The Monologue from Rahab

The Monologue from Rahab

written by Griff Martin

delivered by Amy Hudson-Downing

December 10, 2017

I’ve never quite been who you think I am. Folks just assume that I had an abusive father or an absent mother, but that is not the case. I had great parents, they loved me. I was their only child and they taught me all the things a child should know… how to stand up for herself, how to make her own way, how to believe in herself, how to know she was loved and good, and most important of all how to know she had a purpose.

And I believe my world would have been quite different if my dad had not gotten so sick when I was just a girl, suddenly unable to work, unable to earn a living. And so my choice was to let my parents die into poverty or find a way to make us some money.

So I made my own way. If I was going to be forced to be part of a world that used people- esp. women, I was going to be used for something. I knew how to make a living, men are fools when it comes to lust. I had a plan: to earn enough money until my parents and I could get out of town and start over, to have enough to live on for the rest of our days, to build for them the home they wanted for me. 

I was good at what I did. I had a client list a mile long, so I was surprised one night when two gentleman callers I did not know showed up at my door, Israelite men… not my usual clientele. But they did not want anything from me like that, like every other man who came to my door, they just wanted shelter. It was going to be the easiest money I had ever made. Or so I thought.

Until the city officials came looking for these men. I don’t know what it was, turning them in I probably could have been a hero, but there was something in their eyes that appealed to me, they spoke to a purpose that was suddenly my purpose. There was something about them that was inviting, maybe it was just that they did not treat me as Rahab the whore. 

So I hid them and I made them tell me exactly what was going on. They told me about the plan to destroy this town and I have to say it made good sense, and I was not one to want to save this place: this place that had turned on my parents when they became ill, that had not stepped in to help but had instead let us melt into poverty and had allowed me to start selling my body just so my family could eat. Any town that treats folks like that deserves destruction…..

So the plan made sense, but me being me, I was going to find a way to make a way…. I won’t tell anyone anything, I promised, instead I will help you. I will get you out of this town, but you must promise me this, when it comes time to destroy this place, you have to save me and all who are in my home.

They agreed and we made a plan. I would tie this crimson cord from my window and during the destruction, this would be a sign that this house should be spared. 

Oh I was fearful. I was trusting men I had not even known for hours. I was risking everything. All the future I had built might suddenly be destroyed. In fact I thought about going back on my promise, I imagined that if I went to the town officials and told them what I knew I might even be able to find a future here, but something about those men made me trust. 

Looking about at the town, I saw those who had allowed my family to enter poverty, I saw those who no longer cared about us, I saw those who averted their eyes each time my family walked by, I saw the men who had used me like property and never cared why I did what I did, I saw a world that was careless for the least of these, I saw a world that had forgotten what truly mattered, I saw a world that was heartless and compassionless, a world full of hate and violence and emptiness and brokenness. 

And these men had offered me something no others had, a future, dignity, a place in a story, compassion. 

So I took the risk.

I don’t recall everything about the night it happened, but one thing will never leave my soul, the sound of the cries as the town was destroyed, the lamenting that suddenly occurred over this place. And all I could think was how long those tears had been my own and no one paid any attention. 

Oh Jericho, You think those tears are the only tears? What about the tears of my father as his sickness took away his ability to work? What about his tears of helplessness? What about my mother’s tears when she discovered what I was doing to give us a future? What about the tears as we worried about what we would eat or how we would pay rent? What about the tears the first time I sold myself and every time after that? What about the tears of lament I shed for not feeling I belonged and being disregarded and kicked out, the tears of being treated as less then?  You town of Jericho, do think you are the only one’s who have cried…. Me too, oh Jericho, me too.