The scarlet thread: Rahab

Rahab

Rahab’s place in the genealogy of Jesus is fascinating. She was a Canaanite, so not one of God’s chosen people by blood. She was a foreigner, and would have been brought up to follow the Canaanite gods: Baal and Ashtoreth. She becomes a Jew by virtue of her marriage, having already decided that she had faith in Yahweh after hearing what her Hebrew houseguests had to say about Him.

We don’t know why Rahab chose to make her living as a prostitute. She lived with family members including her parents in a house in the wall of the city of Jericho. It would have been a convenient situation for her trade, as traders visiting the city would be able to find her easily, and to stay with her on arrival or before leaving. It seems that she was well known as a person who entertained foreigners – when looking for foreign spies the city rulers checked on her house and searched it. The King of Jericho (these were the days when every city had a King, and local Kings would work together to oppose outside threats) knew Rahab personally and felt it appropriate to approach her directly. In hiding the Hebrew spies Rahab was taking an enormous personal risk and was betraying her people and her city. The King would have had no hesitation in executing her if she had been caught.

References in Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25 suggest that Rahab was held in high esteem as a woman who acted on her newly found faith and took risks for God.

Rahab’s place in the genealogy is as wife of Salmon, and mother of Boaz. Perhaps her influence on her son helped him in his turn to be compassionate to another foreign woman who had turned to the God of Israel. It is speculated that Salmon was one of the spies who turned to Rahab for help and then rescued her in  their turn. That is a romantic idea, but there is no evidence for it. Whoever Salmon was, he was able to set aside the prejudices against prostitutes and foreigners that would have been common amongst his countrymen, and to see her as a woman of faith and an adopted member of God’s people.

Read    Joshua 2: 1-21; Joshua 6: 17-25   

Consider

Rahab’s situation was treacherous. Death lay in either direction: if she believed in the spies and their God she risked being killed by her own people; if she chose to be loyal to Jericho then she risked not only her life but that of her family, who would die at the hands of the invading army.

The scarlet thread is a symbol of the decision she made. She protected the spies. One might suggest that this was a decision based on assessing the power of the Hebrew army and shrewdly guessing that her chances of survival were greater if she helped them. If this is the case, do we hold that against her, or assume that there was not also a conversion? As is always the case when looking at historical stories, we can’t know for sure what Rahab was thinking or why she took the actions she did.

James, and the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, both saw Rahab as an example of strong faith which passed the test, and they held her up as a model of how to live out faith for their readers. In the days of persecution of Christians by Rome, Rahab’s courage in following Yahweh despite the cultural pressure of her own setting would have been a good one. Rahab was not condemned for the sinful life she had led, but praised for the good life she led once she turned to God.

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Question

1)   Rahab took a stand against the culture in which she lived. What are the cultural pressures on us today which get in the way of us living out our faith? 

2)   In the UK we are not expected to hide our faith or to risk our lives for it. But it can still be difficult to express our faith publicly. How do you cope with this? How do you oppose those anti-faith cultural pressures?

3)   Rahab could be seen to represent people who are in genuine danger of death because of their faith on God. What do you know about people in this situation today? Perhaps you can use the internet to find out more and offer support through prayer, or in other ways.

4)   Rahab moves from being a prostitute to being seen as one of the giants of the faith. Some church members preconceived ideas about people who are ‘sinners’ – especially prostitutes, drug dealers, or gang members – to get in the way of seeing how they could become great? How can we help improve the attitudes of people of faith? And how can we as a church offer support and welcome to those ‘sinners’ and see them with the potential of Rahab?

The Scarlet Thread

The scarlet thread in Rahab’s story is that piece of cord tied into her window frame as a signal to the spies that this is the place to come and rescue her and her family. It becomes a symbol of salvation: in this scarlet thread is the hope of new life and protection for a Canaanite family who are saved from destruction and adopted into God’s family.

The scarlet thread is a reminder of faith that trusts God and is willing to take risks based on that deep trust. Rahab acted on her faith, and those who are baptised are asked to act on their faith too, trusting in God. When you reflect on Rahab, the second of the women Matthew marks out as important in the line that led to Jesus, what do you think marks her out? Why does her presence in Jesus’ story matter? Keep a note of your thoughts and ideas, so that Rahab’s thread can be linked with the other women as we continue to trace their stories.

The scarlet thread: Tamar

Tamar

If you decide to look up Tamar, add some extra search terms, because there is more than one Biblical Tamar. It is a place name, and there are three women called Tamar who appear in the Old Testament. One gets only a passing reference, while another is the daughter of King David who is treated so shamefully by her brother (see 2 Samuel 13). It is the first Tamar that Matthew draws our attention to. She was probably a young teenager when Judah (son of Jacob and Leah) paid the bride-price, perhaps some cattle or sheep, to take her from her father and give her as wife to his eldest son, Er. Tamar’s difficulties begin when Er died, presumably still a young man and possibly not of natural causes given the phrase ‘the Lord put him to death’. The rules of Levirate marriage then came into play; although they may not have been formally codified at this time, the tradition was already in place that younger brothers should take their elder brother’s widow as wives (this could be in addition to any wives they already had).

Er’s brother Onan was not keen on this. Perhaps he felt that if he failed to provide heirs for Er, then Er’s share of the family inheritance would come to him, Onan, instead. So he obeyed his father, too Tamar, but ensured that she would not get pregnant by ‘spilling his seed on the ground’. This would have been humiliating for Tamar. Judah removed Tamar from Onan and suggested that his third son, Shelah, could fulfil this duty. But Shelah was not yet old enough to do so, and Tamar was returned to her father until Shelah was a man. This return would have been humiliating for Tamar. She would have been seen as a woman who had failed in her wifely duty to provide children for the family; she was being returned as damaged or unwanted goods to wait for what must have been an unpalatable future, having to become the wife of a much younger man – although she was probably still fairly young herself.

Tamar may well have had grounds for feeling she had been poorly treated by Judah’s family; tied to Judah by the bride-price that had been paid for her, she was trapped and unable to look forward to any kind of respect or dignity in her older age – unless she could return to Judah’s family to produce a child by Shelah.  Time passed, and Shelah’s adulthood arrived without Tamar being fetched back. We can only speculate on how she felt about this, but her actions may help us to understand her. Tamar heard that her father-in-law was in the area to shear sheep, and took her future into her own hands, possibly for the first time in her life.

Read            Genesis 38: 12-30

Consider

In the Middle East at that time there were two kinds of prostitutes: those who slept with men because they needed the money (Rahab falls into this category), and the shrine or Temple prostitutes. These were women who served the goddesses of fertility. Men could approach them at the Temples of the goddesses, or at locally made shrines which were put up at particular times when fertility rites were relevant – at the time of seeding, for example. Sleeping with the prostitute was considered to be a metaphor for sleeping with the goddess herself, and would be a way of ensuring fertility for the crop, herd or flock. Judah would have assumed that he was sleeping with a Temple prostitute whose services would bring fertility from a goddess to his flock, and the payment – part of the flock that he wanted to be blessed – would go towards the upkeep of the Temple.

In exposing Judah when she returned his pledge items, Tamar showed that he was not only willing to use prostitutes, but that he had betrayed the God of his fathers. His was a double hypocrisy, condemning Tamar for ‘playing the whore’, but also expecting his people to follow Yahweh, while not trusting Yahweh himself.

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Question

1)   Did Tamar have any alternatives, or was this the only way to ensure her future?

2)   Women today are considered to be more independent and less vulnerable. Are there any situations when a woman (or a man) might be as trapped in their circumstances as Tamar was?

3)   Judah betrayed God – in his heart by what he thought he was doing, even if Tamar’s deceit meant he wasn’t really. We could easily be complacent about this, condemning Judah while believing that we modern western Christians would never let God down by looking another way, even for a short time. But are there other ‘gods’ that distract us from being good disciples? What might be the modern things we trust in and forget to pray, or that we allow to take up our time and energy when we should be worshipping or serving God?

4)   Tamar’s reward was to become the mother of twins. The first to be born, Perez, was considered the younger. But as with other twins in the family, it was the younger who stood in the direct line that led to the Messiah of Israel. The status of being mother to Perez raised Tamar in the eyes of Israel, who saw her as having been rewarded by God. Does it make any difference to the way we see Tamar in the twenty-first century?

The Scarlet Thread

The scarlet thread in this story singles out Zerah as the older twin, and so the senior one, who would receive Er’s inheritance, and as eldest son of eldest son (in terms of family position, even though not biologically), Zerah’s thread marked him out as the future head of the family. The genealogy tells us that the status accorded to Zerah isn’t necessarily important to God, who chose the ‘younger’ one, the first to emerge fully from the womb, as an ancestor for Jesus. The thread here marks out what matters to humans and misses what matters to God.

When you reflect on Tamar, the first of the women Matthew marks out as important in the line that led to Jesus, what do you think marks her out? Why does her presence in Jesus’ story matter? Keep a note of your thoughts and ideas, so that Tamar’s thread can be linked with the other women as we trace their stories.

The scarlet thread: introduction

Only five female names appear in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus. Perhaps the surprising thing is that any female names appear at all. The genealogy makes the case that through his adoption by Joseph, Jesus could claim descent from the royal family of David. Adoption was highly respected, and gave a status absolutely equal to that of birth into a family.

I wrote a series of bible studies looking at the five women who Matthew considered significant enough to include, and they have been used by housegroups in a number of places. Through the log, I offer them for wider use. The copyright remains my own, and if you wish to reproduce them, please contact me.

Matthew’s genealogy mentions a lot of men and five women.  With every man mentioned a woman is implicit, of course. Many of the mothers who bore the men in Matthew’s list are unnamed by scripture, but some we know – Sarah was the mother of Isaac, Rebecca the mother of Jacob and Leah was the mother of Judah, yet they are not mentioned in Matthew’s list. So what is it that makes these five women notable enough to include in the list of Jesus’ forebears? It isn’t their pure Jewish heritage, because some of them were Gentiles. It isn’t their pure living, because some of them lived lives that were, at best, racy, at worst, scandalous. Between them we see a group of women who lived in difficult times, were exploited by men, risked danger to themselves to  do God’s will and demonstrated what it means to be truly faithful.

In these six Bible studies you are invited to encounter five good women, and to trace the scarlet thread that connects them to each other and to the most important man who ever lived… who couldn’t have lived without them.

1                                      Tamar                                  

2                                      Rahab                                   

3                                      Ruth                              

4                                      Bathsheba                            

5                                      Mary                              

6                                      The Scarlet Thread      

In each study you will find questions that help you to explore what we know about these women, who are both ordinary and extraordinary, just like every woman and man who was ever born. Each study includes a ‘scarlet thread’ question, which has two parts. Rahab’s scarlet thread was used because it would be easy to see, distinguishing her window from the others in the wall of Jericho, while Tamar’s scarlet thread distinguished one of her sons from the other. So the first part is about considering what makes this woman unique, what her particular qualities are, and what can be learned from her. The second part reflects the use of thread to tie things together: from study two you will be asked to consider what qualities the women have in common. You may wish to bring reminders of each session’s threads to the next session.

By the final study the scarlet thread will lead to discovering what you feel Matthew was thinking about when he included these five women in his genealogy. What does their inclusion tell us about the message and ministry of Jesus?

This poem emphasises in strong terms how seemingly inappropriate these women are to be linked with the Son of God. And yet, they were all called and chosen by God for a vital role in His purposes. If he can use women like these, he can use anyone, perhaps.

The Women in the Matthean Genealogy

Exceedingly odd is the means by which God

Has provided the path to our heavenly shore -

Of the girls from whose line the true light was to shine

There was one an adulteress, one was a whore:

There was Tamar who bore – what we all should deplore-

A fine pair of twins to her father-in-law,

And Rahab the harlot, whose sins were as scarlet

As red as the thread that she hung from the door;

Yet alone of her nation she came to salvation

And lived to be mother of Boaz of yore –

And he married Ruth, a Gentile uncouth,

In a manner quite counter to biblical lore:

And of her did spring blessed David the King,

Who walked in his palace one evening and saw

The wife of Uriah, from whom he did sire

A baby that died – oh, and princes a score;

And a mother unmarried it was too who carried

God’s Son, and him laid in a manger of straw,

That the moral might wait at the heavenly gate

While sinners and publicans go in before,

Who have earned there no place, but received it by grace,

And have found them a righteousness not of the law.

M. L. Goulder, Mithrash and Lection in Matthew.SPCK 1974.

In these studies I encourage you to see beyond the ‘wicked woman/good woman’ stereotypes that have been attached to these five women. Consider the circumstances in which they found themselves and ask what other options they might have had. Are the one who are considered sinful really as bad as they are painted? Could they have done things differently? And even if they have done ‘what they ought not to have done’, has God redeemed them through the good they ultimately came from them? Perhaps there is a message in these women about forgiveness, perhaps about redemption, perhaps about God’s willingness to see and use the best in every one of us, even when the rest of humanity sees only the worst of us. And what can we learn from the ones who were considered good? Some of their actions would not have been seen as quite so good and pure at the time! They took necessary risks in order to obey God, and those risks included being branded as women in the same categories of sinfulness as their sisters on the list. Is this risky living something we need to learn from today in our risk-averse society?

Just what can 21^st century men and women learn about our calling to serve God from these five women from so long ago?

Blessed be God

5/12 Aug                    1 Corinthians 10

Food, glorious food… If we hold a celebration, we provide special food. At a funeral we provide special food. Indeed, in my family, there seems to be a belief that if I recommend a nice pub I’ve been to, I will have been at a funeral wake there. That’s probably right too. Most of us have memories connected with family food rituals, whether it is fish and chips on Saturday nights, or jelly and ice cream at children’s parties, or mum’s Yorkshire pudding with Sunday lunch, or – well, I’m sure that you are thinking of those happy – or not so happy – food memories now.

In chapter 10, Paul is back to the theme of food, and to considering what to do when offered food sacrificed to idols. If you went to a party held by a local friend, the meat being served would have been dedicated to Athene or Apollo or some other deity before the meal began. They’re not real of course, so such a dedication is meaningless. Which meant that Paul could reason that eating the food was fine. There was no reason to offend your hosts or miss out on the best part of the meal. Unless there was another Christian there who really did have a problem, who didn’t agree with that line of reasoning. For some, to eat food dedicated to another deity was to be disloyal to Jesus, to suggest that the other deity was real. If that Christian is going to be distressed by you eating the meant, then don’t eat it, Paul advised. Being thoughtful towards your brother or sister in Christ is more important than getting a plateful of meat.

That thoughtfulness towards fellow Christians is bound up in our own particular experience of sharing food. We make a point of sharing bread and wine together and when we do that we remember one particular special meal. We remember Jesus telling his friends that when they eat the bread and drink the wine together remembering him, the bread becomes his body, the wine his blood. And sharing it strengthens our unity as his body on earth – the bread is his body, and so are we.

As Paul considered this, he used words that were so helpful we repeat them regularly. In Living Brook benefice, almost every communion service includes a phrase that paraphrases Paul’s words:

          We break this bread

          to share in the body of Christ.

          Though we are many, we are one body,

          because we all share in one bread.

We are one, and called to prioritise doing the things that make us one. To prioritise living loving lives, being thoughtful towards each other, putting ourselves second. As in this case, when the strong believer sets aside her sense of rightness in order to spare the weak believer from distress at the dining table.

What made the meat ultimately acceptable for Paul was more than just his sense that the dedication to idols was irrelevant. There was something else that Paul did. At public meals he may have done it silently, in his head, but he certainly did it, and he mentions it here. Paul made the meat acceptable by doing what every good Jew did before eating anything, what every Jewish and Gentile follower of Jesus did before sharing bread and wine together. And what I hope that you do before you eat – I’m sure you do. He gave thanks to God, dedicating the food to God. When Paul ate meat at a public event, he was eating meat which was dedicated to the Lord our God.

In Judaism today, the words of blessing are closely related to the ones Paul would have known. Orthodox Jews learn different prayers to use according to the kind of food that is being consumed, and say them in a particular order, beginning with the most important staple food that always links us to God: bread. From the manna in the wilderness to the bread always kept at the temple, bread is a sacred food for Jews. When Jesus called himself the bread of life, he was connecting himself to the most precious foodstuff, as well as the most basic. For us as Christians, our recollection that bread connects us so intimately to Jesus makes it even more precious. The Jewish blessing on bread can be translated:

          Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe,  

          who brings forth bread from the earth.

The prayer Paul would have said quietly before he consumed meat may have been like the one used today:

          Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe,  

          by whose Word all things came to be.

The Word in the prayer refers to the logos, the life-giving Holy Spirit of God, present at creation and breathing life into the world. Christians associate the Word with Jesus through the opening words of John’s gospel: ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God’. Blessing God in this way makes any food in front of us a reminder of all that God has done for us.

Have you noticed that these prayers are familiar? Because these ancient Jewish prayers, still everyday prayers for so many Jews today, are also entwined into our communion liturgy, in an adapted form. They are optional, but we use them on most Sundays here in Living Brook benefice, using a slightly different translation.

          Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation:

          through your goodness we have this bread to set before you,

          which earth has given and human hands have made.

          It will become for us the bread of life.              

When we use these words we connect to our Jewish heritage, and to the way that Paul saw food: something precious to be eaten in grateful thanks to God for all that he has given us. We bless God for our food.

When Joanna and Kate were growing up, Paul and I insisted on giving thanks – or saying grace – before meals. We’d make up words of thanks on the spot, or use words from one of their prayer books. A particular favourite was

         

          God is great, God is good,

          Thank you God for all our food.

We bought a cube with six different prayers on it, and sometimes rolled it like a die, saying whichever prayer was face up. The important thing was, we always gave thanks, and we still do. We – like most of you, I’m sure – would be the ones who had no problem with saying grace in a restaurant. And like Paul, in those situations where giving thanks to God out loud really isn’t possible, we still do it, quietly. God hears us, and we ourselves know that the meal becomes a reminder of God’s bountiful goodness to us.

In a time when others are hungry, reminding ourselves of God’s goodness every time we eat should also be a reminder to share our portion of his bountiful gifts with others. In Northampton, hundreds of children are fed in school every day because they wouldn’t get to eat properly at home. During the school holiday, churches in different parts of the town are supporting projects to ensure that children still get to have at least one decent meal every day during the school holidays. Last Sunday our CHAT teams highlighted this for us and invited people to make a pledge to support the foodbank as a sign of our commitment to help those who would otherwise go hungry. You can make a donation of food, or of money – if you would like us to pass on a monetary donation for you, please make sure that it is labelled as being for the food bank, and we’ll make sure it gets there.

If you are reading this on the blog, www.restorenorthampton.org.uk/ will take you to the website of the foodbank regularly supported by our benefice collections.

If we take seriously Paul’s connection between what we eat when we share bread and wine together and the way we become the body of Christ as a people, then we realise that we are ourselves reminders of our creator God’s holiness. Just as saying grace – Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of all creation, by whose word all things came to be – makes our food a reminder of God’s creative power and generous gift to us, so we, as we eat it, and in our own dedication at baptism, become a truly holy people. We are the outward sign in the world of God’s holy, life giving and creative activity in the world. People will recognise that when they see us working for unity in love, and when they see us reaching out creatively, lovingly, to give life to others however we can.