Smart, reasonable people can and will reach different conclusions about the consequences of historical events and God’s involvement in them. This is why some of you won’t agree with me that God’s word for today is a call to be like the Witch of Endor: Become an agent of God’s mercy in an unfair world.

This text brings us up against the limits of our human intellect and points toward wisdom that lives on the margins and edges. Could it be that knowledge might one day be needed by the very people who, like Saul, banned it? Throughout history there have been people, many of them women like the medium at Endor, who possess a kind of wisdom or insight that puts them in conflict with the establishment.