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

These readings explore love and power, human and divine and, demonstrate how love and power can be a terrible combination on this side of heaven. Along the way, Ahinoam, Merab and Michal, a mother and her daughters are named. The daughters will have parts to play dictated by the men in their lives. The mother’s...... Read More

What’s A Sista Got to Do? What’s a sista got to do to be respected in these androcentric man-besotted religious streets? Spontaneously reproduce without pleasure or pain (according to some traditions), never have sex (according to some), get bodily snatched up into heaven and avoid death (another tradition)? What on earth, in and under heaven...... Read More

Public confession: I don’t get the sense that I have a congregation of folk waiting on these reflections which permits me to be irregular with them unlike if I were preaching every Sunday. If you are looking forward to them, let me know and I’ll do better. I’ll try to do better anyway but it’ll...... Read More

In these lessons monarchy represents absolute power, whether it is the power of God over all or, the power of some man over a place and a people until someone, likely another man, takes his place. Literarily, Saul is a negative foil for David. That leaves him as doomed to fail and unforgiven when repentant....... Read More

The story behind this week’s first lesson is that God seems to have allowed herself to have reluctantly permitted Israel a king in spite of her own good judgment and, the objections of her prophet Samuel. It is one of the ironies of scripture and its interpretation that Samuel, person and the books that bear...... Read More

These readings offer thinly veiled critiques of monarchy, particularly suitable in an era where women are treated like chattel subjects dependent upon the whims of a despotic theocratic ruling class. Samuel is, surprisingly to many readers, anti-monarchy. He lists all that a king will take from the people and how they will find themselves enslaved...... Read More