God Enters Through the Back Door

This Advent season, we’re telling a different kind of Christmas story. We’re looking at Jesus’ family tree as we tell the Messy Christmas Story. Two weeks ago, we met Abraham and Sarah, who took matters into their own hands when trust was hard. Still, God remained faithful. Last week, Tamar claimed her place in the promise from the margins, showing us that God doesn’t erase the mess; God works through it. Today, we meet Rahab, a woman with a past and a reputation, with nothing to offer except courage and trust in a God she barely knows. And once again, grace shows up in the most unexpected places.

In our Bible Story this morning, the Israelites are getting closer. After years of wandering through the desert, they are preparing to take the Promised Land, which God had promised them. But it wasn’t as easy as walking into the land and taking it. The Promised Land was full of people. They lived in networks of towns, each with its own leaders and structures. The Israelites couldn’t just walk in. They had to prepare for a military conquest. So, Joshua decides to send spies to stake out the Promised Land to prepare for the invasion. Joshua sent two spies from Shittim, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” It was essential to the mission's success that the spies go out. One theologian notes, “In reconnoitering a city they would be interested in defenses, food and water supply, number of fighting men and general preparedness for attack or siege. Most important was to find out what they could about the source of the water supply. If that could be cut off or compromised, a siege would have a much better chance of success.”

So the two spies go off on their mission. As they arrive in Jericho, they end up in Rahab’s house. Rahab wasn’t a strategic ally. She wasn’t an influential member of society. In fact, she was just about the furthest from the best person to use to infiltrate Jericho. As a Canaanite, she was an outsider. As a woman, she was socially powerless. And, as a prostitute, she was religiously unacceptable. This wasn’t the cleanest or easiest way to get into Jericho. It wasn’t the perfect circumstances or the “best” or most key person. It wasn’t the ideal timing either. If God waited for perfect people or perfect timing, the story would never move forward, and Jesus would never have been born. The Christmas story only happens because God keeps showing up in broken stories with people no one expects. And God works through the mess and less-than-ideal circumstances, using Rahab to open the Promised Land to the Israelites. 

Christmas is about God coming into the wrong place at the wrong time—according to human logic. It isn’t ideal to be born during a census in a community far from home. It isn’t ideal to send a baby to be a king. It isn’t “right” to use peaceful means to establish a kingdom. It isn’t easy and clean to have the Holy Spirit conceive a child with a virgin. Who would really believe her? Yet looking back through Jesus’ lineage, Rahab reminds us that throughout history God uses less-than-ideal circumstances in ways that defy human logic to bring about God’s kingdom-building means.

Now Rahab has heard about this God. She’s heard stories about Israel’s God and all that God does for the people of Israel. When these spies come into town, she has a decision to make. Word has already gotten out that the Israelite spies are in town. The king is sending men to search for them, and before long, they knock on Rahab’s door. What will she do? Will she obey the king and give the spies up? Rahab has heard things about this God. She trusts this God. She has no guarantees from the spies or promises from God. Despite this, she hides the spies on the roof and lies to the king about their location, sending the soldiers on a wild-goose chase. One theologian reminds us of the power in making this choice, writing, “Nevertheless, Rahab does recognize Israel’s God as the universal sovereign, the one who is in control of all territory and who has power to allot it to whomever he chooses. Whether or not she identifies personally with Israel’s God is not as important in the story as the fact that she properly identifies the Lord as the power to whom she should bow. This recognition sets her apart from all other Canaanites except the residents of Gibeon.”

Rahab lies to save lives. She risks everything, even her life, to protect the spies. She trusts in a God she barely knows, just based on what she has heard about God. How many people would have the same faith that Rahab does? If soldiers knocked on our door under penalty of death, would we have the same faith? Peter denied Jesus three times after the crucifixion, and he was one of Jesus’ closest disciples. Rahab reminds us that you don’t have to be from the right place or have the right past to be part of God’s future. Rahab had no religious pedigree—but she had courage and trust, and that was enough for God. In fact, Hebrews 11 lists Rahab among the faithful, not because of righteousness in a traditional sense, but because she trusted when others did not.

In fact, Rahab shows us an example of subversive faith. Her decision to protect the spies is not just theological, it’s political too. She aligns herself with the God of the Israelites and with the political kingdom they are coming to establish. Further, in doing so, she sides with God and God’s people before she even knows whether she will be accepted. Rahab risks her life to step into the story of salvation. One theologian frames up her thought process by writing, “A possible explanation may be given by realizing that she was fully convinced that it was futile to fight against the God of Israel. Even if the spies were put to death, it would make no difference in the ultimate result. Jericho was doomed. To reveal the spies would not save a single life, but would only anger the Israelites. At the same time, to conceal the spies would harm no one. Rahab’s choice appeared to be: reveal the spies and sacrifice all hope of life; conceal the spies and have hope that somehow she and her family would be spared.” We wouldn’t expect Rahab to be thinking in this way. We would most likely look at her, her line of work, and her place in society and write her off. Yet the people we write off as too far gone, or outside the boundaries of faith, may already be walking with God in ways we don’t see.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus honors outsiders who show great faith, more often than insiders who assume they already belong. I think about the Canaanite woman’s faith in Matthew 15. She comes to Jesus and asks for help getting a demon out of her daughter. Jesus doesn’t respond. The woman must continue asking for help because the disciples finally ask Jesus to send her away. Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The woman kneels before Jesus and asks for help again to which Jesus responds, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Finally, the woman responds to Jesus, saying, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Jesus, impressed by the faith of this outsider, heals the woman’s daughter while praising her faith. 

And once the danger passes, Rahab doesn’t ask for reward; she asks for mercy. She knows what is going to happen. She knows they will come in and conquer the land. They instruct her to take the red cord that she used to help them down off the roof and tie it in her window. If she keeps their secret and gathers her family in the house with the red cord in the window, they will be saved. God’s grace comes to her home. Her red cord becomes a sign—not unlike the blood on the doors at Passover or even the cross at Calvary. God’s grace covers her, her family, and her future. Rahab becomes a part of Jesus’ family tree and is named in Matthew 1. She gives birth to Boaz, who will marry Ruth, and the grace doesn’t stop with her.

What’s even more striking is that Rahab doesn’t just ask for herself—she asks for her whole family: her parents, her siblings, everyone under their roof. The text doesn’t tell us what they believed or how they felt about hiding in the house of a prostitute with a red cord hanging from the window. But because Rahab believed, they were brought into the promise. Sometimes we are Rahab—trusting God for a future we can’t yet see. And sometimes, we’re the family—unsure, hesitant, maybe even unaware of the grace unfolding around us. But someone else’s faith can become a shelter. That’s the beauty of God’s grace: it doesn’t stop with the one who believes—it spills out. It draws in. It makes space not just for the faithful, but for those still figuring it out. That kind of grace demands something from us, too.

So the church must ask, who are we welcoming into God’s story? Do we welcome the Rahabs of the world? Or would we rather pass her by or exclude her? Who is Rahab today? I think of the woman who walks into a church for the first time in years, unsure if she’ll be welcomed. The woman carrying shame or secrets, unsure if grace is big enough to cover them. The woman who has no titles, no platform, but still shows up with trembling faith. Like Rahab, she ties her red cord in the window, trusting that even if no one else sees her, God will.

So, where are we in the story? Are we tying red cords of hope in unexpected places? Are we becoming shelter for others, like Rahab was? Or are we standing at a distance, deciding who belongs and who doesn’t? The beauty of this messy Christmas story is that grace keeps showing up in the least expected places—sometimes through us, sometimes for us.

As the spies left, Rahab tied the red cord to her window. That cord wasn’t just a secret signal; it was a visible sign of hope. It marked a promise made and a rescue on the way. The red cord was Rahab’s act of trust, tied to the window, waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. It hung there like a crimson Advent candle, marking her home not with perfection, but with expectation. That red cord said: “Grace lives here. Mercy is coming.”

Like Rahab, we live in the space between the promise and its fulfillment. We tie our red cords not because everything is right, but because we trust the One who is. We wait, not passively, but with defiant hope, like lighting one more candle in the dark, trusting that the dawn will come. Because God is coming through. This Advent, what is your red cord? What small sign are you clinging to while you wait? What promise are you holding in hope—against fear, against shame, against despair? Because the same God who saw Rahab—who rescued her and rewrote her story—is still at work: bringing hope to the hopeless and writing redemption into stories we might think are too far gone. That’s part of the crazy Christmas story: no one is too far gone for God’s grace.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.