Tag: Theology

Bathsheba: Beloved of God–Examining 2 Samuel 11 & 12

There was something refreshing about the evening air in springtime. Much of the day had been put behind her save for those last nagging thoughts that tend to linger upon uncertainty. It was the season of war, and hubris pitted nation against nation (2 Sam 11.1). Her husband was among those fighting another man’s battle for glory–taken in by the illusion that bloodshed somehow brought honor or made men great (11.11). Fool, but still, she loved him (12.3; Kensky 155). Like the evening air, the water was cool and invigorating, providing respite in the midst of a tumultuous season. She was unaware of the gaze that held her like an object to be owned or the hunger rising behind those lurid eyes (2 Sam 11.2-4). When the king’s men arrived, Bathsheba had no recourse. Hers was but to submit.

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The structures of power are aligned against Bathsheba. To position her as villain or vixen in the account of 2 Samuel requires leaps the text does not provide. Neither does the Hebrew provide wiggle room to frame David as the unwitting victim of feminine wiles. In the clearest (and least academic) terms, based on what is revealed in the text, Bathsheba was minding her own damn business. It is David’s lustful eyes that happen upon her private moment, and it is David who sexualizes and objectifies her body. Like Simba, who disregarded Mufasa’s warning that the dark places were not his to tread, David considers all he lays eyes upon to be his, for he is king. Therefore, he sends his messengers into the shadowlands beyond divinely established moral borders to take what does not belong to him.

David does what David does because he believes he can. He is king; who can challenge him? There is no hard evidence to prove that his audience with Bathsheba was anything more than a friendly chat. Rumors, after all, are only rumors. It is when Bathsheba becomes pregnant that things get a little more complicated. David can’t just shove $600 into her hand and tell her to “take care of it.” Instead, he does the next worst thing–he brings her husband home for a bit of r&r in the hope of hiding the truth surrounding Bathsheba’s condition. When that doesn’t work, the king murders her husband by proxy.

What transpires between Bathsheba and David is a sexual assault. Regardless of how force, intimidation, or coercion may have been used, the encounter remains an assault. From the moment the male gaze of David falls upon her, Bathsheba’s life is in danger. She cannot refuse the king, for he can put her to death (or worse). If her husband discovers she is pregnant and he a cuckold, he can put her to death to restore his fragile honor. The power differential is far too vast for Bathsheba to cross safely.

Bathsheba is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. Her personhood is violated by a prick in a crown. She has no earthly means of getting the justice due her. Her assault and the murder of her husband go unresolved because the structural powers are set against her. Yet, the unfathomable injury against her does not go unanswered. The Divine Creator of the universe sees the harm brought against the “least of these” (Mt 25.31-46) and is enraged. Bathsheba, bearing the imago dei, has been grossly injured and God is not having it–not today, anyway.

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This divine intervention reveals that our sacred cows do not always get it right–they don’t even get it mostly right. Yet, because we do not want to critique our idols, we miss what is happening before us. To frame this story as “what you do doesn’t matter as long as you love God” is to miss Bathsheba. The man after God’s own heart inflicts undue trauma on her. As Tikva Frymer-Kensky suggests in Reading Women of the Bible, Bathsheba–and not her husband–is the poor man whose lamb is taken and slaughtered (155). The “thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Sam 11.27) and he is held accountable.

God loves Bathsheba. Though her society makes her lesser because of her gender and renders her male property, the Creator’s action casts her in a different light. The Divine brings judgment down on the king’s head for her. Her personhood and dignity matter. She bears the same imago dei as her male counterparts. God equally loves her.

This divine act almost seems to foreshadow the coming Christ, who will fulfill the Law and tear down the barriers erected to segregate us from each other–in whom there is no distinction between “us” and “them.” Certainly, this should call to mind the foundation of the Law and Prophets–to love God with all we are, and to love the human beings around us as we ought love ourselves (Mt 22.36-40) regardless of the segregating barriers culture would have us erect. BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, female, male, poor, rich, homeless, disabled, white, cisgender, heteronormative, non-heteronormative, and everything in between, in Christ, we are one, and by our love we will be judged (Mt 25.31-46).

Perhaps, then, it is imperative that we strive to see the overlooked among us—for regardless of our own perceived standing before God, we will be held to account where we withheld love in favor of cruelty and self satisfaction.

“Jesus Christ Pantocrator” through the Lens of Colossians 1.15-20

Jesus Christ Pantocrator, Instanbul, c.1261

The hymn found in Colossians 1:15-20 opens with: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.”(Col. 1.15-16, NRSVUE, 2022). The claim, according to the hymn, is that the Jesus Christ attested to in the gospels is the embodiment of the Creator whom we have not seen with our own eyes (Jn. 6.46). Through Christ, the Creator is revealed–meaning, the only way to understand God is to first and foremost, look to Christ.

The hymn also asserts what is found in the Gospel of John: 

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. (14.8-10).

John 14:8-10, NRSVUE

The words and the work of Jesus reveal to us the Creator–referred to in the text and by tradition as the “Father.” The hymn reveals the work of the Creator is made manifest through the Son by whom “all things in heaven and on earth. . .visible and invisible. . .have been created. . .” (Col. 1.15-16). For me, it is important to start here in my examination of the claims being made by the late Byzantine mosaic located in Istanbul, Jesus Christ Pantocrator (c. 1261).

As Dr. Amy Whisenand shared throughout her June 14, 2022 lecture, “Pantocrator” translates into “Almighty” or “All Powerful.” This title, by its nature, is therefore making the claim that Jesus Christ is the same as God the Creator. The first text in the Pentateuch–the first five books in the Bible and Torah–identifies God the Creator by the title, “Almighty.” Genesis 17.1 reads: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. . .'” Later instances of the usage of Almighty as a title for the Creator can be found in Genesis 28.3, 35.11, 48.3, 49.25, and at least 91 other times throughout the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocryphal texts. The mosaic’s use of Almighty as a title for Jesus therefore asserts a claim in line with Trinitarian belief that Jesus is not only a member of the Godhead but shares a co-equality with the Creator.

The Trinity Iconography Institute confirms the Chironomia–the meaning of “. . .hand gestures in supporting oratory, or conveyance of unspoken meaning understood by the audience” (Trinity Iconographers)–as a blessing. The positioning of the hand creates the “IXIC,” or the initials of Christ, which appears to assert that the highest form of blessing comes from the person of Christ. After all, what greater blessing can one receive if not from the One through whom “. . .all things in heaven and on earth have been created” (Col. 1.15)? Additionally, the hand gesture not only conveys blessing, but it is also related to classical oration from ancient history indicating “the speaker is going to say something important, which can also be applicable to all icons of Jesus Christ and His saints” (Trinity Iconographers).

In my own journey, as I walked away from the cult in which I was raised and the modern American Evangelical lens of biblical interpretation, I flirted with Eastern Orthodoxy. I studied its traditions, attended their liturgies, and experienced their rich practices of faith and theological interpretations. I discovered icons–works of religious art depicting biblical and divine subjects–were viewed as windows into the divine realm. It is part of the reason religious Byzantine art might seem strange and disproportionate to our Western eyes. The icons are meant to draw us into the story they tell. From that perspective, I cannot help but notice the very ordinary humanness of Jesus in this image.

We have a declaration of Christ as equal with “God Almighty,” the Father and Creator, yet he is very human in his appearance. It brings to life the claim that “. . .He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything” (Col. 1.18). The Almighty took on human form, walked not just among us, but with us. His emptying of himself and obedience “. . .even [unto] death on a cross” (Phil. 2.6-11) and his resurrection has made Christ the “mediator between God and humankind” (1 Tim. 2.5) and our high priest (Heb. 8.1-2). It seems that the humanity of Christ is crucial in the salvific act of God in order to reconcile God and humanity.

Christ’s humanity establishes him as the “firstborn” not just of the dead, but of all creation (Col. 1.15). Therefore, being both God (Jn. 1.1-2) and human (Jn. 1.14-18), and being that he is also the begotten Son of the Creator in whom the Creator was pleased (Matt. 3.17; 17.5; Mk. 9.7; Lk. 9.35), it stands to reason that the value–or worth–of Jesus, from whom the greatest blessings are given, supersedes that of all creation. Therefore, the obedience of Christ to the Creator by way of his life and death, confirmed through the resurrection, is what allows all of creation, “whether on earth or in heaven” (Col. 1.20) to be reconciled to God. In this way, when viewed through the hymn found in Colossians (Col. 1.15-20), Jesus Christ Pantocrator proclaims the salvific work of Jesus Christ for all creation and reveals to us the character of God.