A Letter to Abigail

A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California, based on the lections from A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year A. While I do not have the rights to reprint Women’s Lectionary translations here, the NRSVU versions of the readings assigned can be found here: 1 Samuel 25:14–19, 23–25, 32–34, 42–43, Psalm 25:4-12 , 1 Corinthians 7:1-9, Matthew 5:38-42

This morning in our first reading we met a woman named Abigail. And I’ve been thinking a whole lot about her. So much so, I wrote her a letter:

Dear Abigail—

I grew up going to church, but I don’t remember ever hearing your name. In fact, I went to seminary, and you never came up. Your story doesn’t appear in the Revised Common Lectionary of assigned readings, which means this Sunday may be the first time your story is told out loud in our sanctuary.

I read in scripture that you were “an intelligent and beautiful woman,” and I believe that. I also read that your rich and powerful husband Nabal was “surly” and “mean.”

I know that one morning David asked your wealthy husband for food and hospitality — hospitality that the customs of your time and place said Nabal should provide. And I know that Nabal refused him, with histrionics and attitude. Nabal insulted this young, ambitious man, and I imagine once you heard this, your blood must have run like ice; because you knew that Nabal's insult had landed in the hands of a man with hundreds of armed men behind him. You knew violence was at the door.

Did you have children in your household? Was their safety the first thing you thought of when you understood that you were all in the danger zone between a rich man’s scandalized entitlement and a warrior’s bruised ego?

I know you sprang into action. You grabbed every gift you could think of, Abigail: all the bread. All the wine. All the meat. All the fruit. All the cake. Everything. How long did you think you had before David’s soldiers arrived at the threshold? I know that you rode with the gifts right to the young, soon-to-be king.

And, I’m sorry if this is hard (you can stop reading here if you need to), I know you fell down before him, on your face. Called yourself his slave. Apologized for your husband’s bad behavior.

Abigail, I know that you did what you needed to do. And I know that it worked; soothed every inch of David’s ego. Brought his temperature down. He thanked you for saving him from himself. And, right there in front of you, thanked God for not carrying out his plan to hurt you.

And then, I know that he married you. And you became one of so many wives.

Oh, Abigail. I am so sorry this happened to you. I am so sorry your life experience taught you so well how to anticipate danger, manage anger, and make yourself small enough to survive it. And, I am in awe of what you did with the choices you had.

Abigail, I wish I could tell you 3,000 years later that your story feels foreign or hard to imagine.

Don’t get me wrong — we have made progress! I wish I could take you around our world and show you what we’ve accomplished. Show you the ways women and men have broken free of the oppression of these systems of violence and patriarchy. It’s thrilling!

And … it’s still hard sometimes. And lately, it seems like it’s getting harder.

Some days it feels as though all of the world’s innocent, everyday people are caught in the danger zone between a rich man’s scandalized entitlement and a warrior’s bruised ego.

I guess you know that 1,000 years after your time on this earthly plane, Jesus of Nazareth was born. It changed everything, of course.

I wonder what you thought when you first heard his teachings; particularly when he said, “When someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to them also”? Did it put a hitch in your breath?

Because you wouldn’t be the first, Abigail. That teaching of Jesus has been used to encourage the marginalized and oppressed to be passive in the face of subjugation by the powerful. It’s been used to instruct the powerless and the abused not to make trouble. To endure. To keep the peace.

We Christians have, throughout our history (including in scripture — I’m lookin’ at you, Paul), taken Jesus’ words and used them to sanctify those things that I am so sorry you experienced: the expectation that vulnerable people should be responsible for managing the behavior and feelings of the powerful. For “saving them from themselves.”

And I am so sorry for that Christian legacy too, Abigail. Because I don’t think that is what Jesus was up to with that teaching. And neither does the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, the priest and biblical scholar whose lectionary brought your story into our sanctuary.

Dr. Gafney calls these words of Jesus a “nonviolent resistance manual.” And she says: “That was Abigail’s strategy and it saved her life and the lives of everyone on her estate.” But Dr. Gafney also gives us a warning: teachings like these, she says, can be “easily twisted by those with power to victimize the vulnerable.” [i]

That distinction matters. I do not believe God wanted you on your face, Abigail. I do not believe God asks vulnerable people to make themselves small so that powerful people will decide not to hurt them.

You used the earthly tools left to you in order to survive. And Abigail, it strikes me that the resistance was what you did with them.

David had already decided how this story would end. And you simply refused to accept it.  

The end of the story is already written into the phrase, “An eye for an eye.” But the phrase “Turn the other cheek” leaves the possibilities wide open. So when Jesus says, “turn the other cheek,” it is not a command that the oppressed endure violence and exploitation. It is an insistence that there is another way. There are so many other ways.

David praises your “discernment.” And in that, he got it right. Not your obedience. Not your submission. Your discernment. Your ability to see, when David could not, that there was another path. Another possibility. And for a moment, David saw it too.

All these years later, we are still trying to learn. We’re trying to teach our little girls that managing someone else’s anger is not their rightful vocation. We’re trying to teach our little boys that strength does not require someone else to become small. Heck, some of us are trying to free our children from all the gendered expectations that have confined human beings for so long.

We’re trying, generation after generation, to teach ourselves the way of peace and nonviolence. It’s slow going. Painfully slow. But I know that violence will not get the last word. God has promised us that.

And, we’re trying to get better at remembering people like you, Abigail. As much as we remember the great and powerful David.

Because 3,000 years later, the violent road still sometimes feels like the only inevitable choice. An “eye for an eye.”

And so, we need to remember you, Abigail; to help us in our discernment and give us courage to interrupt the course of events that might seem as though they have an already-written ending. To remember, there is another way.

Thank you, Abigail. The world is a better place because you lived.

[i] A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year A, pg. 267