Late again! Where does the time go. I assure you, if I were preaching every week, I would be more faithful. These passages deal with retribution and cycles of violence. Like many international and interpersonal conflicts, the present violence can only be understood in light of the historic violence but sometimes there is no shared...... Read More

The struggle for survival in the ancient world was a bloody business on a good day; add throne games into the mix and the slaughter could be epic. Many of those epic battles – real and imaginary – are churned out for small and large screens and consumed with gusto. Some few women swashbuckle through...... Read More

This week’s lessons are difficult. They present the incestuous rape of Tamar by her half brother Amnon, the complicity of her cousin who set her up to be raped and, her father’s abandonment of her after the rape. The physical and sexual violence that characterized David became a signature of his dynasty and descendants. I...... Read More

These lessons call for hard truth telling. Telling the truth about biblical texts and characters that we thought we knew. That we may well have loved. King David, from shepherd boy to Shepherd King, holy harpist and devoted dancer. And a mercenary. And a bandit. And a robber. And a rapist. And a murderer. And...... Read More

The lessons this week are marked by lamentation. One might wish to move some of these lessons around in the event of national catastrophe or even the remembrance of 9/11. But at the same time, on any given day, there are unspeakable losses somewhere, if not everywhere, people are hurting and grieving. Folk grieve losses...... Read More

Hello stranded pilgrims. I left you in the wilderness while I went off preaching. The sermon the Sunday before last, “Collateral Damage” is the Pentecost 15 reading in Year A. It shares the first lesson with Year W. What looks like a grand heroic episode in which David rescues his kidnap wives and the wives...... Read More

Collateral Damage: A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year A, Proper 19: 1 Samuel 30:1–8, 17–19; Psalm 13; Matthew 18:10–14   David smote them from twilight until the evening of the morrow. None of them escaped, except four hundred young men who mounted camels and fled. (1 Samuel 30:17) David seems quite the dashing...... Read More

[Looking for Pentecost 13? It is the sermon, “Waiting for the Wicked to Get Theirs.”]  Today’s lessons are about violence and vengeance, fitting as they fall on September 11 this year, 9/11. In the first lesson, David commits massacre after massacre: Neither woman nor man David left living…saying, “Lest they tell about us, and say,...... Read More

In the Name of God, Righteous, Merciful and Forgiving, Amen. In the first lesson, which we did not read, David sets his sights on resources that do not belong to him, cash crops and currency on the hoof. Being more attuned to the threat he represents than her drunk and belligerent husband, Abigail grants David...... Read More

This week’s readings invite us to look deeply at how we treat each other, expect to be treated and when and where we make excuses for poor treatment, particularly among and by our leaders or other persons we hold in esteem. David’s unjustified demand for Nabal to provision his bandits and his willingness to slaughter...... Read More