A harvest not our own

THIS year, the children of St John’s National School, Shannon chose the harvest thanksgiving reading from the Bible’s Book of Ruth.
This is an Old Testament love story that happens at harvest-time. It is about kindness, caring, sharing, putting others first. 
Naomi and her husband and sons go to live among strangers, outside Jewish lands and culture, at a time of hardship. 
The sons marry but they and their father all die, leaving Naomi with two daughters-in-law, both of whom love her deeply. One finally returns at Naomi’s urging to her mother’s house but the other, Ruth, says she will never leave Naomi and goes with her to her hometown, Bethlehem, to live among strangers. Naomi’s people will be her people and Naomi’s God, her God.
This is a big decision, for widows were dependent on their male relatives and they did not know what reception they would get. 
They go to Bethlehem, arriving at harvest time. Naomi’s relations don’t support them, though it is their duty; there is no longer any hardship and, as we later learn, there is land in their keeping which belonged to the dead husband.
The two women share everything, every last bit of food. Ruth, far from home and friends, works among strangers, among the very poorest, in the hardest, back-breaking work in the fields, picking up stray heads of corn. She works all day in the sun and in the evening, threshes the grain and brings it home to Naomi.
Boaz is a more distant relation of Naomi’s husband.  He respects Ruth for her kindness to Naomi and tells the workers on his land to respect her and to make sure she gets to glean enough grain.  He also offers her water his workers have brought when she needs to drink. 
He shares his meal with her and makes sure she has enough left to share with Naomi that evening. Appreciating each other’s kindness leads to love.
The Book of Ruth is a story about human love and about caring for the elders in our community and those who are widowed or have no work of their own. Our own equivalents today are pensioners and people who are unemployed.
The story is set in Bethlehem, which means ‘house of bread’. Ruth and Boaz are the great-grandparents of David, the shepherd from Bethlehem who overcame the giant Goliath and later became King of Israel. 
He was in turn one of the ancestors of Jesus, the shepherd-king, born in Bethlehem, who gave us bread and wine in a new way. 
It is also a parallel. When we learn that Jesus loved his heavenly Father; Christians have an earthly example in how Ruth loved her mother-in-law Naomi enough to leave her own country, family, language and even her beliefs and customs. 
She received, in turn, more than she could ever imagine, as an ancestor of Jesus, who was born in the town that was the house of bread. Her harvest was in her descendants.
The story also reminds us, as recession hits, that our troubles were not caused by the strangers in our midst or foreign nationals.  It was not caused by the young who have no work and are struggling for qualifications and facing the prospect of having to go among strangers to find work abroad. It was not caused by the pensioners or by those without family support. It was not caused by those who work at jobs where they glean too little pay to make life good, or even bearable.
Whatever the outcome of the current financial crisis, it was not caused by the poor. The scriptures call us to respect others and never to ask them to carry burdens we would not carry ourselves.
In acting justly we reap unexpected benefits, a harvest for all to share. Perhaps the story of Ruth still relates to our lives today.

Rosemary Power is minister on behalf of the Methodist Church in County Clare.