BOOKS

Midrashic Imagination: Texts and Textures for Pulpit and Pew

Fortress Press, 2026

Elisabeth R. Jones offers an approach to preaching that facilitates holy inspiration, transformational discipleship, and faithful public witness. Jones presents a tested method of midrashic biblical imagination that enables preachers and their communities of faith to explore the polyvalence of the biblical text.

In Midrashic Imagination, Jones draws on ancient and contemporary biblical and literary interpretive practices that privilege curiosity, open-ended questioning, and faithful imagination.

Her approach to Scripture delays judgment of the text, highlights multiple interpretive possibilities, and works across confessional and theological differences while inviting inquiry and curiosity centered on the biblical text.

Midrashic Imagination invites working preachers to cultivate a community-grounded practice of scriptural interpretation that is rigorous while also creating space for whimsy, imagination, and spiritual engagement with the biblical text. This book is a good fit for preachers-and communities of faith-focused on the sacred connection between the lively word of God in Scripture and today's cultural landscape, spiritual longings, hopes, and fears.

To buy your copy of the book, choose one of these booksellers.

Praise for Midrashic Imagination

  • “Drawing on the deep well of the midrashic tradition of rumbling with sacred text, Elisabeth R. Jones expertly guides us from a place of theological anemia to a rich and deep practice, grounded in that which is wholly love, allowing us to aspire to the bold discipleship we dare to claim.”

    —Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne, Emmanuel College, Toronto, and 44th Moderator of the United Church of Canada

  • “In ‘Midrashic Imagination,” Elisabeth Jones shares a profoundly Jewish way of reading sacred text with a broader audience. She does so with the integrity of a scholar, the sensitivity of a minister, and the imaginativeness born of a true love of scripture.”

    —Rabbi Dr. Lisa Grushcow, Senior Rabbi, Temple Emanu-El Beth Sholom, Montreal

  • “‘Midrashic Imagination’ is a gift to anyone looking to inspire Christian communities to new depths of scriptural engagement and together find new ways to proclaim good news in challenging times. 

    —Jesse Zink, Principal, Montreal Diocesan Theological College, and author of Faithful, Creative, Hopeful: Fifteen Theses for Christians in a Crisis-Shaped World

  • This book should perhaps come with a warning: Only embark on the journey of biblical midrashic imagination with your congregation if you’re willing to be transformed, to have your breath taken away, to witness miracles together.

    —Martha Randy, Communications and Outreach Coordinator, Cedar Park United Church, Quebec

Prayers for a Pandemic Season (2022)

by Elisabeth R. Jones and Martha Randy (graphics)

“This little book began as a daily journal, written day by day throughout the Lenten season of 2021, which overlapped the first anniversary of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were all cut off from our church building, and more to the point, we were all still cut off from each other.

“While we worshipped and worked online, no amount of technology could make up for the tactile starvation we were all experiencing. I was spending so much time on computer screens and keyboards, that this daily ritual of using an old-fashioned fountain pen to write short meditations and prayers into a little brown leather-bound notebook, became a healing balm not just for my soul, but, curiously, for my body and my senses, too.

After posting one of these prayers to my Facebook page, with a photo that mirrored the reflection, my colleague Martha asked if we could/should try posting these prayers, daily, to our church’s Facebook page. What began as a moment of private prayer and reflection for my own soul and sanity became a community Lenten pilgrimage in the company of real-but-virtual others, making our locked-down Easter Sunday celebration somehow more full of the promise of resurrection.

One year later, we were still in ‘pandemic season,’ with its quarantines and shutdowns, variants and case counts. We still hadn’t hugged one another inside our sanctuary, and the tactile starvation continued. So we gathered all the prayers, images and reflections, added a few more to complete the set, and offered it to our community, and friends, near and far, as a tangible gift of Lenten Prayers for a Pandemic Season.”

Self-published, 2022