It’s hard to believe it, but in just a few weeks (6 Easter), I will reach the third anniversary of the very first Divergence on the Lectionary. I will have published one for (almost) every Sunday of the three-year cycle. (There will be one or two Sundays during the Season after Pentecost that I’ll have missed because of the changing dates of Easter and Pentecost.)
I owe a great debt of gratitude to the congregation of St. David’s in Laurinburg, NC, for getting me started on this. I was their parttime vicar for a year or so after my retirement, and it was during that time that I began writing weekly studies to send to them to get them thinking before we had Sunday Bible study. When I moved with SaraLouise to Colorado, I told them I’d keep up the weekly studies, and I did. But there’s this prohibition against being involved with a congregation you’ve just left. (Tends to muddy the waters for whomever follows you.) Since I couldn’t send them directly, I started publishing them on a blog. A few months later, the blog grew into The Vicar’s Keep, and here we are.
Completing the three-year cycle won’t mean I stop working on them though. For one thing, I have only tackled “Track One” in the first time through, so there’ll be a lot of “Track Two” texts to consider. But beyond that, this next time through I’ll be adding another section to each week, called “So What?” This was a staple of every class I taught when I was an “Instructor of New Testament” at the George Mercer School of Theology on Long Island. Every ninety-minute class ended with twenty minutes during which I asked, “So what? We’ve studied these texts from Mark (or John, or Paul, whatever) but does it make a difference in how we live out the Gospel? If so, how?”
Of course, that was the question I put to my students. Now I’ll put it to myself each week and try to find some place that the texts and the studies I’ve done actually touch my real life, our real lives.
I’ve been a bit disappointed that there hasn’t been more comment, more interaction on the Divergence pages themselves over the years. Perhaps this will stimulate more. I don’t know, but I will undertake to answer that “So What” question regardless.
Thank you for journeying with me these last three years. I look forward to the years yet to come.
Jeff
