Public Love

Justice is what love looks like in public. - Cornel West

Ruth lights a fire under Boaz, and Boaz steps up to the challenge. He realizes that all his good intentions and all the grain he’s given to Ruth are short term things - and she and Naomi need a long term solution. They need the system to be shifted in their favor. And Boaz does the one thing that’s so very hard to do: he acts. Listen to his words as soon as he receives Ruth’s challenge:

In the morning if he wants to do his duty as your guardian-redeemer, good; let him redeem you. But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it. - Ruth 3:13

It’s the middle of the night, and Boaz is ready to act as of morning. He realizes what Cornel West would crystalize thousands of years later: Justice is what love looks like in public. So he goes to the most public space in the community - the city gate - and gathers official witnesses (ten elders of the community) and there does the business that needs to be done to set things right for Naomi and Ruth. He goes big. He goes public. (See at bottom his big public announcement).

Are there ways for you to go big? To go public? Don’t settle for a knee-jerk reaction of shame or of over-simplified solutions. Really think about this one. Talk with Jesus about it. Are there ways God is calling YOU to go public with your love, so that justice is done?

Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses!” - Ruth 4:9-10