Sunday sermon: Rahab - 'people of the Bible' series

READINGS/ Joshua 1:1-6; 2:1-24; 6:1-7, 20-25

SERMON
Let’s pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen...

Sometimes, it’s good to have a little mood music, to set the scene,
and what more appropriate background music than a little jazz – feel free to tap your toes...


Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho
and the walls came a-tumbling down
You may talk about your men of Gideon
You may talk about the men of Saul
But there's none like good old Joshua
at the battle of Jericho ...

Actually, you may talk about a man like Joshua,
but the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho is one that proves the saying that:
behind every good man... is a woman –
and, in the case from our bible passages this morning, that woman ...is Rahab.
But before we get to Rahab, a little recap of how we’ve got to her in the first place.

Last week, we heard Hagar’s story –
Hagar, the servant of Abraham and Sarah,
and mother of Abraham’s son, Ishmael.
Many generations have passed since then.
Abraham’s son, Isaac, the one he had with Sarah, has had children, notably, Jacob.
Jacob later fathers many children, but here again, notably, Joseph,
who manages to annoy his big brothers so much that they sell him into slavery –
and he lands up in Egypt.
Eventually, he saves that nation through a prophetic vision –
the Pharaoh is grateful and invites him to bring his people into Egypt.
Hundreds of years pass...and Joseph’s people find themselves under a less kindly disposed Pharaoh.
These Hebrew ‘foreigners’ are seen as a threat to the country –
‘taking our jobs’
‘taking our women’
‘taking what’s ...ours’
something needs done.
And so, Pharaoh forces the Hebrews into virtual slavery.
They’re worked punishingly hard, and, in the midst of their servitude, I wonder:
do they dream of freedom, and make up songs of liberation to sing quietly under their breaths,
while they work on pyramids, or other projects?

Eventually, God sends a deliverer, in the form of Moses –
a Hebrew who’d grown up in Pharaoh’s own court.
With God’s help, and, with Moses at the helm, the Hebrews make a bid for freedom.
Escaping the army chasing them, they cross the Red Sea, and go out, into the wilderness,
where they’ll spend the next 40 years wandering and wondering,
and learning to trust in God, as they, as our first hymn states:
walk like pilgrims, through this barren land.

At the end of 40 years, we find the Hebrews in a time of transition:
coming to the end of their wandering,
coming to a change in leadership –
from Moses, to Joshua;
coming face to face with the now real thought of stepping upon
the land they feel that God has promised to them...
They are on the cusp of being able to finally throw off the last traces
of the shackles of slavery -
on the edge of claiming, and living into, the liberation given to them by God;
they’re ready to freely embrace their freedom:
to have a place to call their own;
to settle, and to prosper, without fear of Pharaohs –
for their only master will be God.
They stand on the brink of new life, but before they enter that new life fully,
they decide to investigate a little further –
Two spies are sent out to investigate the land, especially the city of Jericho.

Jericho’s seen better days;
truth be told, both its inner and outer walls are already a wee bit crumbly in places.
Housed within the inner walls of the city,
are the wealthy –
the ruling classes,
the richer kinds of merchants:
the inner wall gives them an extra layer of protection from marauders...
and, helps keep out the riff-raff – the less desirable inhabitants of the city...
These folk dwell on the edge,
tucked behind the outer wall
yet caught in front of the inner wall:
fodder and first defence in the face of attack.
It’s in this edgy, in-between place, that we find Rahab –
a woman who makes her living in the oldest profession.
When the Hebrew spies head to Jericho, they find their way to Rahab’s house:
perhaps such a place is the perfect spot to hear stories, idle talk, the latest news;
perhaps, too, as strangers it’s easier to blend in at such a place;
perhaps they think they won’t be noticed.
However, our two spies aren’t as subtle as they think:
they’re very much noticed –
and their appearance and location is reported to the king.
The king sends a message to Rahab –
basically: ‘bring ‘em out, we know they’re spies.’
And here’s where it gets interesting...
she doesn’t.
Instead, she does everything within her power to keep these two ‘enemies’ safe.
She’s already taken them up to the roof and hidden them;
She lies to the messengers,
effectively sending the king’s men off on a wild goose chase outside the city walls,
with the gates firmly shut behind them.
And then, we listen in on a conversation between Rahab and the spies – she says:
‘I know the Lord has given this land to you...’
Hang on:
not: ‘I know your God has given this land to you’
But: ‘the Lord’...
She’s identifying with the Hebrew God, not the gods of her own culture –
she’s already made a shift in her mind, in her spirit.
There’s an emerging faith here in the God who she’s heard stories about.
She, like all the inhabitants of Jericho,
knows the story of the parting of the Red Sea.

I wonder what it is about this God that moves Rahab to help those who should be her enemies;
I wonder what it is that causes her to cast her lot in with them, and follow their God?
Perhaps, given her line of work,
a dangerous, oddly lonely job,
perhaps...she understands the fickleness of the human heart only too well, and wants more than this.

Perhaps the story of a God who saves,
a God who uses strength to fight for the captives, the underdogs,
perhaps the story of a God who is ever-present,
who never abandons his people, who is faithful,
is a god worth following.
In a different way,
just as the Hebrews were trapped in Egypt,
she is trapped in her particular life situation:
if she chooses to follow the God of the Hebrews
might she, too, find rescue and safety, freedom and a fresh start?
Perhaps, she thinks it’s worth a shot
and as she waits in her house in the walls of Jericho, perhaps she sings, ever so quietly,
a small song of freedom, of liberation?

We know the rest of the story.
Jericho is attacked,
the walls come a’-tumbin’ down.
Rahab and all in her house are protected:
the promise is made good.
But what happens later?
How does the rest of Rahab’s story –
a story of a person living on the margins of society:
both physically on the outer wall,
and socially, with her line of work...
how does the rest of Rahab’s story pan out?
Well...having cast her lot in with the Hebrew God,
we hear of her again beyond the Book of Joshua –
she’s featured in the New Testament several times.
Twice, Rahab is held up as a hero of the faith –
she’s celebrated as an example to believers:
in the Book of Hebrews, chapter 11, she features in the great list
of those who made the Hall of Fame for faith...
this woman who has a dubious line of work is in there with folk like Noah, Moses, David, and Samuel...
She’s also mentioned in the Letter of James,
again held up as an example of being a person of great faith.
And then, there’s that other mention.
We find Rahab in the Gospel of Matthew.
At some point, Rahab, having chosen to make her future with the Hebrews,
settles down, gets married, has at least one child.
We know this, because there she is, listed in a long genealogy.
We find as we read that list of names in Matthew, that she becomes a mother –
to a son named Boaz.
Remember Boaz?
We were talking about him a few weeks back:
he’s the chap who married Ruth.
They have a son,
who has a son,
who is the father of King David.
Basically, Rahab not only helps the Hebrews move into the Promised Land,
it is from her that Israel gets a king.
Multiple generations later, in Matthew’s genealogy,
we discover that Jesus is a descendent...
of Rahab –
Rahab, an unlikely ancestor for a Messiah:
It’s a case of God, throwing a wee curve ball when it comes to expectations of acceptability;
God throwing a different perspective –
showing that all things are possible,
that all people are created in God’s image,
that God calls all kinds of people
however unusual,
however different,
whatever side of the tracks they’re on.
And, whatever you might say about Rahab,
she wasn’t on living on the so-called ‘right’ side of the tracks...
But God’s Spirit blows where she will and faith appears in likely and unlikely places:
sometimes among the palaces of the powerful,
sometimes in the in-between places populated by the underdogs,
the Ruths, the Hagars, the Rahabs of the world....
who quietly sing the song of God’s liberation,
just as those in slavery in Egypt did,
just as those in slavery in the American South did, when they sang songs like
‘Joshua fought the battle of Jericho.’

We worship a God who seeks liberation:
a God of justice,
who longs for his people to hear his call to freedom –
to shake of the shackles of all that holds them down,
of all that stops them from living fully,
from living abundantly.
Sometimes, it is the real, physical chains of slavery...
and sometimes it’s the stuff we live with
in our hearts,
on our minds,
that we can’t seem to let go of –
regrets, bitterness, guilt, unforgiveness,
particular patterns of behaviour...
We worship a God who seeks liberation for his people:
who calls us to rise up from the chains
that keep us down,
that keep us from following him,
the keep us from walking out of the wilderness,
and into new life with him.
We worship the God who told Joshua ‘be strong and courageous’
and the God who found a place in Rahab’s heart...
As we follow in the faith example of Rahab,
so we pray for the courage to follow God
wherever God takes us,
whoever God brings alongside us,
and whatever God asks of us on the way...
Amen.