It’s a shame that many of us lose interest in the stories from the Hebrew Bible about the time we graduate from Sunday School.  For one thing, some of the best stories in the Bible are really better left to mature audiences.  For another thing, until we are practiced at reading literature, we tend to miss the forest for the trees.  We ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the miraculous and the divine special effects but we fail to probe deeper.  In fact, I think that the miraculous and other-worldly nature of the stories sometimes causes us to put them into the mental category of “interesting but irrelevant.”

Since we don’t usually encounter God through angels and chariots of fire, we tend to dismiss stories in which God is described as meeting humans through these awesome means.  If we stuck with the stories a little longer we might have found ourselves wondering if the biblical authors didn’t employ the sound and light show details as a way of saying to their first readers, “God was in this; God was real to me in a way I can’t describe without resorting to miraculous imagery.”

Reading Sunday School stories as grown-ups not only invites us to probe the symbolic nature of the literature, it also invites us to read it with the self-knowledge we have gained through our own lived experience.

This summer we are reading about King David in the Sunday lectionary.  Those of us following the daily lectionary are getting even more of his action-packed life.  Recently I read how a woman named Abigail (who later became one of David’s wives) saved David from himself.

I think it’s safe to say that we would regard a modern-day David as an example of toxic masculinity.  He was a sexual predator.   He was an adrenaline junkie.  David, if he was living today, would probably be seen on YouTube pulling dangerous and aggressive stunts while his buddy held his beer.

In this story, David felt disrespected, dishonored by a man named Nabal (which is the Hebrew word for “fool”).  David did not suffer fools gladly.  David’s honor and pride demanded that he respond to Nabal’s insult.  For David, this didn’t just mean trash-talking or fisticuffs out behind the bar.  It meant swords and mayhem and death for Nabal and his family.

If it weren’t for Abigail.

Abigail talked David down.  She made peace.  She allowed him to keep his pride without killing Nabal.

You can read this story through the prism of a woman’s power over the supposed power of a warrior king.  You can read it as a story of wisdom over anger.  You can read it as an invitation to leave room for God that can only come to those who truly trust in God.

But, of course, you can’t get any of that out of it unless you read it again as a Sunday School graduate.  (See for yourself in 1 Samuel 25.)

Prayer: God of our fathers and mothers, your word is a light for my path and sometimes a mirror that reveals more than I care to see.  Amen.