Once again, I am resubmitting my reflection on today's readings from some time ago. I hope you won't mind given the late summer doldrums!
Today and tomorrow, we are in the short Book of Ruth, one of only two books in the Hebrew bible named for and about a woman, the other being Esther. The Book of Judith is a later deuterocanonical work not a part of the Hebrew canon even though it may have been written in Hebrew (although no Hebrew texts of it are known).
Ruth is perhaps the most delightful and charming story in the Old Testament. Ruth was a non-Jewish foreigner (a Moabite, after Moab, the son of Lot) which makes her story all the more unique. She is the wife of one of the two sons of Naomi, her Jewish mother-in-law. Naomi’s husband dies along with both her sons who had married Moabite women while in exile in Moab. The other of Naomi’s daughters-in-law (Orpah) returns to her people but Ruth refuses to leave the widowed Naomi. In a beautiful and touching hymn (Ruth 1:16-17), part of which we hear today, Ruth pledges her undying fidelity to Naomi and returns with her back to Bethlehem and also to faith in the God of Israel. There God will bless her, and Naomi through her, and she will marry Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s deceased husband. She will bear a son, Obed, who, as the Book of Ruth states at the end, was the father of Jesse who was David’s father. Thus, Ruth is a direct ancestor of Jesus, according to the genealogies based on Joseph, Mary’s husband, in both the gospels of Matthew and Luke.
This marvelous story of redemption and fidelity, of two women left destitute by widowhood but saved by God’s favor, cannot fail but touch our hearts. It is Ruth’s great love for her mother-in-law and her great faith in the God of her husband that wins the day. Boaz recognizes Ruth’s great fidelity and takes her and thus Naomi under his care and protection. Only good things happen in this tale and we are left rejoicing with all of its characters, most of all with Ruth, the forever faithful one. Blood, it is said, is thicker than water. But here we see that love is beyond even blood, beyond any boundaries.
Which brings us to today’s brief Gospel passage in Matthew 22. The Pharisees, as ever, seek to test Jesus with a standard question, which is the greatest commandment? Jesus answers the one who challenges him by reciting what is known as “The Shema” (Shema Yisrael -Hear O Israel!) from the first words of Deuteronomy 6:4-5. It was known intimately to every Jew in ancient Palestine, as well as today. In Jesus’ time, every Jewish male would recite this passage as a prayer twice a day, morning and evening, by obligation. These words were inscribed in the phylacteries (tefillin) Jewish men wore on their arm and foreheads during Temple services each day. Therefore, Jesus is telling this Pharisee testing him nothing new, nothing they all did not hold true and dear.
But what Jesus does next is unique to him. He combines this, the undisputed greatest commandment to love God with all we have, with another verse from the Hebrew bible, Leviticus 19:18 (in a happy coincidence today, Leviticus 19 also forbids the farmer to harvest his fields totally, but to leave some for the poor to glean- Ruth and Naomi survived by gleaning the fields of Boaz who fully obeyed this law). Thus, Jesus virtually equates love for God with love for one another (our neighbor). In Luke’s version of this event, the scribe will then ask Jesus, “But who is my neighbor?” eliciting the parable of the Good Samaritan as the Lord’s response. It is an example of what the Lord meant by love for neighbor, expanding the idea of “neighbor” far beyond the current Jewish understanding of his day and, I would say, of any day, including our own.
The first letter of John will go on to ask, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his [neighbor], he is a liar. For how can anyone who does not love his [neighbor], whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen?” (1Jn 4:20). And James tells us, “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:8-10)
Love God and love neighbor. This is the greatest commandment, Jesus tells us. We cannot claim to do the former without doing the later. Finally, Jesus at the Last Supper tells his disciples, “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 13:34). Paul will add the crowning touch in 1Corr 13. “[If I] do not have love, I am nothing.” Hear O Israel!