Art Reading Scripture

Honor Tapestry: The Death of Honor, Cluny Museum of the Medieval Age, Paris France 16th Century

The LORD is king; he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed; he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall not be moved; your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting. Psalm 93:1-2

I saw this tapestry at the Cluny Museum of the Medieval Age while on sabbatical in 2014. The first thing I thought of as I considered this depiction of God was the scene from Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" where God speaks to King Arthur instructing him to find the Holy Grail. While Aurther gallops along the sky thunders, a cloud parts revealing a kingly God who voice is deep. Monty Python's God does not like groveling, or people saying they are sorry because it interrupts what God really wants to say. Still, this was the medieval image of God. A heavenly King who appeared like the kings of England, France, or everywhere else, crowned, robed, old, and stern.

The description from the Cluny webpage about the tapestry called "Honor Tapestry: The Death of Honor" reads, "This fragment of tapestry is part of a set, a "tapestry." It combines a landscape décor resolutely inherited from medieval modes of representation with a subject that affiliates it with the Renaissance. We see the soul of Honor, identifiable by its crown, stripped of earthly pageantry, asexual by means of a perizonium. Virtues and angels present her to God the Father, represented in glory, among red or white angels (burning with love and pure). The tapestry illustrates the speeches of the learned rhetoricians of the late Middle Ages who made honorable and virtuous conduct the key to salvation." (Perizonium, "Linen draped around the hips of Christ on the cross and masking his anatomy. It is generally short and replaced the colobium, which went down to the knees, from the11th century onwards. It is visible only in the scenes of the Crucifixion or immediately following it (Descent from the Cross, Pietà, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, etc.).

What does God look like? What image do you think about when you envision God? Pure Light? An old man with a beard and perhaps wearing a crown while seated on a throne like this? Michelangelo's God robed in white, white hair, reaching out from a white cloud from the Sistine Chapel? Jesus? I was drawn to the image of God as Medieval King. To Medieval peoples, and perhaps for us, God was envisioned as the highest image of a person, a King. A King was at the top, powerful, wealthy, in command, majestically adorned, living remotely in a castle, perhaps seldom if ever seen by common folk and yet ever present through his nobles, knights, and decrees. A King was surrounded by servants who continually sang his praises because of his power. Everyone bowed before a King, either to honor the person, or cowering in fear. A King represented both glory and a threat of punishment.

The advent of kings in Israel came at the request of the people but without the support of the prophet or God. Judges ended with a description of the crisis Israel faced. "In those days there was no king in Israel; all people did what was right in their own eyes." Judges 21:25 When Samuel became God's prophet/judge the people demanded a king, believing it would solve all their problems with the neighboring peoples who harassed them. At first Samuel refused them, but then God permitted it with certain caveats. God took it as a rejection of God as King, a rejection of divine authority, leadership, protection. Samuel also warned the people that a king would treat them harshly in order to serve the king's own interests. Neither, Saul, David, Solomon, or any other king could adequately emulate, represent, or stand in for God. Kings take care of themselves.

Psalm 93 provides an image of God as King seemingly reflected in this tapestry. Psalm 72 offers a very different image of what God intended a king of Israel to be. It is an image much more closely related to Christ suffering in love for the world than a Medieval King enthroned remotely from his people. Along with the usual ideas that a king should know prosperity, peace, dominion, and victory, the Psalm directs the king to his responsibility so serve the people, particularly the ones who might never be seen in his throne room. "Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son. ... May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. ... he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight." God as King, or God's kings of the earth, were not supposed to be remote, aloof, above, or against their people, but ruled to serve the least of the people who were largely forgotten by the recorders of the history of the world. None of them has ever fulfilled the calling. The image of God as King is suspect and unsatisfactory.

Keep the faith. Say your prayers. Love like Jesus.

Pastor Tim Bauer