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 & aisles, & Scripture itself arises from that outside life far more than from what goes on inside synagogue or church. It's heart stuff before it's head stuff!

Marginally Mark (MMK) is an attempt to help preacher, congregation, & the text of MK read week by week connect with each other during 'Year B' 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', to break out of preaching blind spots & strait-jackets, including those we use to try to bind the Living God when it suits us. Perhaps to give us an idea to start with, where previously we couldn't see how to 'break the passage open'.

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

MMK 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 from presuppositions that bind us, & on to new, more imaginative trains of thought to 'fly a kite' with, develop, or even cook with for the hungry! This way, we & MK can come alive to each other.

MMK lays no claim to scholarship. It assumes the serious preacher will do the necessary theological groundwork & homework. But I'd humbly suggest that perhaps we oughtn't know what our sermon thrust will be till we've done a lot of poking around in the margins. Scripture is intuitive long before it's logical. As Matthew Fox says somewhere, "faith is the creative use of the imagination". So, go for it, & as you go, pray that God's Spirit will stimulate & foster all our faith imaginings to create a newly unfolding chapter of the Old, Old Story.

P.S. I tend to work from The Complete Gospels [ed. Robert J.Miller, Polebridge, '94] compared with NRSV, NJB, & other versions & commentaries to hand. But in the end, we all have to become our own version & our own commentary!