Rahab and Ruth: good stewards of the family Families are wonderfully complicated and complicated in their wonder. That’s why we parents love to share bite-sized morsels of truth. We say things like a mother is only as happy as their unhappiest child and urge ourselves to make connection before
correction.
But these morsels do not make up a balanced diet and they are not the whole story. Parenting goes beyond the cliché. If we want to know what it means to be a good steward as a parent, we need to look to the Bible for inspiration. Rahab and Ruth are rescuers. Each rescues an innocent, each saves a family and each of them has something to teach us today. Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho, hid Israel’s spies, saving them from death. In Joshua 2, she explains why:
I know that the LORD has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us. We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea. When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed… for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them—and that you will save us from death.” (Joshua 2:9-13) Rahab, a social outcast and a foreigner, takes hold of this covenant promise made between Moses and God’s people, repeats it to Israel’s spies, and claims their God as her own. As a consequence her family is saved. Ruth makes the same claim, choosing to align herself with God’s people. A young, childless widow, she follows her mother-in-law Naomi from Moab to her Bethlehem home. Naomi tells her to turn back. Ruth replies, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
Ruth goes on to marry a Jewish believer – Boaz. He becomes the father of Jesse, who becomes the father of David from whose line Jesus is born. As a consequence of Ruth’s actions a family line is saved. Two women, both outcasts, both rejected, both foreigners in a different culture. Both instrumental in saving their family – a family that goes from Rahab to her son Boaz, to Ruth, Jesse, David, Jesus and beyond. What does it mean to be a good steward of the family? As parents it means learning to focus on the long-term, not just relying on the bite-sized morsels. It means sacrificing and serving and learning to see others as God sees them; indispensable members of a larger family. It may mean accepting an outsider as a future husband or wife to a daughter or son. It means we are, as believers, one family. And in this case, what’s true for parents is true for everyone: Jesus was born from a lineage of rejected outcasts, and yet all that was redeemed. God chose brokenness to demonstrate the mighty power of His love. And it started with two faithful family stewards, Rahab and Ruth. Wow.
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