The Chain of Carnal Transgression

These posts are based on notes from our sermon series on Ruth.

Reading:  Ruth 3:1-7

Strange bits here.  What is it that Naomi is inviting Ruth to do?

·      Winnowing barley

·      At the threshing floor

·      Eating and drinking—a party—merry hearts

·      Sleeping there at the threshing floor—all men

·      Ruth to get dressed up—for marriage

·      “Uncover his feet”

·      “He will tell you what to do.”

Threshing floors and barley harvest and parties—When you’re harvesting your grain, you go out into the field and you stoop down and grab stems of grain and cut them off with a sickle and then you take those bundles or sheaves and gather them and pile them and then transport them on the cart—with the stems attached and everything—to the threshing floor.

And the threshing floor is central and it’s hard-packed earth and it’s also elevated—nice and flat.  All the grain gets piled up on the threshing floor and they bring in the village oxen—all tied up neck to neck maybe—and you drive these oxen around and around on the grain—and the hooves are separating the grains of barley or wheat from the stem/straw and the husk—trampling and trampling—the oxen hoof being hard and a lot of weight on a small spot so every step is like a little hammer blow.

So this big mass of stemmy barley harvest gets all smashed down and you bring in the forks in the evening when the wind picks up and you start to winnow.  Meaning you’re using the forks to chuck the smashed down mess in to the air and the stems and husks fly away downwind and the kernels of wheat or barley are heavy so they fall back down to the floor.

You do this until you’ve got all these cleaned barley berries and you scoop them up into sacks or jars or whatever and that’s your harvest.  It’s all resource intensive—village oxen, village threshing floor--village harvest, really, since the land is all village and family land—and so you’ve got all the people out there doing this thing into the evening.

It's the beginning of spring when you’re harvesting barley—the end of winter—so it’s warmer and you’ve depleted your larder and grainery through the winter, so there’s this good feeling of starting to fill that back up again.  It’s the spring feeling of hopefulness. 

Barley harvest is communal and cheerful, and you’re working around smashing this grain.  It’s a dance—so naturally these were party atmospheres—so the wine comes out and the beer—they had beer—it’s called “shekar” in the Bible and it’s made from—barley.  Pretty much a sedimenty, unfiltered beer.

So that’s this environment—it’s a party and it’s work.

The Bible uses threshing and winnowing a lot in the Bible.  John the Baptist says this about Jesus in Matthew 3:12:  “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn….” 

That’s you—Jesus has harvested his fields, and he’s entered into the threshing floor, and he has all this grain piled in front of him.  And he’s driving the oxen through and smashing it all and pulverizing it and separating wheat from chaff—goats from sheep—and now he has the winnowing fork.  The wind is up—the Holy Spirit—and he tosses the pile into the air—the test—and if you’re a wheat berry, you drop back onto the pile with your buddies—but if you’re the chaff—light—without substance—empty—hypocritical—you’re just going to blow away. 

Who do you know that are just wheat-berry people?  Bad things happen.   Life happens.  But somehow, they’re always right back on the pile with everybody else. 

Who do you know that are chaff?  The first excuse they had to leave, they just blew away.

John the Baptist warns the Pharisees around him that if they’re chaff—and they were—then they get burned with unquenchable fire.  But what happens to the wheat?  They nestle down into the pile of wheat—right back into the threshing floor party.  And then they get made into bread—or if they’re lucky—into, apparently, beer.

True religion is merry religion.  Ruth is going to Boaz at the party. 

Ruth’s ambition is to turn this party into a marriage feast.  So the party is appropriate.  So Boaz’s bride is coming to him, and that’s a merry thing.  And that’s history.  History is Christ’s bride coming to him—and history ends with a marriage feast.  So true religion is a merry religion.