What in the world is the Lectionary?
Our worship this year is going to be guided by the texts of the Revised Common Lectionary of the Church Year. The present Lectionary was put together in 1992 by a team of ecumenical Bible scholars, and follows a three-year cycle. Each Sunday in the church year has four prescribed texts: normally one from the Old Testament, one from the Psalms, one from the Gospels and one from the Epistles. In each of the following two years, there are four new texts per Sunday, following the same pattern (OT, Psalms, Gospel, Epistle).
The use of a lectionary is part of our heritage as a Covenant Church. When the Covenant separated from the Lutheran church in the 19th century, they didn’t leave behind all the old Lutheran practices. Unlike some other denominations with the same roots, our founders thought that infant baptism, confirmation and the church year (all characteristic of Lutheran life and worship) were perfectly consistent with the new life in Christ.
Today there are almost probably more Covenant churches that don’t follow the lectionary than do, but there still many Covenant churches that follow these prescribed texts year in and year out. (Incidentally, of the three Covenant churches attended by my kids, two are Lectionary churches and one is not.)
There is nothing magical about the Lectionary. It is a human compilation, and like most human inventions, it isn’t perfect. Even in a three-year cycle it does not include anything close to every single passage in the Bible, and there are some important (to my mind) passages that it completely leaves out of the rotation. It does, however, have some distinct benefits in the life of the worshipping community:
1. If the preacher follows the Lectionary, it means that the text chooses him rather than him always choosing the text. There are congregations who never hear anything from the Bible except what their pastor, rightly or wrongly, believes to be important. The result is that there are significant biblical themes that may go un-preached for years and years. In attempting to be relevant, what pastors often end up doing is riding their own hobby-horses, to the spiritual impoverishment of their congregations. One of the things I like about the Lectionary is that it forces me to deal with passage that I otherwise might want to ignore.
2. If you follow the Gospel texts (which is my intent for the year), you are given the opportunity to hear the full story of Jesus’ life and ministry every twelve months. You will deal with Jesus’ birth, the call of his disciples, his healings, his teachings, his transfiguration, death, resurrection and ascension, as well as the momentous events that took place on the day of Pentecost. When Advent rolls around, you won’t rush into Christmas, but linger on the words of the prophets who foretold the Messiah’s birth. It’s an unfortunate fact that in today’s consumer-oriented church culture, you are often more likely to hear endless sermon series on “How to be an Effective Parent”, or “How to Manage Your Money” than you are to hear about the life and teachings of Jesus presented in any sort of systematic way. (By the way, I believe that if we heard more Jesus preached on Sundays, we would be more effective parents and money managers!)
3. There are often marvelous connections to be made among the four texts for any given Sunday. In the readings for January 8th, for example, the Gospel from Mark 1 is about the baptism of Jesus; the Old Testament reading from Genesis 1 has the Spirit of God “hovering over the face of the waters”; the Psalm (29) has God “thundering over the mighty waters”; and the fourth text from Acts 19 describes the baptism of some Ephesian believers. In reading these four texts we are invited to think about how the Bible story makes use of water.
4. You will have something to talk about with friends in other churches. If you know someone who is Methodist or Reformed or Lutheran or in some (though not all) of the Baptist denominations, it is likely that their church will be reading and perhaps preaching from the same text that you are hearing here at Trinity.
We welcome you to join us in this biblical journey over the next months. Keep an eye out for the coming four Lectionary texts in your worship folder every week. Read them for yourself before you come to the service on Sunday and see what connections you can make!