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

The story of Jesus manifesting his divinity at the wedding in Cana is paired with nontraditional readings this week. They are a celebration of love and marriage and by inference, a celebration of human sexuality. These readings begin with the lusciousness of the Song of Songs. The psalm is a royal wedding psalm for a...... Read More

In the first lesson, God reveals herself and makes her glory manifest through her redemptive love for her people, expressed here through a marriage metaphor. God will lead her people and her land and be their protector. It is a patriarchal construct, particularly when read with the original masculine grammar. However, just as we have...... Read More

(Saints Serge and Bacchus being united by Christ in what many consider a same sex marriage. For more read John Boswell’s controversial and provocative Same-Sex Union in Pre-Modern Europe.) I’d like to think that by now most folk know that biblical marriage includes rape, abduction, forced pregnancy and surrogacy and polygamy. I’ve lectured and written on...... Read More

For many, marriage is a sacrament or a covenant given by God, an institution that is rooted in love and gives rise to more love through the interweaving of families and sometimes the nurture of children. For many of my conversation partners in the past three weeks, the notion that trafficked girls could be sold...... Read More