Gathered in 'church', most congregations look surprisingly like pages of Scripture. All set in lines, row upon row. Here a stop. There a comma, An exclamation! A question or two?? But a congregation's life is lived mainly outside all these rows of pews and aisles, and Scripture itself arises from that outside life far more than from what goes on inside synagogue or church.

MIM is an attempt to help preacher, congregation, and the text of MT week by week connect with each other during 'Year A' of the Revised Common Lectionary as used in 'A Prayer Book for Australia' of the Anglican Church of Australia. To encourage us to find new 'entry points', and risk  breaking out from any preaching strait-jackets, including any we use to bind the Living God.

Good preaching homes in on the margins of life where scripture still happens. People like Rabbi Lionel Blue describe Jewish Midrash imaginatively as 'scribbling and doodling in the margins'. Good preaching scribbles and doodles too, enlivening the relationship between text and readers. In his 'Day Trips To Eternity' [DLT, '87] and other writings, Lionel Blue gives us some remarkably stimulating and insightful examples of such goings on. From another angle, using kitchen imagery, Beth Yahp [Weekend Australian Magazine 30.8.97, p.12] writes: "I am always looking inside and under things, pots, pans, cupboards, anecdotes, stories; listening for what lies beneath their skins. I am always hungry."

MIM tries to help us look hungrily inside & under the skin of the Gospel as we engage with it in the Eucharist. To help us move in & out of the text creatively. Out of presuppositions. On to new and more imaginative trains of thought to cook with for the hungry! This way, we and MT can come alive to each other.

MIM assumes the serious preacher will do the necessary theological groundwork and homework. Dare I suggest we not have any preconceived idea what our sermon thrust will be till we've done a lot of poking in the margins? Scripture is intuitive long before it's logical. Somewhere, Matthew Fox says "faith is the creative use of the imagination", so, as you go for it, pray God's Spirit to foster all your faith imaginings to create a newly unfolding chapter of the Old, Old Story.

P.S. Knowing MIM was about to hit the net, my son recently gave me a copy of Warren Carter's great new comentary 'Matthew and the Margins' [Orbis, 2001].  Professor Carter uses 'margins' in the sense of those marginalised by society, as distinct from the way I use the term, but to read MT as he reads it is exciting, and I commend it to your consideration.

BRIAN McGOWAN
FALCON, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
After Pentecost, 2001