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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her two most recent sermons on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Currently our sermon series is: Unknown Heroes and Heroines of the Bible. Enjoy.
Abigail the Reconciler
July 27, 2025 7th Sunday of Pentecost
1 Samuel 25:2-20 1 Samuel 25:21-42
Abigail is one of the first female diplomates of the Bible. The Bible even says that she is very intelligent. Abigail is also listed, in Rabbinic commentaries, as one of the four most beautiful women of the Bible; the other three being Sarah, Rahab, and Esther.
Now you all know about King David. But before he was king, he was a soldier and commander under King Saul. Saul even allowed David to marry his daughter Michal; after he performed a requested feat of bravery and conquest. Unfortunately, the people admired David over Saul, and Saul was worried that David would take his throne from him. So, he arranged to have David assassinated. But Michal found out and warned David, who escaped and went on the run with a company of men who were loyal to him. Saul was so angry at Michal that he forced her to divorce David and married her to another man.
So, in this story David is not yet king. He and his soldiers were hiding from Saul, in the wilderness of Paran, which most scholars locate south of Israel in the Sinai Peninsula. Nabal and Abigail live in the area of Carmel, which is south-east of Jerusalem, along the Jordan river but north of the Dead Sea.
This is during the tribal period of Israel. Tribes owned territories with the head of the tribe as the manager of those territories. People did own land, but usually the owned land was used for agricultural purposes like growing grains, orchards, or vineyards. Within the tribal territory there was also land that was used in common by all the families in the tribe as grazing areas for their goats and sheep.
Now David and his men, were not roaming the countryside lawlessly. They were actually protecting the Israeli people from bandits and hostile tribes. Because of this the people were supporting David’s group by feeding them and providing them places to sleep.
Apparently, David had sent ten young men to Nabal’s tribal area when they were shearing their sheep, to be bodyguards for the shepherds. This would help the shepherds get the job done quickly and would prevent bandits from stealing the produce. And David’s men acted honorably. One of Nabal’s men confirms to Abigail: Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we never missed anything when we were in the fields, as long as we were with them; they were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. But when David sends some of his men to Nabal to asked for compensation for their work, which was not an unusual request, Nabal sends insults to David.
David’s reaction is: Every man strap on his sword. Okay you might think this is a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, and you would be right. Throughout David’s history his big problem is that sometimes he acts before he thinks. Don’t get me wrong, the man was a brilliant strategist and was great at bringing people together, but he had a problem with his temper, and he was always getting into trouble because of it. (It is one of the things I like about the Bible – it shows people very realistically at their best, and at their worst.) So there David goes, off to avenge his honor, with 400 men, to basically slaughter the whole male population of Nabal’s house.
Does anyone think this is a good idea? This is not a good idea. If David goes through with this, he’s going to lose all the good will that he’s been building up with the people of Israel. And he will be handing to Saul, on a silver platter, the perfect excuse to declare war on him and hunt him down to extinction. Not a good idea!
Fortunately, Nabal, who we have been told is a very surly and mean person, has an intelligent wife. I am sure that she knows about the 600 soldiers that David has under him. (He left 200 to guard the camp.) When she’s informed about what her husband did, she decides to head the situation off at the pass. Literally! She meets David and his men with two hundred loaves, two skins of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five measures of parched grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs.
Then she apologizes for her out-of-bounds husband’s behavior and begs him to accept her gift of food. She also mentions that she hopes David will turn from his path and points out that this will start a blood feud against him and bring him disgrace and dishonor. David is brought to his senses, accepts the food, and thanks Abigail for reminding him of who he is and what his mission is: To unite Israel. This act of act of revenge would have resulted in the opposite of that.
When Abigail returns home, she tells her husband what she’s done. It’s implied that her news causes him to have a heart-attack which he eventually dies from a few days later. I’m not surprised that Nabal ends up being so shocked at his close call when he finds out that he narrowly missed being set upon by 400 armed men because of his insult.
When David hears the news, he praises God for bringing the judgement upon Nabal, instead of being responsible for it. This story ends with David asking Abigail to be his wife, and she accepts. This might seem to be a bit strange for us, but it’s very possible that as a young widow, she will now lose her standing with Nabal’s family, and that they might even blame her for his death. So besides asking a beautiful, intelligent woman, who prevented him from making a terrible mistake, to marry him; David is also offering her protection. Also remember at this point that David doesn’t have a wife. Abigail becomes his principal wife after this. (He would end up having eight in total when he becomes king.)
What struck me about Abigail was the decisiveness of her actions. Once she was made aware of the problem she didn’t weep and wail about the unfairness of things. She made a decision to solve the problem and then gathered the food, rounded up her servants, and went out to stop what was going on. How many times when we find ourselves in difficult situations do we waste time complaining how unfair the world is? Abigail didn’t waste time. I’m sure she felt, Oh no. What has that husband of mine done to us this time? Now I’m going to have to clean up his mess! Maybe she spent one minute saying a few well-chosen words, but then she figured out what she could do to solve the problem. The next time I’m hit with a problem I think I’ll use her as a model, skip the complaining, and just get on with dealing with the situation.
Also, she was very brave. David was angry, and armed, and had 400 soldiers with him. There was a good chance that her household would have been cut down, especially if the food escort had been all men. But by going with them, she defused the situation. By approaching David, as a woman and the wife of Nabal, she put her life in David’s hands, which made him stop and think for a moment. It would not have looked good for David to attack an unarmed woman, with an unarmed escort, who were delivering food. Sometimes we can defuse conflict by setting up an unexpected situation on neutral ground that everyone can deal with.
Now we might think that falling down in front of someone is a little extreme, but that was how you did a sincere, apology back then. It’s a bit dramatic, but David was distracted from his anger and refocused on the apology. It wasn’t Abigail’s fault, but she decided to swallow her pride for the sake of her people. And the result was a win for both David and Abigail’s people. Sometimes we get so stuck on our own pride in a situation that we make it worse for ourselves and others. This doesn’t mean that you don’t speak truth to power – Abigail certainly did that. She pointed out to David that he was going to bring a lot of grief on himself by his actions. But she didn’t scold; she appealed to his better nature. She emphasized a positive outcome instead of a negative one, reminding him that he would become a just ruler for his people.
Facing and solving the problem; Being brave and finding a way to confront the issue effectively; Swallowing our pride so that we can work to the greater good; And emphasizing a positive outcome. Abigail gives all of us a model for problem solving in a crisis. But finally, Abigail had faith that God would work everything out, and she reminded David of that. In the end Nabal paid for his arrogance, and David eventually became king, with Rachael as his beloved queen. And I am sure – though the Bible doesn’t mention it – that she helped to keep David on a more even keel with his temper.
So, the next time a nasty problem surprises you, remember Abigail: Her resolution, cleverness, bravery, humility, and faith. I believe you’ll be guided to a better outcome that will reflect the wisdom of God and will lead to a just resolution for everyone.
The Prayer of Faith
July 13, 2025 5th Sunday of Pentecost
James 5:13-19 Matthew 7:7-11
In the five chapters of the Book of James, James gives some practical advice to the people of his church to help them be better Christians. And I don't think that any how-to-book of Christianity would be complete without a section on prayer.
Prayer is an act of faith. In fact, I think that it’s one of the strongest actions of faith that we do. Think about what happens when we pray. We take time out of our lives, whether it's a moment, or 20 minutes, or an hour, to verbalize a situation that is happening in our lives. We speak the situation out loud and ask a higher power to help us out with it. That takes faith that there is higher power out there which we can connect to; and that it is listening to us and will respond to us in turn.
There are a lot of types of prayer because there are a lot of different reasons why we would pray. James starts out his advice on prayer by saying: Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Singing hymns is not out of place in this prayer commentary because when we sing hymns we are essentially praying. James is telling us that in the bad times we should tell God what's going on and ask him for help. And in good times, we should express our joy and thank God for all that he has given to us. If you feel like singing your thanks, go for it. James is encouraging his people (and us) to stay in constant connection with the divine power of the universe no matter what happens. And the easiest way to do that is through prayer.
So, our first two types of prayer are prayers about our difficulties and prayers of thanks for our joys.
But then James lifts up another type of prayer: Community prayer as opposed to personal prayer. He says: Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. Here he's talking about a group of people getting together and praying for those who are in need.
He goes on to say: The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Now you need to understand that the concept of being sick could encompass being physically sick, like having a cold, or sick within your soul because you felt that you had done something wrong. This was considered to be spiritual sickness. In the first century it was believed that often you were sick because your sins would make you feel sick or bring about an illness. In other words, guilt and heartache would make you sick. This is why Jesus, when he cured people, would often say, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Today with our extensive medical knowledge about how the body works that might seem to be a simplistic explanation. But besides bacteria and viruses, we also know that a person’s mental state can influence how well or how poorly they fight off an illness. Maybe our ancestors weren’t that simplistic after all. If they did believe that whatever sin they thought was causing them to be ill was forgiven through prayer, then the relief of getting right with God probably did help them to heal. James says: Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.
Community prayer has always been a central part of the Christian church from the beginning. I personally feel that Joys and Concerns, our community prayer time, is more important than my sermon. (Now that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try to give you the best sermon I can every week.) But one of the main purposes of a church is that we come together to support each other. This should be a place where we can lift our burdens up and ask each other to help us get through life. There’s an old expression: Shared joy is doubled; shared sorrow is halved. And I always feel that any church should be a place where people can share their joys and unburden their sorrows. A space that does that is always a welcoming and a healing place.
James tries to be practical with prayer. So do many books that I’ve read on the subject. But in all the books I’ve read, prayer is ultimately a tough thing to write or talk about because at a certain point it’s unexplainable and elusive. It's unexplainable because we don't really know how it works. It's elusive because we know that our prayers don’t always come about the way we think they will. We just have faith that when we send our prayers out into the power of the universe that they will come back in some shape and some form that will be helpful to us.
We know that Jesus took time to pray; sometimes he even went off by himself to do his own prayer retreat. We also know that he encouraged prayer among the disciples. Today we read a passage from a speech that he was giving about prayer. As I studied it this week, I thought: Wow, this is a very encouraging speech! I wonder if his disciples were having some struggles with their own prayer life, and he was trying to help them
He starts by saying: Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. All of the words: Ask, search, and knock are active words. They push the idea of prayer from just sitting and talking with God into a set of actions that help us to reveal the answers to our prayers.
First, we take the time to sit down and ask, or speak to, God. Remember that the Word and speaking things into being is a mystical idea that connects us to the power of God.
Next, we search around our lives and try to find the resources that God is sending to us to solve the problems or situations of our prayers. I’m reminded of that old parable about a Christian in a flood. The sheriff knocks on a man’s door and says, “Sir the river is rising. I’ve come to take you to safety.” The man replies, “Thank you, but Jesus is my savior, and I know he’ll save me.” The water rises and a neighbor in a rowboat comes by and offers to take him to safety. The man replies, “Thank you, but Jesus is my savior, and I know he’ll save me.” Then the water rises so high he has to go onto the roof and a helicopter comes down and offers to take him to safety. The man replies, “Thank you, but Jesus is my savior. and I know he’ll save me.” The waters then rise over the roof and the man goes to heaven where he sees Jesus and says, “Lord, why didn’t you save me?” Jesus said, “I sent you a sheriff, a boat, and a helicopter. What more did you want?”
The word search means to look intensely; to investigate; to explore. We need to be searching for what God has given to us in our lives that will help us to make our prayers happen, and when they come to us accept and use them.
Finally, we need to knock, so that the door will open. I know that many of you have probably seen the print of Jesus knocking on the door, which is a very layered image of Jesus calling to us and an invitation for us to open our hearts and let him in. But I would like to also add that when we knock on someone’s door we can also be asking for help. And I really feel that often there can be shyness in us that might prevent us from asking for help; even when we meet someone who might have been sent to us who can help us with our prayer request. I think that Jesus, like James, is also trying to promote the idea of a community that helps its members. We should not be shy about asking for help. Go ahead and knock on that door and ask someone who was sent to you if they can help you.
Jesus assures his disciples, like James does, that prayer will help us. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Yes, we are flawed and often confused but that doesn’t mean that God is going to give up on us. We are God’s children, and, as a good Divine Parent, He will try to help us. But He also gave us the gift of free will. Kids sometimes don’t want to take their parent’s advice, and sometimes we don’t want to take God’s. But a good parent will keep on trying to give good things to their children, and God will keep on trying to give good things to us.
But we’ve got to have faith and pray with that faith. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. A righteous person is just a regular, flawed person – not a perfect person – who is trying to be right with God. And that’s another thing that prayer is for: A practice to help us get right with God.
So, let’s get our praying on. And we just might find that there are great gifts from God, just waiting to help us around the corner.