Faith in Action: Rahab

Last week, we talked about the book of Joshua, primarily from the perspective of the Israelites entering into the Promised Land. This week, we shift the perspective to one who is inhabiting the land that they are about to enter. It feels appropriate to remind ourselves that we are on land once inhabited by native peoples, including the Kaw, the Kickapoi, the Ocethi Sakowin, and the Osage. Remembering those who once lived freely on those lands, we now hear the story of a Canaanite woman named Rahab.

Did you ever know someone who is identified to friends and family by one characteristic? I think of those gangster movies where everyone is called “Jimmy the Butcher” or “Left Eye Looey.” Or in sports where we think about Ed “Too Tall” Jones or the Seattle Mariners All-Star catcher Cal Raleigh, known as “Big Dumper.” Or “Blondie” or “Red” after someone’s hair color. When you hear these folks’ names, it is always with this one identifier. Sometimes it is a fun nickname, but it sometimes feels like it can reduce someone from a complex human with a lot of characteristics…to one aspect of their body or personality.

I think that is the case with Rahab. Do you ever notice that usually when you hear Rahab mentioned, she is “Rahab the Prostitute”? Like it is her last name, or something. It is not like there are a lot of Rahab’s out there, where we have to keep them straight. But for some reason, it’s like we have to remind ourselves about that one aspect of Rahab’s life. But I don’t think that the text itself is as anxious about it as we have been. I want to take a little bit deeper look at who Rahab actually is in the story, and maybe even give her some new monikers, based on what the text actually says about her.

First, I would suggest that we call her “Rahab the (Materially) Poor.” It is important to know that in the time and place where she lived, being a prostitute was much less about morality, as it was about poverty. Scholar Robert Coote explains the prevalence of debt slavery in that time and place. Because an individual or family was indebted beyond what they could pay, prostitution became a way to pay those debts. It was very possible that she was forced into this way of life by someone else, and did not make this choice willingly.

One of the ways that we can see the poverty of Rahab is by looking at where she lived. The text says that she actually lived “in the wall” of Jericho. In the ancient world, the walls would be thick enough for there to be small dwelling places. But talk about pushed to the edge of town…you couldn’t get any further onto the margins! Just like our communities talk about “living on the other side of the tracks” or “the poor side of town,” or systems of redlining to keep poverty concentrated in one area of town, Rahab and her family were literally pushed to the margins of Jericho, to the most dangerous and least desirable part of the city.

It helps us, too, to see why she didn’t feel much loyalty to the people of Jericho, and was ready to give them up…because they had not really been very loyal to her. Marginalized, used for her body, and trapped by debt. Some commentators over the years have wondered how she could “sell out” her city, but if we understand her poverty, we see that she had been sold out, long before this event. Ironically, she probably felt as though she had more in common with the Israelites—homeless, wandering, impoverished immigrants—than she did with the king of Jericho and his ilk.

Coote reminds us that when we see someone who has been sold into this level of debt slavery, it becomes much more difficult to use our modern assumptions of morality to define them. How would it change our opinions of her if we called her “Rahab the Slave” or “Rahab the Forced Laborer” or “Rahab the Coerced”? Coote suggests that instead of defining her through our eyes, it might be meaningful to listen to the reading of a modern person who is in a similar situation. Who are the women today who live in lives that they did not choose? Who are the indebted in our world? Who are the coerced, forced by poverty to  make decisions that most of us have never even had to imagine ourselves making?

Which leads us to a second title for our main character: “Rahab the Wise.” Make no mistake, Rahab is the hero of this story. Did you notice the names of the spies that came to see her? Did you notice the name of the King who visited her? No, because they weren’t important enough to get named! But Rahab is!

Scholar Ashley Wilcox suggests that this is because she outsmarts everyone else in the story! The most obvious is the way that she outsmarts the King and his soldiers. When they come to her to accuse her of harboring these spies, she is very cunning in the way that she deals with them. She doesn’t outright deny that they showed up, but suggested that they appeared and disappeared and “oh, by the way, I think that they went that way and if you hurry you can catch them.” She carefully directed the King’s men one direction and the spies a different direction, so that even when they were out of her sight, they would be safe.

But Wilcox suggests that she was also cunning in the way that she dealt with the spies. She knew that they were her path to safety, along with the rest of her family. But why would they save her? So, she made a deal. But did you notice that she made this deal, not when the spies were safe and on the way out of the window, shimmying down the wall, not when they were running for the hills to safety. But when they were still on her roof, protected by a flimsy layer of flax. One scream from her and the soldiers would come running. She had the spies caught between a rock and a hard place, and she knew it was her best chance to save her family. Again, she probably had much more in common with them than she did with her own king, but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t need to think on her feet.

Finally, and this one might make some folks a little nervous, depending on your theology, Wilcox suggests that Rahab even outsmarted God! After all, God had told the people not to save any of the inhabitants of the land where they entered, and definitely not to make any oaths with any of them. And what are the Israelite spies doing in the second chapter of the book? Making an oath to save a bunch of the inhabitants of Jericho! Even if you wouldn’t go as far as Wilcox that she is outsmarting God, you can at least suggest that her wisdom and cunning action meant that God’s people had to pretty quickly abandon their agenda for a Plan B!

Now, you’ll notice that I called her Rahab the Wise, not Rahab the Liar. Folks often have a concern with her deceitfulness or her manipulation of the situation. But it is important to note that over and over again in Scripture, deceit has a different meaning when one is disempowered. The disempowered younger son Jacob deceives his brother, and is the hero of his story. The disempowered midwives in Egypt—Shiprah and Puah—deceive the Pharaoh, and are the hero of their story. And now the disempowered Rahab is the hero of her story, using her cunning to outsmart those more powerful than she. And—spoiler alert—her plan works! She and her people are saved, while the king and his men and the rest of Jericho are destroyed.

There is a third name for our main character: “Rahab the Preacher.” Part of the history of the interpretation of this passage often assumes that Rahab is an Israelite convert. That when the spies showed up and told her about God, she changed her ways and immediately became a follower of Yahweh. But that isn’t what happened, at all! Did you notice who was doing the preaching? It was all Rahab! In fact, she seems to know as much, if not more about the history of God’s salvation of the people than the spies do:

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. As soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no courage left in any of us because of you. The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below.

Preach it, sister! She is not converted by them…she already knows all about this God and if anything, she is preaching to them. This is important. A few weeks ago, you heard another important scholar, [an FBC member] by the name of Steve Yoder, preach a sermon about liberation theology. Liberation theology suggests that when a person is materially rich, or a part of the power structure, then they will naturally have a different theology than those who are materially poor or marginalized. Steve reminded us of Robert McAfee Brown’s words that “where you stand determines what you see,” suggesting… “If that is the case, then, as followers of Jesus we must deliberately abandon our elitist and privileged vantage point and make our best effort to see things from the perspective of those whose struggle to put food on the table, who lack clean drinking water, who lack access to medicine and a doctor, who have no hope because of inescapable poverty.” Or, who are forced into a life of prostitution, pushed into the margins of the city. That is why Rahab’s voice matters. So even though she isn’t called a preacher, or a prophet, or a priest, Rahab is all of these things. She announces an important theological truth from the margins. From the outside.

A couple of weeks ago, our church hosted Family Promise at Mt. Hope Shelter. But as we talked about in the Missions meeting last week, we still haven’t figured out what that means. We have not embraced the new model, and it is still just a few people carrying the load for the rest of us. Now, I have no intention of shaming anyone or beating anyone up, but I would suggest that it is imperative that we start to figure out how to get more of us involved in this new model of hosting. Why? Not because our guests at Family Promise can’t survive without us. Not because Wendy and I are on the Board and we have a reputation to uphold. Not because Jesus won’t love you if you don’t serve in this way. Rahab’s story reminds us that it is imperative that we are listening to voices on the margins of our world. Maybe it is at Family Promise. Maybe it is joining Trina and Jax at the Jax Project. Maybe it is joining the Bonners at the Homeless Resource Center. If we are not spending time listening to the sermons preached by those on the margins, we are missing the voice of Jesus in our midst.

Finally, there is one more title that I want to share: “Rahab the Exemplar of Faith in Action.” And, of course, this ties to our series theme, but there is more to it than that. There are two books in the New Testament that are important to today’s story. The first is the book of Hebrews. In Chapter 11, there is a section that is sometimes called the “roll call of faith.” It lists various Old Testament heroes who demonstrate their faith in a multitude of ways. And then, in the book of James, in Chapter 2, there is this important statement, that “faith without works is dead.” Trina mentioned it a few weeks ago when she talked about faith in action. So there are these two passages in the New Testament that talk about Faith…and Action…and the ways that they interplay with each other. And both of them have a name in common that they suggest demonstrates this way of living: Rahab. Thousands of years after she lived and died, God’s people still affirmed her as an exemplar of what Faith in Action looks like. In fact, there is a third time that she is mentioned in the New Testament, as she is one of the names listed in the genealogy of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew explains that Rahab the Wise played a crucial role in the arrival of Jesus himself. Her legacy of an active faith, portrayed in the ultimate Revelation of Faith in Action.