No Christmas Without Her: Rahab’s Story

Post Author: Rev. Elizabeth Grasham

Who do you consider to be a hero? Our word “hero” comes from a Greek which literally meant protector or defender. Originally, heroes were not necessarily good, but they were always extraordinary; to be a hero was to expand people’s sense of what was possible for a human being. Every culture, every people, constructs their own heroic myths because we need heroes; they express our ideals and hopes, they define the courage, honor, justice, and the other shared values we aspire to. Perhaps when you consider heroes, you might consider heroes of the faith like the ones mentioned in Jesus’ own genealogy in Matthew, but you probably do not think of Rahab.

In the book of Joshua, we meet the tribes of Israel on the cusp of taking the fortress city of Jericho. Joshua has sent spies into the land to do some reconnaissance, but the spies he has sent seem to have other things on their mind. The first thing they do when they get to Jericho is to visit a brothel. And let’s be clear: the spies didn’t come here to go to sleep. The Hebrew reads: “they laid down”, and the word for sleep isn’t used. The Israelites Spies are so bad at their jobs that the King of Jericho knows they’re there and is coming after them too. 

If you hadn’t already heard me read you the end of this story, you might assume it would go like this: “bad spies commit sexual sin in the house of a prostitute. Then they die because of this sin. The end.” But that’s not what happened, precisely because of the prostitute. The text says Rahab sends the King’s men on a merry chase AWAY from the Spies who are hidden on her roof. And then? She uncovers the men from their hiding place and makes a confession of faith: “I know the LORD has given you the Land.” How does a Canaanite prostitute know ANYTHING about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? 

In fact, Rahab knows more than just the name of God; she also knows the history of how God has been merciful to the people of Israel. She bets on that mercy, trusts that mercy will be extended and negotiates a deal. Rahab and all of her family will be saved on the day that Jericho falls if she will tie a crimson cord in the window of her home. 

Rahab also turns out to be the perfect person for the spies to spend time with: she gives them the information that Joshua needs to know, that in fact the people of the city are already afraid of the approaching tribes. So when Joshua and his people prepare to sack Jericho, he sends the two spies back to Rahab to save her and her family. The text is terse but full of meaning: “[they] 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….her family has lived in Israel ever since.” 

Y’all, she saved her whole family and it seems, every person who worked in her house. She didn’t just save herself! She saved all of them (were these people even nice to her? Had they mocked her because of her profession? Had they shamed her before they needed her to save them?) and became a part of Israel. Rahab, the Canaanite who lived when all others died, the Prostitute who named God in the midst of a sex-house, the pagan woman who knew the God of Israel, became a part of the bigger story. How big? Rahab became the mother of Boaz, who married Ruth who had Obed who was the father of Jesse who was the father of King David. And who’s at the end of the line of David? JESUS.

This story is an indictment of our limited judgment, of our inability to imagine heroes amongst classes of people we have wrongly judged inferior. We arrest prostitutes and dismiss them as worthless. But what if Rahab had been rejected, had been arrested, forgotten, or worse, killed despite her deal with the spies? Then there’d be no King David. There’d be no Jesus, and no Christmas. We cannot ever know the lasting effect that people will have on this world, we cannot ever know the plans that God has for people we would consider the least qualified, the least likely to be called Hero. 

Too often, in our desire to conform to God’s standards for living, we make those standards barriers by which no one can stand alongside us. Too often, in our desire to listen to God, we forget that God speaks to more people than us. We are thankful for the place we have in the kingdom, too often not realizing that God is making room in the camp for all sorts of folks for us to live alongside. We submit ourselves to the will of God, hoping for the chance to be heroes for the cause without realizing that God could say: “Thanks. But the hero I’m thinking of is a sex worker.” 

I’d like to be clear that I don’t think the story of Rahab is cause for us to leave behind our jobs and take up the sex-trade. I think our Christian witness values sex and bodies too much to encourage the commodification of it or any other part of God’s good creation. I also know that there are too many stories of people coerced into sex work against their will, and of those who exploit rather than enrich the lives of those who work for them. I am not naive.

But I think it is clear that the story of Rahab dispels our illusions, that we’ve somehow got God and God’s plans, the boundaries of God’s kingdom figured out. Rahab teaches us this: the person you disapprove of could be speaking with God when you don’t know it. The person you shame could be the hero that saves others. The person who we vilify could be the beginning of a set of dominoes which changes the world for the better. 

And honestly, aren’t those the things that Jesus teaches us as well? 

Jesus was a scandalous kid to a scandalous mom who everyone knew had a baby not by her husband. Jesus and Mary were backwater nobodies from Nazareth, and Jesus was chased from his own hometown as a radical and blasphemer. He was disapproved of; he was shamed; he was the one who saved not only his people but the whole world because of his confession of who God was and what God would do. Jesus may never have been a sex worker, but he sure had a lot in common with great-grandma Rahab; maybe that’s why prostitutes, the demon-possessed, and other shamed and outcast people followed him to the end and beyond. 

This season is about preparing ourselves for the arrival of Jesus into our midst; that also means preparing ourselves for the people that Jesus loves in our midst. And if madams can become participants in the people of Israel, the direct ancestors of Kings and messiahs, then they can also be called into relationship with us as fellow disciples. 

There would be no Christmas without Rahab. She trusted in God and saved the lives of her people. Maybe God is saving even us through the mercy and generosity of the ones who scandalize us the most. Our communities are full of Rahabs; maybe it’s time we got to know and love them.