Lenten Reflection: That Woman Jezebel

The following is the fifth in a series of reflections on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation.

For more reflections on these letters, check out the hub page for the series.

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That Woman Jezebel

A Reflection on the Letter to the Church in Thyatira

And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze:

I know your works - your love, faith, service, and patient endurance.  I know that your last works are greater than the first.  But I have this against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet and is teaching and beguiling my servants to practice fornication and to eat food sacrificed to idols.  I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her fornication.  Beware, I am throwing her on a bed, and those who commit adultery with her I am throwing into great distress, unless they repent of her doings; and I will strike her children dead.  And all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve.  But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call "the deep things of Satan," to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden; only hold fast to what you have until I come.  To everyone who conquers and continues to do my works to the end,

I will give authority over the nations;

to rule them with an iron rod,

as when clay pots are shattered -

even as I also received authority from my Father.  To the one who conquers I will also give the morning star.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

Revelation 2:18-28 (NRSV)

Ruin my life, the plans I have made

Ruin desires for my own selfish gain

Destroy the idols that have taken Your place

Till it's You alone I live for

You alone I live for

From "Ruin Me" by Jack Johnson

Christ acknowledges the love, faithfulness, service, and spiritual growth of the Christians in Thyatira, yet He calls them out for tolerating someone He identifies as "Jezebel."  This false prophet, He alleges, is influencing believers to do things they should not be doing.  Using some very harsh language, Christ promises judgment for this person and for anyone who follows her teachings.

Like Balaam, who is mentioned in the letter to Pergamum, Jezebel is a figure in the Old Testament.  She was not a good person, to say the least.

Jezebel was the princess of Sidon.  When she married Ahab, the king of Israel, he started worshiping Ba'al, one of the gods of her people, even building a temple to the deity in the capital city.¹  Jezebel had many of the prophets who remained faithful to God put to death, and she forced many more into hiding.²  At one point, Ahab started coveting a vineyard that belonged to one of his subjects.  The owner refused to sell the vineyard because the sale of property was forbidden by God, so Jezebel arranged to have him executed under false charges of blasphemy and sedition so that Ahab could take possession of the vineyard.³

The person identified as Jezebel in the letter to Thyatira is, according to Christ, instructing people in the church "to practice fornication and to eat food sacrificed to idols," as are the people He compares to Balaam in the previous letter.  Note that, throughout the Bible, unfaithfulness to God is compared to marital unfaithfulness.  Also note that, in the ancient Roman world, meat sold in the marketplace came from animals slaughtered in sacrifices to Roman gods, making the consumption of meat problematic to early Christians.

In this letter, Christ is identified as "the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze."  Such imagery would have appealed to people in Thyatira, since the city was the home to a number of trade guilds, one of which was made up of bronze and copper smelters.⁴  According to William Barclay, "Abstention from guild membership was equivalent to commercial suicide."⁵  Participation in these trade guilds meant partaking in communal meals.  These meals were likely held in temples to Roman deities, and, at these meals, meat was served that had likely been offered to Roman gods.⁶  Obviously, the Christians in Thyatira faced a dilemma.

For a short time, while I was a teenager, I had a part-time job at the company where my mother worked at the time.  At first, I stuffed fliers into envelopes for mailing, but later on I stuffed catalogs into boxes.  One day, I wore a Christian-themed baseball cap to work.  Christian-themed apparel often features a brand logo or something else from pop culture that is tweaked slightly so that it says something about Jesus.  At that time, the Y2K computer bug had been in the news frequently, so my hat read, "Y2K: Say yes to the King."

That day, one of my mother's coworkers read my hat as he walked by, and asked me, "Who's the King?"

"Jesus!" I replied.

"There you go!" he said affirmingly.

In many parts of the world, Christians face real persecution, but, in my neck of the woods, referring to Jesus as "King" or "Lord" is not at all controversial.  I live in a region of the United States known as the Bible Belt, where Christianity is simply part of the culture.  Calling Jesus "King" is not at all out of the ordinary.  The early Christians, on the other hand, confessed that "Jesus Christ is Lord" in a culture where they were expected to declare that "Caesar is lord."  There can be only one Lord, so, when one says that Jesus is Lord, one is also saying that Caesar is not lord, and there were serious consequences for defying Caesar.

Balaam and Jezebel are used symbolically in these letters because they were both people from the Hebrew Scriptures who enticed the people of God into doing things that God did not want God's people to do.⁷  M. Eugene Boring suggests that "the 'Nicolatians,' 'Balaam,' and 'Jezebel' promoted the 'progressive' doctrine of accommodation to the culture around them."⁸  He writes,
The Nicolatians and related groups taught that Christians should attend the cultural festivals, buy and eat the sacrificial meat sold in the marketplace, and participate in the cultural lifestyle.  For Israel's prophets and for John, such accommodations to pagan ways was a betrayal of the faith, equivalent to idolatry and fornication, to which John may not have been alluding only figuratively.⁹

Christianity might be part of the culture here in the United States of America, but American Christians are still tempted to worship and serve false American gods.  Many Christians in America like to claim that they live in a Christian nation, but, personally, I beg to differ.  I say this, not because the United States Constitution forbids the establishment of a national religion, but because the USA is a capitalist nation, meaning that the Almighty Dollar is lord.  I suspect that even most of us professing Christians in America base most of our decisions not on what Christ is calling us to do but on what is most financially advantageous.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "No one can serve two masters.  Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other.  You cannot serve God and wealth."¹⁰  As a friend of mine once said, Jesus does not leave us any wiggle room in this regard.  What Jesus says about wealth could also be said about power, fame, or anything else one might pursue in life.  There can be only one lord of a person's life.

For American Christians, faithfulness to Christ means not simply saying that He is Lord, which is tolerated and even expected, but actually living as if He is our Lord, which is truly countercultural.  Christ identifies Himself as "the one who searches minds and hearts."  Perhaps, during this Lenten season, we who profess to be Christians should examine our motivations, so that we may see if Christ really is the Lord of our lives.

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Questions for reflection:

• What kind of "gods" does the culture around you try to seduce you into serving?
• What does it mean to actually live as if Jesus is Lord?
• What might it cost you to live in this way?

Notes:

1. 1 Kings 16:29-33
2. 1 Kings 18:4
3. 1 Kings 21:1-16
4. N.T. Wright.  Revelation for Everyone.  2011, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 25
5. William Barclay.  The Revelation of John, Volume 1, Revised Edition.  1976, The Westminster Press.  p. 107
6. ibid.
7. M. Eugene Boring.  Revelation (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching).  2011, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 31
8. ibid.
9. ibid.
10. Matthew 6:24 (CEB)

The Almightier was drawn by Carl Hassmann and was featured in Puck magazine in 1907.  It has been released to the public domain.