A Lady of the Night

Have you ever been in a tight spot in life? Like whether because of a decision that you’ve made or just the circumstances that life has given you, you find yourself just waiting, hoping that an opportunity might arise for you to be relieved and lifted into a new set of circumstances?

Maybe you’d just been waiting for a call from one of those jobs that you applied for, or some kind of transportation to come through. Waiting for some kind of help to come your way to resource you to handle your medical health or the health of a loved one. Waiting for some help for your child who has a learning or behavioral disability.

Regardless of the particular situation, we all have found ourselves in this place at some moment in our lives right? Basically sitting there at the mercy of fate, the generosity of another person, or the mercy of God.

This is the reality of Advent. We remember that for over 400 years the people of Israel waited in darkness for a messiah. They waited — generation after generation — being passed from under the thumb of one miserable empire to the next. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome. Waiting. Hoping. Wondering… will our time ever come?

That waiting game was nothing new to our Ancient Israelite Neighbors. Heck, it’s nothing new to us right? Here we are, still waiting for Christ to come again… 2000 years and counting. But particularly when we look at the history of Israel, we find that this waiting game is woven all throughout their history. They basically almost always existed between a rock and a hard place. The Hebrew scriptures highlight this reality over and over again — both in the big picture stories and in the intricate stories of individuals.

What we find in our Bibles is that sometimes, the most unexpected people are given a chance to escape an impossible situation and have their lives changed forever. Some of theses people had their names immortalized in the lineage of Jesus Christ — and some of them were most notably female.

We are in the midst of our Advent sermon series called “Bad Company” where were are looking at some of the curious female names that are in Jesus’s family tree and seeing how certain outsiders, people who don’t belong, people who by virtue of their past and perhaps even their occupation would be considered “Bad Company” at any family dinner party, have been invited by Jesus into his family. Mostly though, we are seeing how this translates as a message of Hope for people like you and me in this season of Advent, people who may need a little hope in a dark place.

So in the very beginning of the New Testament, Matthew gives us a list of Jesus’s ancestors. And what we’ve been looking at is the women who are included — because a typical ancient genealogy would not include the names of women. Last week we talked about the first woman — a lady named Tamar — so lets pick up there and continue until we find another name.

Matthew 1:3–5a (NRSV)

and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram,

and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon,

and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab,

Boom. Here we are already. Rahab. Who the heck is Rahab. Why is her name in Jesus’s family tree. Well, let’s find out.

Where we are in this part of Israel’s story is this: Moses led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. God promised them the land of Canaan, which is the land that was promised to their ancestor Abraham. So they wandered through the wilderness for 40 years trying to figure out how to live and how to follow God. And finally, after the entire wilderness generation and Moses passed away, the Israelites cross over into the promised land, led by a man named Joshua.

The problem with the promised land is that other people already live there. Particularly a group of people called Canaanites. And canaanites were bad news bears. They were pretty nasty when it came to military strength and super nasty when it came to their religious practices. The Canaanite religion was known for child sacrifice and temple prostitution and just all kinds of stuff that offended God.

So God tells Joshua that they have got to take over the land, and that it’s going to be a military fight. And the first place that they are going to go is a city called Jericho. So that leads us up to Joshua chapter 2.

Joshua 2:1–2 NRSV

Then 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. The king of Jericho was told, “Some Israelites have come here tonight to search out the land.”

Ok. Here she is. Rahab. And surprise. She’s bad company. Bet you didn’t see that coming right? So Rahab is a practitioner of the oldest and only profession that women had the opportunity to have in the ancient world. We don’t know what has caused her to take up this profession, but it likely wasn’t her first choice. Either she was widowed, or was working off some kind of family debt. Regardless, she’s in a kind of hopeless situation… but she’s apparently excelled at her craft because she’s so famous that the King of Jericho is like — outsiders are here? Go to Rahab’s place. Guaranteed they are there. And he’s not wrong.

So the King inquires of Rahab and she plays dumb. She tells the king that they already left. Why you might ask? Well the Israelite spies ask the same question. So this is why:

Joshua 2:8–11 NRSV

Before they went to sleep, she came up to them on the roof and 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. 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 that 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.

Rahab has acknowledged God’s power. She has heard of what God did in delivering the people from Egypt and then into the promised land, and She wants in.

In the following verses she pleads with the Spies to spare her life and her families’ lives. The spies agree and she sneaks them out of the city with a plan. She has faith that this God who delivered his people from a broken past of slavery and oppression will also save her from her broken past and restore her.

Later on in the story, it is time for the city of Jericho to fall at the hands of the Israelites, and this is what Joshua says:

Joshua 6:22–25 NRSV

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.” 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; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. But 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.

Joshua remembers Rahab’s kindness. Even though she is a Canaanite and a woman who practiced a sinful lifestyle — her admission that Yahweh is the true God and that the land belongs to Israel is all that Joshua needs in order to fulfill the oath that the spies had made to her.

This woman, who’s name Rahab is even a bit of an innuendo about her occupation in the semetic language that the Canaanites spoke, has her identity rearranged. She goes from a foreign woman who’s name means “open” who practiced a lifestyle of opening her home to men for a price has now been invited to become a part of the family of God in the nation of Israel.

And then a thousand plus years later, she is invited to be a great great ancestor to the Messiah of Israel, God in human form, Jesus Christ himself.

Why? This woman is bad company right? Well the author of Hebrews puts it this way:

Hebrews 11:31 NRSV

By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

And now I just want to take a moment to notice on thing about the treatment of Rahab in Jesus’s genealogy:

It’s the only place in scripture where Rahab’s name is mentioned without the caveat of her occupation.

It’s like even here, is this boring list of names: Jesus has redeemed her. Liberated her from the shackles of her past. She’s no longer “Rahab the prostitute” Look. It says that she is the mother of Boaz. And Boaz it will turn out is a very important character: He’s the Great Granddaddy of King David.

This outsider Rahab gives birth to the line of the greatest king Israel ever knew.

Rahab found herself in one of those really tight spots in life. Whatever the circumstances were surrounding her occupation, it’s clear that she was waiting for something, for someone to show up and invite her to something better, to something more. She was looking for a place to belong.

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt that so many times in my own life. Like God, show me that I’m not alone in this world. That the sum total of my circumstances are not going to define me forever. Send help. And help me recognize that help when it arrives.

You may be feeling this way yourself. Perhaps you are feeling a bit lost, a bit alone in your life right now. Maybe this is your first advent and holiday season without a loved one. Or it feels like the first all over again because grief has no time limit.

Maybe if you’re honest: there’s not a whole lot of holiday cheer in you for whatever reason. Your family situation is all messed up. Or it’s separated by continents, oceans, or relations. Maybe the world is just so darn broken right now that you can’t feel the holiday cheer.

If that’s you, I get it. This time of year seems to pick up as much baggage as it can and life goes on. But let me offer you this: the one who redeemed the baggage of an ancient Canaanite prostitute and called her his own is waiting and wanting to do the same thing for you.

This season, when we strip it down, is all about the reality that God came to earth to rearrange everything - including our lives. And I know that it rarely happens on our time table, but I promise you that Jesus is actively working in your life to take you out from between that rock and that hard place and to set you free from whatever or where ever you find yourself.

If you’re doing good, living the dream — then my word for you is to be like Joshua. Be the extended arm of Jesus that reaches into the broken and jammed up lives of those who are struggling. Offer them a chance to belong, to know that they are loved and valued and part of God’s family.

Friends we have been given this wonderful hope that Christmas wasn’t just a single event. Rather, Christmas is something real that we live in our hearts every single time that the love of Jesus Christ flows through us into the world around us. The incarnation — God’s love made tangible in the face of a baby who grew up to be a man who took on the cross — is just as real today as it was 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. Will you see it? Will you live it? Will you let it become you this advent season?