Rev. Dr. James Goodlet…Biblical Odyssey: To Be Stalwart Among Spies

Sunday Worship - FPC LaGrange - June 28th, 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

He's already wearing the shirt. Well, we often, I found, we often take for granted just how epic the biblical narrative is. We just administered the sacrament of baptism, and it has its roots in the waters of the Jordan River, which was mentioned in today's story. Jesus entered those waters once upon a time, and the skies opened up, and a voice thundered down from heaven. You are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased. Now, when you think about that story, it's actually quite, for lack of a better word, epic. A voice thundered from the heavens. And yet, and I'll speak for myself here, I find that I often read that story like I'm reading the classified section of newspapers from yesteryear. It's not an isolated case either. The whole situation, for instance, surrounding Christmas is wild. You've got shepherds, you've got angels, you've got magi and kings, and yet culture has commercialized it onto wrapping paper. Pentecost, the birth of the church. It is one of the craziest, most wild stories in all of Scripture, with wind and fire and people speaking in different tongues and acting all crazy like they were at a little John concert in LaGrange, Georgia. Yet the day we've set aside to celebrate and commemorate the birth of the church has all too often been rendered a footnote in the ecclesiastical calendar. Scripture is out there. It is epic. You got ladders built to heaven, you've got great fish swallowing people whole, you've got talking donkeys, you've got people rising from the dead. And yet sometimes I wonder if when reading and encountering the biblical text, we domesticate it. Sometimes I wonder if we should set aside the traditional Sunday attire and throw on some camo fatigues and that warrior-looking eye black that football and baseball players wear probably would be a lot more comfortable than wearing wool in the summer. Not to mention there's something altogether appropriate about adorning outerwear that looks like we're characters in Rambo. It is consistent with the material that we encounter in Scripture. I mean, look at today's story, for instance. In case you missed it, what do we have? We've got spies. We've got spies. How amazing and awesome is that! Scoping around, scoping out the enemy, sneaking around, and then we've got a woman with something of a disreputable vocation, Rahab, whose work in what has been dubbed the world's oldest profession, might also have been something far different. It might have just been the work, she might have been engaged in just the work of hospitality, of receiving guests while not necessarily seducing them. We can't know for sure, but it is possible. But what we do know is that Rahab was not and is not someone whom the audience would expect to celebrate. Rahab was a woman. Rahab was a foreign woman. Rahab was a foreign woman with something of a bad rap. In these Hebrew scriptures, she is the last person you would have expected to celebrate. And yet, she is a portrait of biblical heroism. This is the kind of person who repeatedly throughout the scriptures, all of scriptures, steals the show. Throughout scripture, you have unexpected champions. You have wounded warriors like Saul, the former persecutor of the church, Peter, the great denier of Jesus, Mary, unwed, young. Jacob, the trickster, the liar. Ruth, who we heard about a couple weeks ago. Rahab. Today, Rahab, a stalwart who recognizes and seizes an opportunity at hand when the spies close in. These are unexpected, unforeseen, unanticipated pivot points through whom God continuously works throughout the whole Bible to teach us a lesson. That it is through these people, these unexpected champions, through them we see courage, and for that matter, leadership and bravery embodied through them. The Rahabs of the world, the overlooked, the ostracized, they are the very ones who stand tall amid the chaos and show us what real faithfulness looks like, and we're called to do the same. But I have to admit, I find it quite curious. Amid the presence of overwhelming biblical support, including like today's story and many others, that there are followers of Jesus Christ who are still debating just who does and does not qualify for leadership in Christ's church. Specifically, even now, based upon the role of gender. Now, full disclosure, there is no such thing as a perfect denomination, there is no such thing as a perfect church. We are all broken, we all get it wrong. I know I get it wrong individually, corporately, we all get it wrong. At some point, we all could stand to learn and utilize some humility and understanding that people draw certain conclusions based upon their own experiences. I understand that. The Presbyterians, I will tell you right now, are meeting in General Assembly in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I'm sure that there are things that are going to happen at General Assembly that might not meet what we would expect or hope. So once again, let me just say that very clearly and also say that there is love here for the body of Christ, that we are all sisters, brothers, siblings in the body of Christ. And so what I'm about to say, I don't say it apologetically, but I also say it with both a spirit of love and of frustration. Because when it comes to family, how many of us know the reality of love and frustration? Both things can be true. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand how some of our Christian brothers, sisters, and siblings over the last few weeks, I've seen come to the conclusion that women could not or should not be in formal positions of ministry leadership. We could prove texts, scriptures, that were written during a time of cultural patriarchy that seemingly suggest that women should not speak or lead, but then you have to place those texts against the chorus of other biblical stories throughout the biblical canon, in which women are not only leaders, they are not only pictures of faithfulness, they are not only the first preachers of the Christian gospel, but they are also heroes of the faith. In stories like this one, and stories like that of Rahab, so much a hero is she that she is actually this woman of all women is listed in Jesus' family tree in Matthew. What right do any of us think we have to legislate in broad strokes the kind of persons or people who can or cannot lead us in ministry when the biblical account is full of women, men, fisherfolk, eunuchs, Jews, Gentiles, slave, free, leaders at the center, non-leaders at the margins, who stand stalwart among the spies of the world and testify to Jesus as Lord and Savior. Why are so many of us preoccupied by the type of person who can or cannot stand in this pulpit when the Christian faith actually means following a Christ who left temples behind, often after criticizing them and their leaders, so that he could minister to all people on the streets. You see, the story of Rahab isn't an outlier. It is part of a larger scriptural framework in which it is the underdogs and the underestimated, the misunderstood and the misjudged who are depicted as archetypes for devotion and dependability. There is, if you look at the stories, there is no epic story of Jesus' baptism, for instance, without John, the guy who ate locusts and honey on the literal edges of society, dousing him with holy water. And there's no epic story of Christmas without Mary, the young, unwed, soon-to-be mother of our Lord. And there's no epic story of Pentecost without those sea salts of disciples and the Christ denier named Peter speaking languages that they had never been taught in school. The world believes it knows what's best for Christ and the church when the reality, as we see in Scripture, is that Christ over and over knows who's best for the church and for the world. And if we can glean anything about what heroes and leaders look like in Scripture, we will see that time and time and time again, Christ pushes the envelope. Don't think that this doesn't have anything to do with you. Because it does. Sometimes I wonder if the reason individuals, congregations, and denominations are so worried about who shows up in their pulpits or who staffs their churches is because they're afraid, not that these folks will fail, but that they might actually succeed. And the same goes for ourselves. We fear failure, but we also fear success because success portends change in our lives, in our relationships, our worldviews, our routines, and our rituals. And I'm here to tell you, y'all, do not fall into that trap. Do not underestimate what you could accomplish or just how important your successes might be for the church. Do not sit on whatever it is you are thinking or feeling that could contribute to the kingdom of God. Because here we are, thousands of years later, telling the story, the epic story of Rahab, the last person we might have been expecting to hear or tell a story about, someone with the courage to do what she was what she knew was right in the eyes of the God she served. We cannot fall prey to the limits that we place on one another or ourselves. That is not faithfulness, that is cowardice. Let courage be the bedrock of fidelity to the church and to the Christian faith. Be like Rahab. Be stalwark in despise among us.