Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday December 4, 2022 – 2nd Sunday of Advent
Scripture Reading: Joshua 2:1-16
(Note: this Advent, we are exploring the stories from Jesus’s family tree recounted in Matthew 1:1-17 – specifically the stories of the 5 women who are named there. Each week, one woman is going to visit us, share her story, and offer a blessing to the newborn child lying in a manger.)
All that your book records about me is that I was a prostitute. I was someone who sold my body in exchange for money that would buy me enough food for the day and keep a shelter over my head for another night.
What your book doesn’t tell you is that I had no other choice. I stand in the middle of a long line of women stretching through history who have not had a choice about their own lives and their own bodies. Tell me – if you had to choose between selling your body and starving to death and watching your whole family starve to death, what would you choose?
My name is Rahab. I lived in Jericho, that great walled city. In such a large city, with so many traders and travellers passing through, I was never short on customers. I could almost always earn enough coins to be able to buy bread for my parents and my siblings.
It wasn’t a very joyful existence, but at least it was existence. It was better than the alternative.
Before this day that I’m telling you about, we had heard rumours about these descendants of Israel. We had heard that their God was powerful enough to part the waters of the sea so that the people could just walk across to the other side like it was dry land. We had heard that their God was travelling with them, through the desert, as a pillar of smoke during the day and as a pillar of flame during the night. We had heard that their God had promised them land, and we had heard that the land that their God had promised them was the same land on which we were living. Can you imagine that? Their God had promised them our land? I’m not quite sure how that is supposed to work; but now that I can see across time and space, I know that this is something that has happened in many times and places in this world. And now the latest rumours said that 40 years after they had left Egypt, some of the descendants of Israel had crossed the Jordan River and were now right here, in our land.
Rumour was, that war was right on our doorstop.
And so, when two unfamiliar men showed up at my door, I suspected right away that they were descendants of Israel. They told me that they had been sent to spy on the city, to get the lay of the land, and then report back to their leader.
In that split second, I had to make a decision. War was inevitable. My city of Jericho was likely going to be the first target. So… do I stay loyal to my people and turn these spies away and likely be killed by them so that I couldn’t reveal their presence? If I had died, my family would have starved to death. Or do I become a traitor to my own people, and let them into my home and hide them from my own people?
I believe that you have an expression, being stuck between a rock and a hard place. That is where I was. Living on the margins, and living in a time of war forces us to make difficult decisions in order to survive – which is the least worse of two bad options? I’ve spent my whole life always trying to make the next best decision for me and for my family.
I let the spies into my house. My family couldn’t afford to lose me. But as I did so, I negotiated the best deal that I could. In exchange for sheltering the spies from my own people, they had to promise safety for me and for my family. When the invasion of our city came, they had to get all of us out of there.
And that day came, and first there was a siege of the city and a time of hunger, a time of starvation; and then the walls of Jericho fell; and then everyone who lived in Jericho was killed.
Everyone except for me and my family. We were given a home within the descendants of Israel and came under the protection of the God of Israel. Even with my past, I was given a husband, and I had a family of my own.
Was I a hero, or was I a traitor? I don’t know. Both, maybe? I was just doing what I needed to do to survive in a time of war.
And you, my child – many, many generations later, you carry my blood in you.
And I offer you my blessing of peace. Like me, you are going to live through troubled times; and as you navigate the troubles of your times, I give you the blessing of inner peace so that you know that your God is with you. May your God guide you, so that you can know that you are always doing the next best thing. May that peace fill your heart and your whole self, my sweet child. Amen.
at Westfield United Church
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