A Prostitute in Church
Now you may be wondering, of all the women in the Bible, why have I chosen to bring a prostitute into this service this evening. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, 'Stir up' Sunday, shouldn't our thoughts be directed towards the coming of Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem? But inviting Rahab here this evening wasn't my idea. Sometimes, we have to take our cue from Jesus.
You know all those bracelets that say, "WWJD" ("What Would Jesus Do?")? "What would Jesus do at a service like this?" I think he'd go out into the streets and invite a few prostitutes to come. So it was really Jesus' idea. After all, she was his great, great, great, great grandmother. The Church treats her like a skeleton in Jesus' closet just like Tamar whom we met last week and like Ruth who we will meet next.
Getting our Bearings:
First, we need to get our bearings. Where are we? If we were in the Arndale
Centre, there would be one of those arrows that says "you are here."
So where are we now in the story? You are here on the east side of the Jordan
river and the very beginning of the book of Joshua. The people who had been
slaves in Egypt have wandered for 40 years in a very circuitous route. They
now are trying to come into the promised land from the east.
Now it was Joshua who had been called by God to lead the Hebrew people across the river. But it wasn't as simple as crossing the river! There was a problem. "The promised land," was not deserted. Canaanites, Jebusites, Edomites, and Hittites already lived there.
Now this is a problem when you arrive at land that you think is the promised land and discover someone else already lives there. What do you do?
In 1948 when the British divided Palestine to create the state of Israel, did they see that thousands of Palestinians had been living there for a very long time? There was a very unfortunate slogan used in the settling of that new state: "A land without people for a people without land." But we know it wasn't true. 712,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes in 1948. But it is not that simple even, because the Jewish people who sought this homeland had already been driven out of their homes by a holocaust so tragic, it is almost impossible to imagine: six million men, women and children put to death. They who were left had to search for home beyond anything that was familiar. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is simple.
It wasn't simple for Joshua, so he had to send out some spies: a reconnaissance mission. "Go into the land. How strong are their troops? How big are their cities? How thick are the walls?" The spies slipped inside the city.
Meeting Rahab
This is so interesting to me - they stopped at the house of Rahab the prostitute. Now was this God's idea or was it their own longing? Or perhaps it was just that this was the first house that they came to? For you see Rahab lived so far on the edge of the city that the text tells us that she lived in the wall - in the place between "insider" and "outsider." Or perhaps the spies knew they would hear soldiers' stories at the house of a prostitute. Perhaps they knew that they would get the information they needed at the prostitute's house. So they spent the night. Actually, the Hebrew text says they "lay there." (Well, that is all the text says!)
The next day the king sent orders to Rahab. (Ah, did the king know her? Perhaps he had, also, lain there?) These messengers from the king said to Rahab, "Bring out the men who came to you." Now what is she supposed to do? Who is Rahab to defy the king? Her life would be worth little or nothing if she disobeyed the king. What is the value of a prostitute who lives in the city wall?
Rahab took the two men and hid them on her roof. Then she said to these messengers (I can just hear her, can't you?) "Yes, let me see. A lot of people come here. Yes, two men did come here, but I did not know them and I did not know where they were from. When it was time to close the gate, the men went out. Where they went I do not know. I think if you go started right now, you could find them."
I love this woman. Oh, she's crafty - as crafty as her sisters Shiphrah and Puah in the book of Exodus. They, too, deceived the king. They refused to kill the Hebrew baby boys. And so the king was a bit upset about this and called them in. Now you can just see the king, the pharaoh. He did not know much about birthing babies. "Oh, your majesty," they said, "the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women. They are vigorous. The babies just pop out of them before we can even get there." "Oh," he said, "I see." So with their courageous deception, they saved the boys, at least for a while.
Who are these women to defy the king? Who is Rahab to tell such a lie? Even as she spoke, she thought of the men up on her roof. What if the king's men did not believe her? What if they searched her house? What gave people courage to lie when the Gestapo came knocking at the door asking if there were any Jews ("No, we haven't seen any.") even though they were now in the attic or under the floor boards? Sometimes it is necessary to bear false witness to save our neighbour.
But these men were not Rahab's neighbours: they were outsiders to her. She was an outsider to them. Yet on the rooftop of her house the distinctions blurred. Rahab had not stood at the foot of Sinai, nor had she been numbered among the tribes of Israel. Yet she dared to make this bold confession of faith: "The Lord your God is the Lord of heaven above and on earth below." How did she know this? She even had word about what had happened at the Red Sea. How could she have heard? How did she know this? Or could it be that the God of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar had also spoken to Rahab? Could God have been places we have never visited?
"Swear to me by the Lord," she says, "swear to me that you will deal kindly with my family. Give me a sign of good faith that you will spare my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to me." She makes a bargain; she closes the deal. Then she lets the spies down by a rope through her window in the wall. "Go toward the hill country," she tells them. But what sign will they give her? (Rahab has learned long ago not to trust the word of men who come to her house!)
"Tie a crimson cord outside this window," the men tell her. "Then gather all your family in your house in the wall and you and all your household will be spared." Could she trust them? Would anybody bother to tell the army to save the life of a prostitute? She sent them away and they departed. Then she tied the crimson cord in the window.
If
she had any doubts about their word, she did not say. She tied the crimson
cord at the window. This blood-red sign of deliverance like the sign of Passover,
the blood of the lamb on the door post. Now this woman, who was not among
the chosen, has been given this blood-red sign. Was she only scheming - or
did she fully believe that the God of heaven and earth was also her God? Later
on, when the people cross over the Jordan, we wait. Will the army remember?
Will the spies have told anyone about this woman in the wall? In the sixth
chapter we read:
Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, "Go into the prostitute's
house [notice she no longer has a name], and bring the woman out of it and
all who belong to her; as you swore to her." So Rahab and her family
were rescued.
The Isrealites burned down the city, and everything in it. But Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, Joshua spared. Her family has lived in Israel ever since.
Insiders and Outsiders
Like the Hebrews saved by the sign of blood on the door posts, Rahab was saved by the blood-red cord tied at her window. The forces of death had passed over her house, and the walls between "insider" and "outsider" fell away in her presence.
I think this is why Rahab is here - she is the very first person the Hebrew people meet in the promised land. She is there to remind us of the terrible danger of dividing the world into between "insiders" and "outsiders".
Under the many stories of battle, under those songs about the walls that came a-tumbling down, Rahab stands at her window in the wall. She is remembered for centuries. In the very first chapter of the very first book of the New Testament in Matthew's gospel, there's a long genealogy of Jesus' ancestors that we almost always skip over. So-and so begat, and so-and so- The odd thing about Matthew's list is the four very strange women who appear there: Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Rahab. There she is an ancestor of Jesus. All of these women suspect in one way or another. At least two of them foreigners. There is Rahab the prostitute, named in the genealogy of Jesus. One of Jesus' great-great-great-grandmothers. An outsider counted as one of Jesus' great, great, great-grandmothers!
The New Testament starts out: Don't forget that red thread in the window. The red thread is woven throughout the tapestry that tells God's story. If if weren't for that red thread, some people might begin to see the Bible as only a story of conquest and holy war. But the red thread draws us to the window where we must see Rahab's face. She bids us to be attentive to those who live in the margins of life: those who live in the walls of the city, under its bridges and in the doorways. Rahab pleads with those who would conquer any land in the name of God - for she knows that the Lord is God of heaven and earth and will not be held captive by any nation.
Outsiders Now
Rahab begs us to listen. She begs us to listen to the voice of Israeli mothers whose children have died in this never-ending war. She begs us to listen to wailing parents whose children have been killed by suicide bombers. We cannot fathom it now that even a woman - one, two, many more - lined up be suicide bombers. It's easy for us to begin to see a monster rather than a martyr, and soon to see all Palestinians as monsters, and all Arab people as terrorists. It is always the first way to get rid of a people: to de-humanize them to make them expendable. It happens when Palestinians are reduced to fanatic terrorists willing to blow themselves up with innocent people.
Please see Rahab, sitting in the window. She begs us to see human beings. Still she sits at the window in her beloved Middle East. She calls us to see the faces of Israelis and Palestinians. To know that it is desperation that drives people to acts of madness. Behind every suicide bomber are 1000 refugees and more living in camps that were squalid to begin with but that have now been destroyed.
But look, I see Rahab in the window. Look, I see Israeli women. They are standing at the checkpoints where Palestinian people have to pass through. These Israeli women are standing there to make sure that the Palestinian people are not mistreated. We hardly ever hear about those Israeli women. And they are standing there! Over there stands a group of Palestinian Christians committed to justice Can you see those women? They refuse to give up on peace!
Stand for Justice
These women in Israel are not special, they are not saints, we can do similar things. Remember what a difference you can make. Remember Shiphrah and Puah. They dared to say no to policies that meant the death of children. To save the children, Shiphrah and Puah did that and then called upon three other sisters some years later when the pharaoh decided that if they were not going to kill these babies at birth then he was going drown them in the river. Three women came to the river that day? One was the daughter of the pharaoh. Two were Hebrew slaves, a mother and a sister. Together these three women conspired across race, class, and religion. They took that little baby and saved his life. And then Rahab lying - not just to save her life but to erase that terrible border between "insider" and "outsider," to remind us that when we enter the land of promise this is God's calling to us: to erase those boundaries between "insider" and "outsider." She risked her life to do that. Just realise what these women we have heard of this evening managed to do - those three women at the river, saved the life of Moses and, thereby, changed human history.
And Us?
God is counting on us. The voices of hatred are so loud, the cries of mourning never silenced. But there Rahab is at the window, tying again the blood-red cord, singing her subversive song. She is remembered as Rahab the Prostitute. Today, I rename her also Rahab the Prophet. Little things have big consequences - what will we do for justice this week? What will we do to see beyond distinctions of race and class and religion? In this season of Christ's coming, how will we follow his example, and those of his ancestors?
Amen.
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.