When I was a high school kid trying to figure out my relation to
faith. I think I drove my Sunday School
teachers crazy in all the wrong ways. I
was the only one in a confirmation class of thirteen who told my pastor I needed
to withdraw because I wasn’t sure about this “faith thing.” But I read through the Bible a couple times. And I would read anything I could that might
help me understand more deeply. Although I may have been a troublemaker, there
was a spiritual hunger there.
So when I
saw the novel David and Bathsheba in the romance novel section of my
local Kmart, I immediately plucked it from the shelves. I
remember reading it as if these were the long, lost details only the National Enquirer could report. You know the ones I mean. David is half-naked, wind blowing through his
hair, Bathsheba held in his arms, maybe her tunic down her arm to indicate what
is about to happen. According to this
fictional novel, Bathsheba seduced David, David romanced Bathsheba, and the
starstruck lovers were destined to give birth to the promised future
king—Solomon.
I read the novel quickly, gobbled it up, the author filling in all the lurid
details of the romance between King David and the beautiful Bathsheba not
provided by the Biblical story.
We are in the midst of the Summer Olympics, and the women’s gymnastics
competition once again provided real-life drama that reminded me of the heroic
woman’s gymnast, Aly Raisman.
It's OK. Don't worry. We've got it covered. Be careful. There are risks involved.’ The intention? To silence us in favor of money, medals, and reputation.[1]
Those were the opening lines from United States
gold-medal gymnast, Aly Raisman as she and dozens of other women stood up to
receive the ESPY’s 2018 Arthur Ashe Courage Award—an award given for courage
that transcends sports. Raisman’s speech
was not so much about the abuse itself.
The use of unmitigated power will continue to assert its evil in the
world, often using the power adults have over children, the power a still
male-dominated society has over women.
Raisman’s point is that the abuse could have come to an end but for the
willingness of other adults to ignore, pass off, or forgive too quickly those
who commit unfathomable acts of violence against those entrusted to their
care.
Her speech in the courtroom, speaking directly to
the perpetrator, reminded everyone that the perpetrator should not be the one
receiving everyone’s easy sympathies. In
order to speak out, Raisman has said, she must relive her trauma, an act of
self-sacrifice not everyone can or is called to do, but Raisman does it choosing
to save the lives of others who come after her.
Not only that, but Raisman has appeared in ESPN’s “body” issue, refusing
to have her sexuality dictated by historical violence or present puritanical
shaming.
The Bible is a discernment tool by which we
divine the heart of God. But there are
other discernment tools we use to divine God’s heart, many of them shared in
the Bible, but sometimes even critiquing, limiting, and drawing a boundary
around the Bible. For example, many of
the Psalms speak of relationship with creation or elements of creation to
understand the way God is moving in the world.
The prophet Daniel divines the heart of God through spiritual practice—his
kosher practice, his prayer, and his fasting.
Throughout the Bible, relationship with the poor and oppressed or with
their struggle is a way of seeing God already at work in the world. Finally, the apostle Paul divines the heart
of God by Socratic questioning, “Does it build up community or tear it
down?”
We are part of a living tradition. And therefore engagement, attention, and
critique are necessary to discern what we will carry forward and leave
behind.
What we hear again and again in Scripture,
repeated as the heart of God, are steadfast love, righteousness, and
justice. These values, this way of
being, is the way God moves in the world.
They are God’s name, reflect God’s integrity. Through that lens, we discern what we will
carry forward and what we will leave behind.
We are
required to engage our tradition. Hear
this though. Though this wider story of
King David and the prophet Nathan is a powerful critique and relates some of my
deepest values, I want to engage and critique our tradition to say that we must
not let this story end with David’s repentance, forgiveness, and the death of a
child. For there is something strikingly
absent from an incredible story written out of male-dominated world, a story
that would critique one of the greatest figures in Jewish history. There is something missing from even the
prophet Nathan, who shows up later in this story, who comes to hold King David
account for his misdeeds. Nathan uses a metaphor to describe Bathsheba that
describes her as property, a ewe lamb.[2] Then the prophet Nathan tells David that the
Biblical God seeks to exact punishment for what he has done and that punishment
is the death of the child with which Bathsheba is pregnant. Nathan does not even use her name but
references her as the “wife of Uriah.”[3]
What has
been forgotten is the woman who was raped and carries that child—Bathsheba. Her husband, Uriah, is remembered. It is as if the dead Uriah, as a man, is the
only one who seems to matter to Nathan and the Biblical God as judgment is
pronounced against the most powerful person in the ancient world, King David.
Too often
this story has been altered to maintain our prejudices. In keeping with our windswept romance novels
found at the local Kmart.
Bathsheba
is taking a ritual bath when David sees her—not an act of seduction, not a way
to tantalize. David sends for her. This is an act of kingly power, not seductive
act. In the ancient near East, when the
king of the nation sends for you, you go or risk not only your life but the
life of your whole family. But Bathsheba
is so forgotten that when David sends Uriah to lie with his wife, Uriah feels
more kinship with his soldier comrades out in the field than with a wife he has
not seen for some time. As a credit
to Uriah and to his honor, he forgets his wife.
Bathsheba
must not only grieve the violence done to her in this rape, the violent death
of her husband, Uriah, but also the violence done to her by God when it is
decided that her child shall be taken as a punishment for King David’s
acts. She is but a byword in a terrible
story. Now my daughter, the wise Sophia Heilman,
suggested what was left out of the story as Biblical midrash, is that certainly
Bathsheba knew what herbs to eat to not bring her pregnancy to term.
Maybe so,
but not found in the Biblical story. And
I say to this part of a powerful story, that I disown it. It is wrong.
In my relationship with the Living God, a God who has often been my
nurturing and strong mother, a God who has held my hand and confidences as
wife, sister, and friend, a God who has inspired and seduced me with wisdom too
great for my own brain, this is not the God of compassion I have come to
know. Nor would I want to worship a God
who forgets Bathsheba and her pain and then punishes Bathsheba.
One can
only imagine what Bathsheba felt, what any number of women forgotten in the
tradition have felt, as Uriah, her honorable and loyal husband, is dead. The purity she was keeping when David saw
her, gone by the man who murdered her husband.
Her child, the product of a violent act, now dead, by the hand of a
violent God atoning for the sin of David.
Then Bathsheba is supposed to endure intercourse with this same man to
have four more children by him. The
rapist takes her once again to complete God’s promise. She probably consented to this arrangement
knowing that her place in the palace protects her.
As I work
out those details to the story, my stomach turns and I am revolted by this part
of the tradition. Bathsheba, and so many
strong women who have survived their silent tragedies, need to be remembered so
that we create a community which is counter to the one which suggests that
kings, presidents, priests, pastors, football coaches, and team doctor have
carte blanche to fulfill their needs however they see fit. Our women, daughters, and children should not
have to atone for the sins of their fathers to be part of God’s continuing
promise.
Hebrew
Scripture scholar the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney points out that Bathsheba shows up
later in the text, having negotiated her situation, to become the first queen
mother when Solomon, her son, is on the throne.
Her son bows to her and then continues the violence begun by David to
make sure nobody is a rival to the throne.
Gafney imagines a day when Bathsheba might have confronted David with
these words:
You are not going
to shut me away as you did your first wife, Michal. You stole the life I had with my husband in
the sight of God, the man I love, the husband I chose to live with. You stole our future and you stole our
children. I can’t get that back, but I
can have your children and the security that comes with them. I will be the mother of kings.[4]
Although
Gafney admits that a modern woman cannot possibly imagine the vulnerability and
strength of a woman in the ancient world, I am struck by how much Gafney’s
imagined words for Bathsheba resonate with the words of Aly Raisman.
In full
discernment, I say that part of Biblical authority and tradition is wrong,
revolting, and we must remember our daughters, sisters, friends, and Bathsheba,
and all women who have been lost in our tradition. Through the lens of God’s character and
integrity, we say the Biblical tradition is wrong when it is sympathetic to
David and forgets Bathsheba. We will not
let any tradition or king or powerful program have our daughters, or our women,
or our sons as a sacrifice to sate their desires. And let us proclaim that we do not believe
God requires it as well, and that God grieves and thunders in the Halls of
Heaven every time we believe such a sacrifice is required—whether that be
Bathsheba or the women and children in Southwest Michigan.
In her
amazing book, Jesus and John Wayne:
How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Calvin
University professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, relates how the most oppressive and
violent part of Evangelical Christianity is strongly tied to, at the least, a
subjugation of women. At the most, this
tradition again and again allows for men to do incomprehensible damage to women
with no consequences. I say that a
stronger and more mature form of Christianity finds that unacceptable. The God of Compassion seeks to deliver those
who are without a helper and precious in God’s sight is their blood. Precious in God’s sight is their blood.
Aly
Raisman finished her acceptance speech by saying, “We all face hardships. If we choose to listen and we choose
to act with empathy, we can draw strength from each other. We may suffer alone,
but we survive together.”[5] In contrast to how the Biblical story ignores
Bathsheba, I believe Aly Raisman’s statement, said by a courageous prophet in
our time, is part of the tradition we carry forward as a way of listening to
those who have been historically oppressed; a way of building up and weaving
together our community in a more healthy sexuality; a way of being in keeping
with a God of steadfast love, righteousness, and justice. We suffer alone, but we survive
together. May we find our voices. As adults.
As children of God. As carriers
of the tradition. Amen.
[1] Aly Raisman, “Acceptance
speech at the ESPYs for Arthur Ashe Courage Award,” July 18, 2018. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a22212177/aly-raisman-sarah-klein-tiffany-thomas-lopez-espy-speech-larry-nassar/
[2] Wilda Gafney, Womanist
Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women
of the Torah and the Throne (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), p. 217.
[3]Ibid, p. 218.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Raisman, “Acceptance.”
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