Do the Walls Come Down?

Do the Walls Come Down?

A Sermon on Rahab (Joshua 2)

by Griff Martin

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

On the Second Sunday of Advent

December 10, 2017

Incarnate God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing Resurrected reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Risen Christ and the Comforter.  Amen.

That was a good movie, that was a good meal, that was a good song, that was a good sermon (maybe)….

That was a good taco.

He was a good man.

She was a good teacher.

Good and evil.

Good vibrations.

Good morning, Good night.

Only the Good Die Young.

For the good of the country…

For goodness sake….

Good tidings we bring…

Good Christian men rejoice…

Have you been good this year?

I feel good.

I long for the good old days.

How was his behavior? Good…. Good.

She is being good.

Good can mean many things: good as kind, good as high quality, and good as virtuous and often a combination of those meanings. For a lot of life good is a boundary line, something is good or evil, good or bad and there seem to be clear lines, right?

So if I asked you if lying was good or bad? Bad.

If not telling the whole truth was good or bad? Bad.

If treason was good or bad? Bad.

If someone who worked in the sex industry was good or bad? Bad.

Right?

I can tell you if I told this story of Rahab in any other way, if I used another name… say Jezebel or Hillary or Kellyanne. If I told you about someone colluding with a foreign country to demolish our country. If I told you about a prostitute who lied to get out of trouble. If I told you this story in more simple terms…. A call girl who betrayed her own country. The story is clear, she’s bad. We don’t see kindness, quality or virtue. We can write this off. It’s simple, it’s black and white.

Except it’s not, because it’s Rahab.

Hebrews 11:31… “By faith Rahab…” included right there beside Abraham and Moses and Noah and the prophets. Rahab in the Hebrew’s Hall of Fame.

And before that Rahab in the lineage of Jesus, Rahab, is one of the four. She is on the Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Which who guides Jesus’ development. Hers is a story he grew up knowing, a story that I think deeply formed him, a story that I think changed him, as I said last week one of 4 stories upon which I believe Jesus’ entire personal theology is based.

It’s a story that I think made him see good was not really a black and white matter. We now refer to this as Kohlberg’s stages of moral development defined in three stages: preconventional, conventional and post conventional morality. It starts with simply trying to avoid punishment, then our self interest gets involved, then it’s about social norms, law and order (and most of us stop there in our moral development) because the next stage is complicated, it’s about principled conscience. Here we realize that at times individual perspective may take precedent over societies, here we struggle with what happens when rules and principles collide when legally right and morally right might not be the same. Here the world is seen in different values, opinions, and rights. Rules matter but more as social constructs. Moral principles transcend mutual benefit.

And although it seems most of us exist in conventional morality, I think its obvious God exists in post conventional morality, hence so many of our deep theological issues when we can’t box God in, when God does not clearly fall in our simplistic categories.

So when it comes time for a story like Jonah where God says one thing and then does another or a story like Rahab where God works with someone who breaks God’s own rules… it gets complicated and we have to ask the questions: What good is a God who does not follow God’s own Word?

I have to say that God is great.

Because that God is a God who decides that it’s okay to heal on the Sabbath even though the Bible says otherwise.

That God is a God who decides it’s okay to talk to the Samaritan woman by the well.

That it’s okay to touch the leper despite all the holiness codes.

That it’s good to walk the border places in life despite fear of the other.

That it’s okay to make your home in a nontraditional setting with Mary and Martha and Lazarus.

That it’s okay to break family tradition and call fisherman to leave their father and do more.

That it’s good to befriend prostitutes and tax collectors and not worry about your own reputation.

That it’s okay to be called a wine glutton and a friend of sinners.

That it’s okay to have ridiculously expensive oil poured on your feet and your feet dried by a woman’s hair because that might be the exact ministry she needs.

That it’s good to forgive the unforgivable.

That it’s truth to claim grace has ridiculously low standards.

And that it’s okay to see death on the cross not as the ultimate failure but as the ultimate victory.  In fact that might even be good.

I can see Jesus as he was learning about his family, hearing the stories of his grandmothers and hearing Rahab’s story. I can see his eyes growing big when Mary tells him what Rahab did for a living, I see her notice his reaction and smile saying “Jesus don’t think so simply, she was a good woman, a woman who did exactly what God called her to do. You see Jesus sometimes good is not as black and white as you think it is.”

It’s a lesson we probably need to let Mary teach us as well. And it’s not an easy one to learn, even Jesus has to learn it several times.

It’s the same lesson Jesus is going to learn from the Canaanite woman who wants crumbs from the table. She had to remind Jesus just because I am a Canannite does not mean I am bad, this is bigger than that.

And once he learns the lesson, he lives it greater than anyone else ever has. His vision changes. Good and bad are not nearly as clear cut as they once were. He sees everything as sacred and us all as sinners and saints. It’s the world for what it really is. It’s true vision.

I have been thinking about Jesus’ vision a lot this weekend because my friend Warren has been in town and I was so hoping he could be here with us this morning but he had to catch an early flight back to New York. Warren is one of my favorite friends, a friendship that started off all places at Focus on the Family Institute when I was in college. Which seems quite ironic to tell you that my one of my closest gay friends and I met at a very conservative institution.

That was over a decade ago now. Warren and I were both raised in similar churches and were taught what was right and what was wrong and in that church it was quite clear that anything other than heterosexual was wrong.

Warren’s story is not mine to tell but I can share this portion, Warren called to come out to me several years later. I was beginning to question some of my own assumptions and to challenge things the church had given to me at this point as well. When Warren came out I told him this changed nothing and I loved him just as much as I had before knowing this, maybe even more because of his bravery. Three days later, Easter Sunday, Warren called me that afternoon because when he went to take communion that Sunday morning the priest asked him to sit back down, he was no longer welcome at the table.

At that point everything I knew about good and bad changed because I knew that Jesus included everyone at the table. I began a journey where I could honor all sexuality and Scripture and compromise neither of those. I began a journey that brought me to this place today, a place of welcoming and affirming.

It’s not as black and white as the church I started in, but the grayer seems truer to me.

In my black and white world, Warren gave me a crimson cord to follow and Warren saved me. He helped me navigate to a full color world and I found God again and anew. And in that world I found goodness. Warren was good and God was good, the world was good.

I think there are crimson cords all around us, just waiting to lead us to see more. There are Rabahs, Mary’s, Canaanite women, Warren’s, all Christ’s everywhere all wanting to teach us, to lead us to see more.

Rahab and Jesus, our rebels, but they are good. They are the very picture of the infamous line from C.S. Lewis’ first Narnia when Mrs. Beaver explaining the lion to the children says “Safe? Who ever said anything about safe, the lion is not safe but the lion is good. He’s the king I tell you.”

You see good is not as simple as we want it to be, but it is good, and thank God for that.

So may our own preconceived and limiting idea of good and bad fall away, just like the walls of Jericho, and may we find freedom in the wide open space. As the mystic poet Rumi once said, “There is a field. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

So may we too see the world like that…. through the eyes of Rahab, Mary and Jesus because their vision is God’s visions. So may we see everything through them.