Just imagine...

Several years ago I attended a two-day seminar led by Dr. John McClure, who now is the Charles G. Finney Professor of Preaching and Worship at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.  He talked with us about his then-recently published book, Roundtable Preaching: Where Preaching and Leadership Meet.  In that book he proposes a unique way to make sermon writing a collaborative effort between pastor and members of the congregation.  It is a fascinating idea, and one that I utilized for a couple of years with a rotating group of members of the church I served at the time as pastor.  One of the unique methods he describes is working together to look at a biblical passage and try to envision the broader picture of the passage:

·      whose voices do we hear?

·      whose voices are not lifted up in the passage?

·      who might have been standing on the edges of the scene?

·      what might they have been thinking or saying?

·      what might we say if we were there?

It was a wonderful and powerful prescription that helps one really delve into a biblical story.  It never failed to help me find new insights about a passage.

Especially this week - which we in the Church have come to recognize as an especially Holy Week - what do we see, really see, in the events of Jesus' Passion?

·      What did Jesus and the disciples do the afternoon and evening after the entry into Jerusalem?

·      What kinds of things did they talk about?

·      How thick was the tension in conversations on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and the hours before they gathered for the Passover meal?

·      What side talks were going on during that meal?

·      What would we have been doing on that Friday?

·      How much despair would we have felt on Saturday?

·      And would we have believed the women who came with their improbable, preposterous news of early Sunday morning?

This is the high drama week of the liturgical year, because the events of this week were quite literally about life and death.  Let us be faithful in walking with Jesus and the disciples this week... and let us do so with our minds, our hearts, our spirits, our imaginations, and our faith wide open to all that happens.