Esther was a punk; Ruth was a CHAMP

I get kinda frustrated and disappointed when I ask one of my sisters-in-christ who their favorite bible character is, and they answer with “Esther”.

Esther, the chick who effectively just stood there and looked pretty for a king so she could get married to him.

Esther, who’s greatest heroic action was to save her people from annihilation (very good), because her uncle Mordecai told her to (well, at least she was dutiful), risking death by approaching the king unsummoned, (okay, that’s heroic), by buttering up the pagan king for three days (okay, less risky), then buttering him up for two more days (alright, much less risky), by asking a favor of the king on behalf of herself and her national-hero uncle (are you serious?), to please, please, please, don’t kill her people.

Really?  That’s your favorite bible character?

Granted, there might be more going on there that I am not aware of, but at least from my cursory look at the circumstances, Esther isn’t really that impressive to me.

Ruth though, hoo boy Ruth.  She’s not just heroic, she’s heroinic.

Let’s start by setting up the scene for you:

Ruth was written after Judges, when the Isrealites were in the Promised Land, but before the coronation of David.  It was believed that Ruth was written in defense of David's right as king.

Ruth was a Moabite, and there was an injunction against Moabites from joining Israel up to the tenth generation.  David was Ruth’s great-grandson, and therefore not technically allowed to join isreal for at least another six generations.  This poses a conundrum to someone who is to be the new leader of Isarel.

But Ruth isn’t your typical Moabite: she abandons her gods, her ancestral home, and her family to stick with her mother-in-law, even after her mother-in-law’s son has died and Ruth has no reason to stay around (indeed, Naomi’s other daughter-in-law, Orpah, leaves Naomi, and Orpah is in deep distress to go, but she still takes her chance to exit when she could). 

Ruth is different: she is deeply convinced that Naomi’s god is the true god, and throughout the narative she understands that she has no right to the benefits available to Abraham’s descendents, and respects that boundary between the two peoples.  The sin of Moab was abandoning the Israelites when they most needed them, the righteousness of Ruth was completely distancing herself from her people, and staying with an Israelite even when she was asked again and again to leave.

A lot of people say God won’t make exceptions to extraordinary people.  For Ruth, God made the exception, and raised one of her descendents to be king of Israel, and later, the King of Kings.

Luke and Matthew record the genealogy of Jesus, and in Matthew (the gospel most likely written for a Jewish audience),Ruth is also included in the in this list (Matthew 1:5).  Most people accuse Christianity and Judiasm as being chauvenistic, but the fact that Matthew included women in the genealogy of the world’s savior shows that these women contributed greatly to the nation of Israel. Compounded with the fact that the genealogy is also pretty much a “highlight reel” of Jesus’s most important ancestors, this doubles the emphasis of Ruth’s importance to Israel’s history and Jesus’s heritage. (Also worth noting is that Esther doesn’t show up in there.)

Ruth was faithful, humble, diligent, and deeply loyal, enough to be included in the genealogy of Jesus and to exempt David from the injunction against the Moabites.  Next week, I’ll show you why this is true.

See you there.

How Far Will You Walk?

If you have ever read Matthew 15:21-29, or Mark 7:24-31, you'll find a curious story.  Jesus goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon, after leaving Gennesaret (Matthew 14:34 & Mark 6:53), where he meets a Canaanite woman.  She comes up to Jesus and their interaction goes something like this:

"Jesus, Son of David, heal my daughter!"

Jesus ignores her.

"Jesus, Son of David, heal my daughter!"

She says again, but Jesus ignores her.

"Jesus, Son of David, heal my daughter!"

Jesus still ignores her, and by this time the disciples must be a little annoyed by her, so they come up to Jesus like, "Hey, uhhh, Jesus, can you send her away or something?  She's like bothering you and everyone else."

"It is not fit to take the children's food and feed it to their dogs."  Replies Jesus.

"That's true, but even their dogs eat the crumbs that fall off the table."  Says the woman.

"I like your answer," Jesus says, "Go.  Your daughter is healed."

She goes home to find her daughter healed, and Jesus and his disciples leave the region of Tyre and Sidon to go to the Sea of Galilee.

This story is so odd: Jesus seems to be calling this woman a dog, and her reply doesn't seem sufficient enough to warrant her daughter's healing, yet Jesus approves of how she responded to him, and Jesus is always wanting to heal and teach, but this time he seems to purposefully withhold his healing.  There are three points I want to make about this story.

The first point I want to address is the fact that Jesus called her a "dog".  The greek word he uses here is "κυναρίοις", or "kynariois", which means "little dog". So Jesus wasn't calling her a "dog", as much as he was calling her "precious, little puppy".  At the time, the Jews called Canaanites "dogs", and Jesus's decision to call her "little puppy" was more a play on the words and references between their two cultures than an insult.

When Jesus said he was there for the "children of Israel", not for their "dogs", her response was that she knew she wasn't a child of Israel, that she was a dog and had no right to the blessings God would give them, but all she wanted was a breadcrumb.  Her sense of humility and gratitude was what moved Jesus to heal her daughter; she knew she didn't deserve what he could give, but she was grateful for what little God would bless her with.  We too, do not deserve the blessings God has given us, and yet how often do we take what God gives us for granted?

The second point is the distance Jesus and his disciples traveled, going from Gennesaret to Tyre and Sidon.  Some people estimate that the distance Jesus traveled on this leg of his journey was around 50 miles.  It is reasonably assumed that Jesus didn't travel via donkey or camel, much less a car, so that means Jesus and his disicples probably hoofed it via foot during the entire journey.  Assuming a natural pace of 5/mph, Jesus spent about ten hours to travel that distance, not including stops for resting and eating a snack before moving on.  This means that Jesus traveled an entire day to get there, and when he arrived, he did no teaching or miracles, aside from meeting this woman, testing her faith, and healing her daughter, before he left that area.  Jesus walked 50 miles for one person.

Think about that for a second: Jesus walked 50 miles for one person.  Just one person.  How far will you walk for one person?

I want to encourage us all to follow Jesus's example: how far will you walk?  Will you walk 50 miles for a friend, much less a stranger?  In America (and especially Orange County, where I live), we are so busy trying to pay our bills and living our lifestyle that I think we forget to commit to people more.  Sitting down to eat or walking around a mall and shopping with a friend doesn't quite fill the needs we have as social creatures. 

When was the last time you stayed up all night with a friend because they were in grief?  When was the last time someone did that for you?  When have you given someone $100 because they were in need, and you told them to not bother paying you back?  When was the last time you had a fight with a friend, and you stuck with them, despite your differences?

We are social creatures, and we need our relationships to help us function and live our daily lives.  I think Americans pride themselves on their independence, resilience, and self-sufficiency, so we are not ready to admit our weaknesses or our need to have help from time to time.  Perhaps if we are better friends with the people already in our lives, maybe, just maybe, we'll have people who are better friends to us.

My final point is that there are many facets and lessons we can learn from this one account.  How often do we read our Bibles (if some of us read it at all), find a curious passage like this, and just keep skimming through it?  In one short account, we find the heart we need to please God, Jesus's cleverness and sense of humor (and his humanity), and the depth of level of commitment Jesus had for one person to measure against our own sense of commitment to other people.

The Bible is an ancient document that records a culture's relationship between God and man.  The purpose I want to establish about this blog is not only the literary and historical context of the Bible, but keeping God's heart and desire to have a relationship with us, while writing in a style that's more accessible to everyone, because I think that most people feel a little intimidated about the countless dry, academic papers that examines God's word.

I'll be tackling many topics, and I'm open to discuss pretty much anything; so don't feel shy about asking me a question.  Hopefully, I'll be making a new post every Tuesday, and I'll try to preface my posts with remarks on what I believe are doctrinal (like issues on what makes us saved, what is and isn't a sin), and things that I believe are my opinion (should Christians be in the military? Run for political office?  Vote?). 

Next week I'll be talking about the Daniel prophecy of Jesus. 

Let's get started.