Monday 15 June 2015

Early start on next Sunday

Monday mornings, I seem to wake later, or at least get up more slowly, when there's nothing in the diary. After a leisurely start however, if I'm not distracted, I get curious about next Sunday's readings, and what there'll be to preach about. From this a train of thoughts develops and a draft text to ponder on and tinker with for the rest of the week. I have immediate access to my internet archive of twelve years worth of sermons. Retrievable less quickly, another eight years of sermons are digitally stored. I reckon I've gone through the three year lectionary a total of six times, since I introduced it in Geneva, ahead of the publication of the Book of Common Worship.

Trinitytide in Year B of the lectionary using the thread of continuous rather than theme related readings is a sequence I haven't done before, or so I discovered, looking back into my archive. The decision to use this thread was taken before I came, and it offers an opportunity to write something fresh each week, rather than hunt the archive and decide if material from previous years can be used as a starting point and adapted to a different audience and setting. This involves just as much thought as writing from scratch, but isn't so stimulating. The lectionary is not an easy resource to get used to, as it's quite complex, offering many possible options for Sundays in any year. This particular set of Trinitytide readings is one I've not worked on before, hence the added pleasure in engaging with scripture afresh for the Ministry of the Word.

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