with the Rev Dr Jason Byassee
Butler Chair in Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation
Vancouver School of Theology

The Orthodox Church calls Lent “a bright sadness.” So much of our work nudges us toward being unbeareably, relentlessly chipper. But whatever the cross is, it’s not that. Of course dour and disconnected is not the answer either. What is?

Augustine insists to his congregation regularly, ‘I’m only feeding you what I feast on myself.’ Whatever hope we have for preaching that fires imaginations and hearts and mission is in the content of the gospel itself. Lent and Holy Week ask us to return to that feast and plunge into depths there that we didn’t know existed.

In this seminar we will attend to God’s work for us on Good Friday, the way Holy Week prepares us for that, and the way Lent asks us to die to ourselves on the way to that. None of this sounds very pleasant. But it is immeasurably hopeful.