“Short Stories, Lasting Calls” Part 5: Rahab

July 23, 2023 — Ordinary Time

Joshua 2

Sus Conner

We’re in the middle of the series: “Short Stories, Lasting Calls” about some of the less recognized characters in the Bible who receive important calls upon their lives in the hopes that we might all start, within our own, biblical imaginations, to recognize call in our own lives.

Today we encounter a mother of the faith who is often skipped over in contemporary teaching, though she is not forgotten in the teachings of the New Testament, as we will see. And it is also one of the most fabulous adventure sequences in the whole Bible. This is the story of Rahab.

The Israelites, lead by Moses, have come to the far side of the Jordan River – the edge of the Promised Land. Upon Moses’ death, his assistant Joshua is appointed by God to now lead the people on the final leg of the journey. You’ll recall that the land promised to the Israelites isn’t empty, there are already people living there, so Joshua’s first act as leader is going to be the planning and execution of a complex military maneuver – they are going to take the walled city of Jericho.

Under cover of night, Joshua sends two spies to survey the area and assess the city’s defenses. Jericho is known for its fortress-like protection, but we’re told that just outside the city wall is the home of Rahab, a prostitute, and in fact she herself lives within the wall. Got to love the Bible, we never really know if we’re getting fact or poetic license, but, okay, Rahab – almost certainly because of her profession – lives half in and half out of the community; literally in the capital-M Margin of the city. And it is here that the spies find they can transgress the wall and gather intelligence.

Surrounding your city with a giant wall isn’t very useful if you don’t have guards on top of the wall. I assume that’s how the king of Jericho finds out that there are spies hiding at Rahab’s house. The king deploys soldiers to find the spies, they pound on Rahab’s door, shouting that she needs to turn over the spies, we know they’re in there. But Rahab hides the men and opens the door, casual, “Sure those guys were here,” BIG wink, “but they went thataway.” And off they run, the soldiers who will now search beyond the gates for days and find no one.

Rahab goes up onto the roof where she left the spies, pulls them out of their little flax stalk hiding place, and she tells them: I know you’re going to destroy my people. We’ve heard what you did to the Egyptians, to the two kings of the Amorites, to Sihon and Og. I understand that your God is the true God. Now. I saved your lives and in return I want a promise that you’ll spare me and my family when you bring your armies back here for war.

And, so, the spies swear to save Rahab and her family because she saved the spies from the soldiers of the King of Jericho. And when Joshua eventually leads his warriors in their seven-day march around the walls of Jericho, and he gives them the final pump-up speech before they take the city, he includes the protection of Rahab and her family: “Shout! (cheers) For the Lord has given you the city! (cheers) The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction! (cheers) Except Rahab!” And we’re told that her family lives forever with the Israelites.

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Here’s a curious thing about Rahab: The Bible is preoccupied with the sexual morality of women. Old Testament law is lousy with ethical gymnastics when it comes to defining sexual purity and proving virginity. And then men who interpret the Bible, both the writers of the New Testament interpreting the Hebrew Bible and Christian theologians until, like, now, are always trying to figure out if women mentioned in the Bible are prostitutes or not or maybe just publicly sexually immoral? It’s like poor Mary Magdalene, the text describes her affliction as something that we, today, might recognize as acute mental illness and in two thousand years of Christian scholarship we can’t seem to stop asking about her sex life. It isn’t mentioned. And yet – Rahab is actually a prostitute for her job. One of only a handful of actual sex workers in the Bible, as opposed to the many women who are called “prostitute” for a sexual transgression, and in the ten times she is mentioned across the Old and New Testaments, no one ever has a single thing to say about how she makes her money.

When Matthew lists her in the genealogy of Jesus, it’s as the mother of Boaz. When she is mentioned in the letter to the Hebrews, it’s in a list of the faithful, presented on equal footing with Moses and David. And when her name comes up in the Letter of James, it’s as an example of the necessity of living with both faith and good works. The one other example James gives is Abraham.

Scholars think that Joshua chapters 2 through 11 is one of the most ancient portions of the Hebrew Bible. But the story of Rahab has clearly captured the imaginations of early Christians and I think it is significant – possibly essential – that the woman welcomed into the lineage of Abraham, Moses, and David; the woman adopted into the lineage of Christ; embodies the Biblical definition of unfit, unclean, unworthy. Feel this with me: we are some 2,600 years on from the first written record of this story and it would be hard for me, in America in 2023, to come up with a group of people more overlooked, undervalued, and unprotected than sex workers. What is going on here? That Matthew, the author of Hebrews, and James are clamoring to claim her as a mother of the faith? I mean, first century Christians are not known for their celebration of women. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul doesn’t even want a woman to speak in church. And now Rahab is up on the marquee with Abraham.

The ministry of Christ was to those on the margins of society. I think these guys, these early Christians, these non-Jewish gentile men recognize in Rahab, of all people, someone who was adopted into the family of God, not on her merits, but on the basis of her willingness to answer God’s call when it came. That’s what makes her an Israelite. That’s what makes her an ancestor. The fact that she recognized the presence of God, that two of God’s people put their lives into her hands, and that she used her exact literal place in the world – her place in the wall – to do what no one else could do.

For those of us who feel as if we have been relegated to live in the proverbial wall; those of us who, for whatever reason, present to the world or to our Christian community as unfit; the story of Rahab is a story for us. God can call us to anything from anywhere and the only thing that makes us People of God is that we answer.

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Now. Here’s the second curious thing about Rahab: She’s not going to answer God’s call without asking for something in return.

When Joshua’s spies need to hide in her house, I can imagine that she doesn’t feel like she has a lot of choices. We know she knows that the Israelites are coming to destroy her city. And these spies have come to her house that’s on the wrong side of the wall and there’s two of them and one of her. There’s a way we can read this story where Rahab is really just choosing between being killed on this night or being killed a couple weeks from now. Simple self-preservation. But after she sends the king’s soldiers on a wild goose chase, she comes up to the roof and has the audacity to bargain for her life and the lives of her family members, when it comes time for the inevitable invasion of Jericho. Again: a foreign nation has concrete plans to destroy my home and my people, I am hiding two of this nation’s military men in my house, my job and my gender mean that I live unprotected by my own government, and I have just committed treason. Would I personally have the presence of mind or courage to now say to these guys, “I’m going to need something from you now”?

This is often the super power of people who have lived a long time in the wall. When you have long been without something that you need – food, love, protection – when you have long suffered with no relief – illness, pain, rejection – you are not going to waste any time if you meet someone who might be able to mitigate an imprisoning circumstance. If you’re like me and you’ve more or less lived your life so far with the illusion of control and the resources to address your own problems, it can be easy to dismiss people who are swift and adamant in asking for what they need. But Rahab is asked to risk her life to save the lives of two strangers; two strangers who, with their saved lives are going to bring an army back to slaughter Rahab’s people; thank God Rahab knows what she needs and how to ask for it. She needs to survive.

Christians have a tendency to talk about things like call or mission in terms of self-sacrifice. As if we will know that the call is from God if it involves a whole lot of suffering. We look at the life of Jesus and we can get confused about where to read ourselves into that story. I’ll say, I don’t think our part is really the part where he’s tortured and crucified. Because the ministry of Christ is all about Jesus answering the calls of regular people; all about people asking for something concrete in return for their faith; and about the ways that God wants to respond to those requests with brilliance and abundance. Healing incurable diseases. Giving sustenance where there was none. Returning the outcast to loving community. God isn’t calling us so that we can do some free labor, stick our necks out, tick off of our neighbors, risk financial insecurity, and look generally foolish. Although those can sure be side effects of answering a call. Jesus draws a crowd so that the people can come close enough to be healed. God is calling you to some kind of work in this life so that you come close enough to the ministry of Jesus to get what you need.

I think this is why these new Christians keep coming back to Rahab, how did she know? She wasn’t even one of God’s “chosen,” how could she have known that what God was really hoping for was someone to ask for something in return? To give God an opening for something miraculous.

Whatever God has called you to; whatever work, small or wild, no matter how ill-advised or impossible; you are not expected to receive that call and not call back. What do you need? To make it happen? What would you need? To make that change? It is yours to ask for and there is nothing about who you are now that would exempt you from being called, from being equipped, from being written into the lineage of the faithful.

And, more often than we are called, we will have occasion to recognize the call on the lives of others and participate in the abundant giving of God. My prayer this morning is not just that we would receive our calls and call back with great faith, but that we would embrace the askers. The bargainers. Those among us who require something in return and brave enough to make that known. People of God, these gifts are also ours to give. Life. To anyone who comes to us asking to live.              

Amen.