Series: October 2022
Speaker: Rob McClellan
Today's Sermon
"Encased and Erased: Rahab, Jesus’ Grandmothers II"
First Reading
Joshua 2:1-24
2Then Joshua son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, ‘Go, view the land, especially Jericho.’ So they went, and entered the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and spent the night there. 2The king of Jericho was told, ‘Some Israelites have come here tonight to search out the land.’ 3Then the king of Jericho sent orders to Rahab, ‘Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come only to search out the whole land.’ 4But the woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said, ‘True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they came from. 5And when it was time to close the gate at dark, the men went out. Where the men went I do not know. Pursue them quickly, for you can overtake them.’ 6She had, however, brought them up to the roof and hidden them with the stalks of flax that she had laid out on the roof. 7So the men pursued them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords. As soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.
8 Before they went to sleep, she came up to them on the roof 9and said to the men: ‘I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that dread of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before you. 10For 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 that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. 11As soon as we heard it, our hearts failed, 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. 12Now then, since I have dealt kindly with you, swear to me by the Lord that you in turn will deal kindly with my family. Give me a sign of good faith 13that you will spare my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.’ 14The men said to her, ‘Our life for yours! If you do not tell this business of ours, then we will deal kindly and faithfully with you when the Lord gives us the land.’
15 Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the outer side of the city wall and she resided within the wall itself. 16She said to them, ‘Go towards the hill country, so that the pursuers may not come upon you. Hide yourselves there for three days, until the pursuers have returned; then afterwards you may go on your way.’ 17The men said to her, ‘We will be released from this oath that you have made us swear to you 18if we invade the land and you do not tie this crimson cord in the window through which you let us down, and you do not gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your family. 19If any of you go out of the doors of your house into the street, they shall be responsible for their own death, and we shall be innocent; but if a hand is laid upon any who are with you in the house, we shall bear the responsibility for their death. 20But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be released from this oath that you made us swear to you.’ 21She said, ‘According to your words, so be it.’ She sent them away and they departed. Then she tied the crimson cord in the window.
22 They departed and went into the hill country and stayed there for three days, until the pursuers returned. The pursuers had searched all along the way and found nothing. 23Then the two men came down again from the hill country. They crossed over, came to Joshua son of Nun, and told him all that had happened to them. 24They said to Joshua, ‘Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands; moreover, all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before us.’
Second Reading
Joshua 6:22-25
22 Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, ‘Go into the prostitute’s house, and bring the woman out of it and all who belong to her, as you swore to her.’ 23So the young men who had been spies went in and brought Rahab out, along with her father, her mother, her brothers, and all who belonged to her—they brought all her kindred out—and set them outside the camp of Israel. 24They burned down the city, and everything in it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. 25But Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, Joshua spared. Her family has lived in Israel ever since. For she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.
“Encased and Erased: Jesus’ Grandmothers II”
Some of you may remember a couple of weeks ago during the Time of Discovery with the children that I mentioned Sherri’s stepmother was in the path of Hurricane Ian. She’s lost her car, her home is essentially destroyed, and everything in it is ruined. Part of the everything was all the family pictures, some of the last relics of Sherri’s father who died over 25 years ago, and his side of the family. All gone.
These ties to those who came before mean something. They tell us not only about who they were, but about who we are. As we talked about last week, our lineages, inherited and chosen shape us. We continue the series we began last week, Jesus’ grandmothers, exploring three of the women named in the genealogy of Jesus with which Matthew begins the gospel. It’s remarkable that women were included at all. That wouldn’t have been the norm, and that Matthew chose these particular women – Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba – is extraordinary. Tim Hughes Williams, a pastor in Baltimore who writes excellently on the topic, points out that there would have been likelier candidates if one was simply trying to include notable women from the Hebrew Bible, women such as Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel. They don’t appear while these three do, our three, Jesus’ three, who have in common the fascinating characteristic of being either of foreign ancestry or married to a foreigner.[1] There’s your first interesting lesson for today—Matthew wanted to make clear that Jesus, who came from a people defined largely by bloodline, had foreign blood flowing through him.
Let’s back up and recap this week as we did last, because these stories are unfamiliar to many. The Israelites are moving in to take new territory. This happens differently according to different accounts in the Bible, and different still if you’re looking strictly at historical sources. This raises a host of interesting issues on its own, but it’s for another time. In this story, the Israelites are looking to capture the city of Jericho. Spies are sent in, and immediately they come to the home of a prostitute, Rahab. The king of Jericho gets wind and asks Rahab to produce the men. She refuses, knowing what would befall them, and hides them in flax on the roof. She tells them she knows who they are, who their God is, and what this God has done freeing them from slavery and leading them here. She sends them back out safely to hide for three days in the hills but not before securing a promise that when the warring party returns, she will be spared. They agree and she, her family, and her belongings, are saved before the city is burned to the ground.
The episode is rich with connections to other stories and symbolically rich images. Let’s talk about sex. Rahab is a prostitute. Remember last week, Tamar had to pose as a prostitute to navigate her circumstances; here Rahab has turned to that profession to survive. Does she have other choices? Few choose that path out of anything but necessity. Sex is a thread that runs through these three stories, particularly sex from a position of vulnerability – Tamar poses as a prostitute to seduce her father-in-law to secure offspring, Rahab prostitutes to make a living, and Bathsheba is taken by the most powerful man in the kingdom which by definition means she has little or no choice in the matter. In our era of “me too” and fights over abortion, it’s amazing how long sex has been something that puts women at risk and yet it is something they are repeatedly asked to use to make their way in the world. Notice the stigma often sticks with the woman, when it’s the male spies who seemingly can’t make it one day on their mission from God without visiting a prostitute.
More images - Rahab tells the freed men to wait three days. Is there any less subtle recurring image in Scripture – Jonah in the fish, the Israelites in the hills, Jesus in the earth for 3 days, each emerging to a new life, not just for them individually, but a new reality for their people. Another image, the crimson cord, which Rahab hangs from her window to signal to the invaders her location and guarantee safety for her family. If that image is catching your attention, it may be because you remember last week that when Tamar gave birth to twins, they tied a crimson thread around the baby that starts to come out first, presumably to confirm birthright. You might also be thinking of the Passover story when they children of the enslaved Israelites are spared by spreading the crimson blood of the lamb on their doors so the angel of death passes over them. Hughes Williams reminds us that the blood of violence flows through so many of these stories, and those who inhabit them live in constant threat of bloodshed. Matthew wants us to know the Prince of Peace comes from this.
The reason the cord is so visible to the invaders is because Rahab lives literally inside the city wall. That’s right, the wall. City walls were wide, made of two walls really, between which there could be storage, rubble as reinforcement in times of battle, or effectively low-income housing, presumably housing for those of little value. Certain people lived in the wall, people like Rahab. Living in the wall symbolizes the “betweenness” of Rahab’s existence. Rahab is caught between two peoples. It’s important to remember this as people are tempted to reign down judgment upon her for selling out her people. Hughes Williams cites Amy Robertson, a Jewish scholar, who writes, “Rahab clearly has very little reason to feel a vested interest in the city of Jericho as it is. She is tolerated there but is far enough outside of mainstream Canaanite society to be able to envision something else for herself. Perhaps this vision—and the sense that she has little to lose by bringing about change— helped move her to risk what she had, in order to see what else could be.” She is revered in the Israelite’s telling of the story, but even that measures her for how she is valuable to them. Some feminist scholars, according to Hughes Williams, contend Rahab is a fictional creation that serves as simple Israelite propaganda. Either way, Rahab is stuck in her story, encased in a wall and erased from a history that appreciates the fullness of her being.
What then may we do with this story? Well, one thing, the one thing I have for us today is to consider the people, women and others, who are similarly encased in a reality not of their own choosing, pushed to the side, used, exploited for someone else’s goal, someone else’s agenda, someone else’s conquest. Their full stories are similarly erased or unwritten, colored by someone else’s palette. I’m going to invite us to spend some time remembering who these people are. It’s autumn and in some places, even a few places here, that means leaves finally revealing their true colors covered much of the time. Let it be a season of revelation. The worship committee has prepared some colored leaf pieces of paper, and I am going to invite you to write on these leaves people—either by individual name or by group—who have been encased or erased by the way we live or tell their stories. Let’s write their names and give them their due visibility. These leaves will be collected and hung from these ribbons around the sanctuary until advent to be seen on their own terms. You can take the time you need now, I’ll collect after the anthem, but you can take the rest of the service. You can come in during the week and add to the collection or just pray among these forgotten ones.
If you know the movieEncantoand the character who lived in a wall, you’ll know the reference, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” but we can talk about Rahab, this women in the wall, and all who have had to live as her, who are a part of Jesus’ line and ours. We have to talk about them lest they washed away by the storms of our culture’s amnesia and selective memory. She had a name. Remember her. Rahab was Jesus’ 30thgreat grandmother. Amen.
[1]Insights from Hughes Williams come from paper delivered at annual preacher’s gathering.