Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Sunday, November 4, 2012 Read – 1 Samuel 25 & 26 In a very short and terse way the narrator tells us of the death of Samuel. We might have expected much more. After all Samuel has been one of the main characters in the story for some time. We are left wondering if that is all there is to say. Samuel will play one more role in the story. But even then we are left wanting for more. The narrator now tells us a rather strange story about David, Nabal, and Abigail. The purpose of the story is to tell us how David got a second wife. There is not much else of value or importance in the story. As the story ends we are told that David also marries another woman, Ahimoam of Jezreel. That makes three wives, although Michal, Saul’s daughter, has not been with David after the time he fled from Saul. Saul has given her to another man. That part of the story will be resolved later. In our time we can’t help but wonder about all these wives. Is this what God wanted? Of course David is not the only one who has multiple wives. Abraham did. Jacob did. The Bible does not seem to be one bit concerned about it. Yet, the Bible story does tell us that God made Adam and Eve for a special relationship of “one flesh”, and when Jesus is pressed about divorce he returns to this early story to lift up the value of marriage in God’s eyes. What does God now think of all this – multiple wives? The story does not tell us. And because the story is written in such a way that David’s actions are left unchallenged, our reading of the Bible is made more complicated. One could make a good argument that having multiple wives is God’s will. Most of us do not believe that today, and most of us would argue that the more dominant view in the Bible is that God made one man and one woman for one relationship called marriage. If we are going to read the Bible for what it says, we are going to have to develop a more complex notion about Biblical inspiration than simply viewing the Bible as words spoken from the mouth of God and written by “uninvolved” human beings who did not influence what is written. Rather, we are going to need to struggle with the reality that the Bible is both a divine and human enterprise. It is God’s Word because God speaks through it to create and sustain faith. But it has human fingerprints all over it, and humans have determined at least some of what it says. This need not worry us. God is bigger than the Bible! God is not troubled with working with fallible human beings. In fact, as we read the story we come to the marvelous realization that God has committed himself to working with human beings. That means of course that not everything goes the way God would like. It takes God more time and sometimes God even needs to change directions. I think all this business of multiple wives is part of that messy business of God simply needing to work things out in spite of the humans God has committed to work with. That kind of God who risks making human beings real and significant is a far larger God than a God who controls everything and will not risk vulnerability and even failure. This is the God we meet in Jesus who put it all on the line – even allowing human beings to crucify him – in order to create a genuine relationship of faith and love. What a wonderful God we worship! What a wonderful Bible that does not hedge on anything – revealing everything as it really is.