a resistance to normal patterns of conventions and behaviour in the culture of the day. Ruth is encouraged by Naomi to take some initiatives towards Boaz. Ruth does not resist anything Naomi suggests, she goes along with it, she colludes with the plan. I wonder if we are guilty of colluding with things we perhaps should have resisted. Take for example the whole issues of statues to slave traders. Edward Colston’s statue was pulled from its plinth and Bristol and his symbolic figure was rolled down the street and cast into Bristol dock. There have been campaigns for many a year to remove him from his honoured place as we now see he made his money from an horrific business. History is unfolding all the time, it is not just a static deposit of facts, our perceptions of people change as we become more sensitive to issues. The programme on TV “a house through time” by David Olusoga has provided a fascinating insight into the people who lived in Guinea Street, Bristol, the first owner being a slave-ship owner who was trading in black captives from Africa as the name of the street suggests. It now houses a refugee who lodges there with the family who own it. Whatever our view of someone like Winston Churchill, we are probably aware now much more than ever that all people are a complex mixture of good and bad, glorious actions and grimy dimensions too. I was brought up to remember from my grandad what Churchill thoughtshould happen to striking miners in a previous era! Most of us are a complex mix of good and evil. Sometimes our motives are less then they might be. As human beings we are capable of great acts of honour, service and self-sacrifice but we also all have the potential for scheming, plotting and less than glorious words and deeds and attitudes. We must make a real concerted effort to ensure that we resist evil and do good. REDEMPTION I heard Peter Stanford’s Private Passions on Radio 3 last week. He told the story of his meeting with Lord Longford some years ago and Longford’s passion for the release of Myra Hyndley. Longford as a Christian was passionate about prison reform and made the comment to the young journalist Peter Stanford that if you ever slip into believing that someone is incapable of rehabilitation you are actually saying something about human nature that goes against all we proclaim in the gospel. Longford believed passionately in rehabilitation, as a campaigner for prison reform, and as a Christian in the concept of redemption. In an old hymn by Thomas Ken of “Awake my soul and with the sun” we sing in verse 2 “redeem the misspent moments past and live each day as if thy last”. It seems to suggest we can make good what we made a mess of in the past. We profess to believe in a God who redeems, who continues to work his work of grace in the life of the world he loves and has redeemed in his Son. Boaz awakes to find a beautiful woman lying next to him and he asks “Who are you?”. I wonder how good we are at seeing the whole person in the folk we encounter and seeing their potential rather than who they seem to present themselves as to us. The shabbily dressed person we might encounter probably has a sad story to tell if only we make time to listen to it, if we could only take time to get to know the person behind the appearance we might shun. They also have potential. Boaz sees Ruth more than just a foreigner as he did in the previous chapter, he now sees her as the widow of Elimelech’s son. Boaz comes to see her as a kins-woman, one of his own kith and kin. And he wants her to know God’s blessing, to see things go well for her, after her disappointment and calamity. She goes home with a plentiful supply of barley. Bill Gowland (founder of the Luton Industrial Mission in the 1960’s) was passionate about the Church needing to stand alongside people in their daily lives and work. He coined a phrase “that we cannot redeem what we do not understand”. Of course, it is God who redeems but he does call us, as his followers, to share in the work he is doing, for God’s work continues. Part of our task as disciples of Christ is to get alongside people in all the daily struggles they encounter and to look and listen for the signs of God’s kingdom around us and among us, to see God’s work of redemption in situations in our world today. We believe in a God who takes what we are and what we offer and transforms them by his grace. So we can sing in the words of Kevin Nichols “In bread we bring you Lord” (689 StF) “Take all that daily toil, plant in our hearts’ poor soil, take all we start and spoil, each hopeful dream, the chances we have missed, the graces we resist, Lord in your Eucharist, take and redeem”. Or if you prefer , In the words of Charles Wesley “Great is our redeeming Lord in power and truth and grace”. RESTORING The story of Ruth chapter 3 ends with Ruth returning to Naomi with six measures of barley, the plans Naomi has hatched is working and coming to fruition, her mission is almost complete. Boaz is seeing Ruth in a different way and the fortunes of the family are looking up. There looks like the potential of some restoration of fortunes, the redeeming of the land that once belonged to Elimelech, there is hope for the future and promise filled with potential. In these days of Coronavirus restriction and the gradual lifting of those restrictions, I wonder what we are hoping might be restored. Many of us are probably longing for a restoration of things as we knew them at the beginning of March. Chances are that those days are either some way off yet or perhaps will never return as they were. In the life of the Church we probably will never return to how things were and perhaps we shouldn’t, because some of the things we did and the way we did them were already long past their sell-by date. The restoration might well be quite different from how things used to be. So, I end with some questions to ponder, “What work of restoration is God calling us to?”, “What things have been restored during these odd days of Coronavirus that we had lost sight of? “ (and I know the way we have been looking after each other is perhaps one such thing, “watching over one another in love”). “What things are we hoping might be restored? And what things should and what things should not be restored?”. And how do we decide? Renewal is perhaps a better word because God is continually making things new. We are going to sing a hymn now which speaks of such a renewal in the life of God’s Church…..Lord your Church on earth is seeking… StF 410/ HAP 774 Lord thy Church on earth is seeking