Singing in the Window: Rahab's Subversive Song

The Rev. Barbara K. Lundblad

Scripture Reading: Joshua 2:1-21

This Bible study was presented at the morning plenary of Assembly 2002 on April 27, 2002 (32 minutes). Choose Low or High Speed. You must have the free RealPlayer^tm plugin.

   Photo by Paul Jeffrey, GBGM.

Gracias. Thank you to all of you. It is wonderful to be here. The best part of standing up here is that I don't have to see myself on the big screen.

Now you may be wondering, of all the women in the Bible, why have I chosen to bring a prostitute into this group of fine, upstanding United Methodist women? I hope you are not offended, but it really 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 big gathering like this?" I think he'd go out into the streets and invite a few prostitutes to come. I read that in the gospels-- where Jesus often ate with "prostitutes and tax collectors" or "prostitutes and sinners." So it wasn't my idea to invite Rahab the prostitute this morning... it was really Jesus' idea. After all, she was his great, great, great, great grandmother.

First, we need to get our bearings. Where are we? If we were in the mall, there would be one of those arrows that says "you are here." 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. Remember that Moses has died at the top of Mt. Nebo - for God said he could never go into the promised land. It was Dr. King who remembered that moment and stood there with Moses when he said in Memphis, "I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

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. What was it? "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? It was a problem when Columbus though he had "discovered" America, right? There were people already living there. When northern Europeans came to the United States as the promised land, they forgot to acknowledge that Native American people had lived here for centuries. 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 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. 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. (Which is which? Who is who? It depends on where you stand, doesn't it? It always does....) 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. Do you remember them? They, too, deceived the king. Remember 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 highness," 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 (I used to love this story as a child and the picture of these men hidden among the flax stalks that were up there for drying). What if the king's men did not believe her? What if they searched her house? What gave people courage on the Underground Railroad to tell lies when asked if they had seen any runaway slaves in the area? 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 neighbor.

But these men were not Rahab's neighbors: 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? (This was long before email!) 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. Can you see it? 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 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. They 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. [Joshua 6:22-25, NRSV]

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.

Is that why Rahab is here-- the very first person the Hebrew people meet in the promised land? Is she there to remind us of the terrible danger of dividing the world into between "insiders" and "outsiders"? Old Testament scholar Danna Nolan Fewell says this about Rahab:

"Rahab's faith and kindness raise serious questions about the obsession with holy war in the book of Joshua. How many Rahabs are killed in the attempt to conquer the land? How many people with vision and loyalty... are destroyed in the attempt to establish a pure and unadulterated nation?" [Women's Bible Commentary, p. 66.]

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, the wife of Uriah (that is, 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.

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 dehumanize them to make them expendable. We know in this country it was done when some "scholars of sorts" compared African slaves to apes. It was done in Nazi Germany, when Jewish people were characterized with certain physical characteristics and seen as a lesser race, a threat to the purity of Nazi Germany. 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.

I had to get this text in for translators a long time ago. I had no idea what would have happened in the Middle East in the last few weeks. Who can now discern the depth of despair that is there?

Last summer I listened to my dear friend Viola Rehab. (I have thought her name sounds so much like "Rahab" but her name means "monk" in Arabic.) She talked about the plight of her people in Palestine. Viola is a Lutheran from Bethlehem, director of several schools for Muslim and Christian children. She comes to the United States to plead with us in this country: she says if you're going to supply weapons of war, then you must work harder to make peace possible in Palestine and Israel. You cannot let this go away because you are paying for this. If you're going to supply weapons of war, then you must work harder to make peace possible. Oh, I have seen the red thread at Viola's window in Bethlehem and at the school in Beit Jala where she refuses to give up. She says, "Look at this red cord. Remember me and my family, my sisters and brothers and all of my people."

Can you see this red thread now? It is always there in the window between "insiders" and "outsiders," between those who have been promised the land and those who have lived in the land for centuries. Now the news is more than we can bear. Many see only enemies and the thirst for revenge.

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 (I know there is a very strong Methodist presence, alongside the Orthodox and a little tiny Lutheran presence, the Lutheran Church of Jordan with schools on the West Bank, even now they are planning to build a new school because the one that was there has been destroyed). Can you see those women? They refuse to give up on peace!

Look at this, I see all of you here. What a difference you are making and you can make. Remember Shiphrah and Puah. They dared to say no to policies that meant the death of children. They defied the king in order to do that, to save the children with the kind of passion that Marian Wright Edelman had here yesterday. 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-- remember? One was the daughter of the pharaoh. Two were Hebrew slaves, a mother and a sister. Together these three women conspired (It is a wonderful word, you know, "to conspire" -- it means to "breathe with.") 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.

Count them up: that is Shiphrah and Puah, the three women at the river, and Rahab. Only six women who changed so much. Imagine what over 9000 women might do!

God is counting on us. The voices of hatred are so loud, the cries of mourning never silenced. But there she 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.

Please, sing her song with me. ["Rahab's Song" sung to the tune of "Shall We Gather at the River?"]

Red thread flowing from the window,
Blood-red mark above the door;
Signs of passing over to freedom,
God has marked us for ever more.

E-mail Contact: kmartini@gbgm-umc.org