Author: Scott L. Barton
Submitted: November 28, 2021
Tell us a little about yourself. I’m a Presbyterian (P.C.U.S.A.) minister, having served four congregations as pastor over the course of thirty-six years, in Northern New York, Vermont, and suburban Philadelphia. I wrote hymns for my congregations and often used good visual art as a springboard to gospel-telling. I was active in presbyteries in educational programs, task forces and councils; and was a stated clerk in one presbytery, and acting stated clerk in another. I’m also a singer, and have sung with the Philadelphia Orchestra in its chorus, and currently sing in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which is the Boston Symphony’s chorus. I’m lucky to have an amazing wife and three grown daughters.
What was your motivation behind this project? In my retirement, i still had things to say about the biblical text, but no congregation. Plus, I had written all kinds of poems, serious and humorous, over the years. So writing poems about lectionary texts was a natural step. They are very brief mini-sermons.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? Grace truly is in each lectionary text, but sometimes our familiarity blinds us to it. We may think we know what a text is about, but this means we can easily forget that it was meant to surprise; and that it says something about a God that is always, to modern humans, unexpected. Through these poems, I hope people will see the Bible with new eyes, and as neither prescriptive nor proscriptive, but as proclamation.
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists? North Country poet and pastor Thomas John Carlisle was a big influence in how to portray the kernal of a Biblical text. Thomas Troeger helped me see the mystery behind the old stories. Visual artists Rembrandt, Marc Chagall, and He Qi have ways of surprising me with what God can mean.
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