Lectionaries

This started as a reply to @bwallac2335 , but it grew and grew.

Actually, most mainline Protestant churches, and many traditional ones, like some LCMS and ACNA parishes, do have all of that, for they use something I mention with great trepidation: the Revised Common Lectionary.

A true traditional Anglican church will have Morning Prayer, with an Old Testament lesson and a New Testament lesson, and three Psalms, followed by the Litany and concluding with Communion or Ante-Communion, with an appointed Collect, Epistle and Gospel (a rubric requiring this was in the 1662 BCP, and in the American BCP until the 1928 edition; the one thing Rev. Percy Dearmer did that really back fired was campaign against the “Sunday morning sandwich”).

If Anglican churches would have priests who exercised more brevity and preached shorter sermons, (and our priests, let us admit, with I have no doubt the exception of @Shane R and @Fr. Brench and our other Anglican.net priests, can sometimes be absolutely thumping bores; two of my favorite traditional Episcopalian priests are boring homilists), or reread classic sermons or excerpts thereof, or moved the main sermon to Morning Prayer and made the sermon at Communion or Ante-Communion brief and mystical, perhaps a metrical homily of St. Ephrem the Syrian, intoned by a lay speaker licensed to preach, with accompaniement from the choir and/or the organ), this model could work again.

If you do these services, you get four scripture lessons, and if you attend Evensong, or even listen to it on BBC Radio Three, you get six, and an extra three psalms. I wish Radio Three and stations in the US would carry Mattins on weekdays; if Evensong and Mattins were streamed on YouTube and broadcast daily, everyone could hear the entire Psalter in one month, and the complete lectionary, which does the New Testament and much of the Old Testament and Apocrypha in a year.

The one year lectionary is superior to the Revised Common Lectionary for other reasons - it is derived from the Sarum Rite lectionary, the ancient liturgy of the South of England, and related to all other Old Roman Rite-derived lectionaries, such as the Lutheran, Moravian, and early Methodist* lectionaries, the Dominican Rite and the Tridentine lectionary. And more importantly, because some ancient lectionaries such as those of the East, or the Gallican Rite and its related Ambrosian and Mozarabic forms, the old lectionary doesn’t make you wait two years to hear a synoptic Gospel. We just finished Year C, which is focused on the Gospel according to Luke, so for the vast majority churches that do not use the unusual, if creative, Year D** supplement authored by Rev. Timothy Matthew Slemmons, the parishioners have to wait a year to hear the Gospel according to Mark or John at ordinary Sunday services (John is used throughout the RCL for feasts, as a supplement to Mark in Year B, due to its shortness, and is also the focus of Year D), and two dreary years before we they hear some of their favorite lessons from Luke.

And the RCL editors decided to chop many important verses, including 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 on Maundy Thursday, which has contributed to the disaster of casual communion without repentance beforehand, and the greater disaster of Episcopal parishes communicating those who are not baptized (this is also in my opinion confounded by drawn out baptismal programs and catechumenates; these made sense in the early church, but we have a large number of unbaptized Christians due to the stupidity of some denominations and non-denominational churches; I favor admitting to the font anyone who asks sincerely without delay, on terms only slightly more inquisitive than those of infant baptism). But I digress.

* The Methodist Book of Worship and some Lutheran service books added an Old Testament lesson and a Psalm in the 1940s-60s, but these remained solidly traditional one year lectionaries, and such a format can be justified from the Gallican, Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites.

** As a joke I might do Year E, an additional supplement focused on the “Gospel of Thomas” and other Nag Hammadi lectionaries. Except I have a life. That said, there is a Gnostic Lectionary compiled by the devout Gnostic Jungian Bishop Stephen Hoeller in Los Angeles, which uses a mix of canonical and Gnostic lessons.

A more useful lectionary resource is here: http://www.bombaxo.com

 

There's a reason I don't let the rector record my homilies anymore . On a serious note: many of them are not for the larger public. I have been writing a fair amount of material specific to the needs of the parish this year.

Now, to the subject of the thread. My colleague Fr. Jason and I (both in the VA deanery) were chatting about the lectionary a week or two ago. He asked how my parish's experiment with the 3 year was going (Abp. Gordon will approve a parish to use the LCMS 3 year for a full cycle). I told him it didn't even last six months. We read that lectionary from Advent 1 to Easter a couple of years ago. My rector doesn't think the OT is worth reading in public services - he thinks it's too confusing to lay people. So he wasn't using the LCMS lectionary the right way. Also, the organist was constantly whining about how she had to actually read the readings in advance to select music. Then he got tired of having to write new sermons every week because the lectionary was going over passages he hadn't covered before.

Fr. Jason and I both agreed that the laity don't read the Bible at home. My parish has a fair number of lapsed RCs. I doubt most of them could even find a particular Bible passage if you gave them 5 minutes to work at it. In the case where the daily office is not a common occurrence and where the laity are not reading the Bible to any meaningful extent, the 3 year lectionary is defensible. It is also a blessing to preachers.

 

The lack of Bible-reading at home and/or at the Office is a serious problem, and I agree with you that the 3-year lectionary is like a decent life-support system for such people. They're better off following a daily lectionary and getting the traditional topical 1-year cycle at the Communion, but that's an ideal that most parishes and persons are sadly far away from achieving.

It definitely sounds like your rector's implementation of the 3-year lectionary was half-hearted and ill-advised. Understanding that the OT lesson is paired with the Gospel can be wonderfully eye-opening for preacher and listener alike, unlocking those texts in ways that many would never otherwise experience. And "tired of writing new sermons each week" sounds... horrible, frankly. A priest unwilling to preach new texts is a priest who needs to stop preaching entirely. But maybe that's just me O

 

Fathers,

I do understand your point, but I have also met priests who strongly prefer the one year lectionary.

Now, I agree entirely with @Fr. Brench on the imperative of including an Old Testament prophecy that connects to the Gospel and the Epistle. The Eastern Orthodox, for example, do this on major feasts at vespers, and the BCP lectionary does the same thing at morning prayer.

For me, it is chiefly a matter of tradition and boredom: the three year lectionary is unprecedented in the entire history of the Christian church, before 1969, with only a tiny minority of Rabinnical Jews using it starting in the first thousand years after our Lord.

Now, to further address both tradition and the importance of the Old Testament, p one year lectionary in fact traces back to the time of St. Ezra the High Priest* and St. Nehemiah the prophet, who, under the guidance of St. Ezra, saw to the implementation of synagogues where the entire Torah would be read, to protect the Israelites from another catastrophe like the Babylonian captivity. Before that time, the knowledge of the Torah was limited to the Aaronic kohanim and the Levites, the royalty who paid attention, like King David and King Solomon, and other prophetic figures starting with Moses, Joshua and the Judges. The people were exposed to the Law only during Sukhot, the Feast of Tabernacles, when they would travel to Jerusalem and in theory listen to the King, who read certain recapitulations of the law from Deuteronomy. By the time of Christ, the Haftarah, or lesson from the other books of the Old Testament read after the Pentateuch, and knowledge of the Psalms, was certainly widespread, and the East Syriac Church of the East founded by St. Thomas basically copied this pattern and integrated it into their liturgy, along with what became the normal Christian lectionary rule, which inverted the Jewish lectionary, to read the Epistle followed by the Gospel. These obviously correspond to the Haftarah and Torah, but the reversed order conveys the fulfillment of the Law in Christ. I actually consider the East Syriac lectionary to be theoretically the best, because numerous important prophecies concerning Christ occur two or more times, first in the Torah or Pentateuch, and then in the rest of the Old Testament. The West Syriac Rite also performs well here, in theory, but in practice, in the diaspora, the Old Testament lessons are often unread (and the East Syriacs will frequently drop the Haftarah or the Torah). This is also an area where the Byzantine Rite and the Tridentine Rite (until 1955, when Pope Pius XII wrecked it) both excelled, by reading 14 and 12 Old Testament lessons on Easter Even, at the Vesperal Divine Liturgy and Paschal Vigils, respectively.

However, in other respects the Roman Rite had broken down, outside of Milan and a few parishes in Toledo and required reform, because the lack of public celebrations of the Divine Office, the restoration of which was the chief accomplishment of the Church of England, denied the Old Testament to even those who could understand Latin (and those who had help from friars, like the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), established specifically for that function). The Armenian Rite also has this problem to a great extent, and the Coptic Rite, while doing a very good job, probably better than anyone else, on reading the New Testament (their lectionary is the only ancient lectionary remaining in use that guarantees the reading of Revelations, in its entirety on Easter Sunday), does less of a good job with the Old Testament, because some Psalms are inexplicably missing from the Agpeya, the main part of the divine office, which is universally used by parishes and monks, and the rest of the Old Testament is only read from, partially, in Holy Week. Now, aside from these, there are three major traditional lectionaries which have an Old Testament lesson: the Gallican, and its two derivatives, the Mozarabic and Ambrosian (the former is only used in one chapel in the cathedral of Toledo, but the latter is used throughout Milan). This also legitimizes lectionaries like the Methodist Episcopal one-year lectionary with its appointed Old Testament, Epistle, Gospel and Psalm.

Now moving along to boredom, I find it to be a frustration that one has to wait up to two years, now that we are in Year A, to hear much of Luke, and also there is the problem of huge chunks of the New Testament that were in the Old Lectionary, in the Communion Service even, being chopped. “Year D”, if adapted, corrects this, but then your people are waiting up to four years for their favorite Gospel to be the regularly read one, since Year D specifically focuses on John; also, the lessons in Year D, while logically justified, are for many feasts, radically different from what people are used to hearing.

This takes us to the solutions: restore the Divine Office, making Morning Prayer the main Sunday service once more, and reviving Ante Communion, but in the interim, using the rubric that allows the Synaxis of Morning Prayer to be used in the Communion Service. So basically, add the lessons from Mattins and/or Evensong along with the Confiteor, and reduce the sermon duration to the minimum time required to clearly tie the scriptures together. Or, if that is still too long, follow the pattern of the old Methodist and some Lutheran lectionaries, which use the same ordo as the RCL, but follow the BCP for the Epistle and Gospel and conclude in one year. Or adopt the Mozarabic or Ambrosian lectionary (due to Latinization, the latter will be especially familiar).

Also @Fr. Brench, bearing in mind you were primarily addressing @Shane R, the RCL-using Methodist pastors of my youth failed, as mentioned in the NT Wright thread, on his article on Times which I completely agree with, but their failure was not a factor of the RCL. Actually, one of them was so bad that Year B actually helped him stay focused, but, the major caveat is this was in Lent when Mark was on the menu anyway. And after Easter, he totally lost the plot again, doing a service in the summer that was so rotten it caused me to stop regularly attending.

*Since Priest really means Presbyter, it is better to refer to the Jewish High Priest as the Archhierus or Protohierus, in Greek, or call him by his Hebrew title Kohen Gadol. And to refer to an ordinary priest as a Kohen or Hierus, or Sacerdos, or Pontifex. Because their function, that of sacerdotal communication with God as intermediaries, was assumed directly by all Christians, with Christ himself becoming the final Archhierus or “High Priest” in the vernacular.

 

By the way @Shane R the new LCMS Lutheran Service Book, introduced in 2006, which is probably the best new liturgical work, better than the 2019 BCP except in terms of literary style, breadth of services, and rubrical quality, has a one year lectionary with an Old Testament lesson.

But it sounds like your pastor would have screwed that one up also, given his ridiculous assertion that the Old Testament was not worth reading in public worship.

The bottom line though is that the traditional BCP lectionary rocks, and the RCL is boring and contrary to tradition. Except for the unofficial Year D, which is thrilling, but would exacerbate the other problems with the RCL (a partial integration of Year D into the liturgy would be a win, however, for example, using it on the Wednesday Eucharists that many Anglican churches serve, or if there are two or more Holy Communion services in one day, especially a brief Sunday evening service, use it for that, but at a minimum it should not be added to the RCL, and it would actuallt work better if plugged into the traditional lectionaries, in my opinion.

There is one other possibility that could work, which I could support, and that would be a semi-RCL wherein the lessons changed each year in part, but one Gospel was not read primarily, rather, each of the four receiving equal time in each year. But thus would be a huge compromise for me, because it would still be confrary to tradition, or at the very least, eclectic. Also, it, and the RCL itself, both violate the rule of our greatest 20th century Anglican apologist CS Lewis, that the worship services should be as invariant as possible so the congregation does not have to relearn them. Lewis himself would ride with his brother to a parish more than an hour away from Oxford each morning, where they would atfend a Said Eucharist at 7:30; they would leave immediately after receiving communion and not wait for the dismissal.

 

Survey data from 2016 and 2019 suggests that about 1/3 of Protestants personally read the Bible daily, which is roughly twice the percentage of Catholics who do so. Also, another 1/4 of Protestants read the Bible 'a few times per week,' which means that somewhere around 60% of them are doing fairly regular Bible reading on their own.

Is it possible that most Protestants consider the Bible to be their greatest external source of spiritual comfort and that most Catholics (I assume the survey centered on Roman Catholics and not small-'c' catholics) find their liturgy to be their greatest external source of spiritual comfort? Or is it that the Protestant churches tend to emphasize personal Bible reading more than the Catholics? Just some hypotheses that might explain the statistical data. There could be other factors, I imagine.

I have had some RCs tell me (proudly) that of course they and their brethren know the Bible, because their church's lectionary covers the whole Bible every three years! But they forget that they only will hear the vast bulk of that lectionary'a Bible readings if they attend Mass daily. So they think they know their Bibles, but they might only know about 1/7 of it.

 

No common lectionary covers the entire Bible.

The last sermon I wrote was for Advent 2, with the appointed Gospel coming from Luke 21. The following Tuesday I returned to the custom framing shop to pick up a project that was finished. The proprietor is an Episcopalian and he likes to chat with me on occasions that I stop in. He asked what my sermon had been and I told him the reading. He replied that he didn't know Luke wrote about the end-times. I explained to him that the passage roughly parallels Matthew 24, which he was also unfamiliar with.

And I suspect what many people pass off as daily Bible reading is devotional material where they are given one or two positive and upbeat verses as a daily pep talk. Those things tend to cycle through the same 50-60 verses with all the variety of a Clear Channel radio playlist. My own mother reads 2 or 3 chapters of the Bible every day and is not Biblically literate. For her, Bible reading is an exercise that she does to feel like she's doing something more or better than most of the other people she knows. Last time she visited she was reading a passage from the prophets and asked me if I knew the prophet said such and such a thing. It was a passage which one of the Evangelists quotes explicitly.

I've visited Anglican parishes that claimed to have Bible study but you'd be hard pressed to find a Bible in the place. Usually they were actually studying out of the Anglican Missal.

 

True around here most Protestants are of the Baptist or Assembly of God variety. I don't think they have that.

 

I don't consider myself a great Biblical scholar but many of my people in my small group think I am some sort of one when it comes to Bible knowledge.

 

Actually integrated scripturo-liturgical-eschatological study with an heresiological counterpoint to epmphasize true doctrine by contrasting it with the wickedness of the Gnostics and other wolves in sheeps clothing strikes me as cracking good fun, and educational. I could sit there and listen to a skilled orator deliver on that for hours. One thing I regret by the way is both how engaging Presbyterian ministers are, and the extent to which they tend to not actually preach about doctrine. Now I loved Dr. James Kennedy, and he did sometimes get doctrinal, but othertimes he was diverted by moral or political discourse. Our great Anglican homilists have the great advantage, going back to the very Book of Homilies, which I dare some of our members of the cloth to read in their parishes on occasion, is that the consistent pattern is to preach an exposition of scripture and doctrine, in a liturgical setting, against error.

And let me go a step further: why do we even need Bible Study? If we do the Divine Office and throw in a homily, which is allowed, even at Evensong, we cover more ground and in a more controlled way than we ever could with a convention Bible Study. And it will be less boring and more interesting. The Priest, Deacon or Licensed Minister of whatever rank conducting the service could even take questions from the pulpit, ambo, lectern, or place where licensed readers are permitted to stand when leadin the divine services.

And in doing so, I daresay we would follow in the logical course charted for us by the most splendid, revered, excellent and exalted BCP edition of 1662, that liturgy of liturgies, has set out for us, following as it does in the grandest and greatest traditions of the Christian faith, of the reforms of Cranmer, of the morals that have shaped Britain proclaimed from the majestic pulpits of the Church of England, and all that is right and good in the world, from bluebells in the Spring to turkeys at Christmas.

 

Non-conformist conventicles! Shiver me timbers. I have not the forebearance to deal with the likes of those on a fine Sunday vigil.

 

I was left speechless when I read this. Could that church sink any lower or turn further from the faith of Christ?

 

Perhaps I should clarify my earlier comment - I also prefer the one-year lectionary; its traditional roots and the wisdom and logic behind it are unbeatable. I would only "edit" it by adding matching OT lessons, a project that has been undertaken by several others already, so I wouldn't have to do any of that leg-work myself.

The RCL isn't terrible, just inferior. Handled rightly, it can be profitable, and it's frustrating when priests or other preachers misuse it and make it out to be worse than it is.

 

Just bought my 2019 BCP.

 

Make sure the binding is sound - I've heard reports of a bad batch recently.

 

My BCP's binding must not be sound enough... I haven't heard it make any sound whatsoever!

 

While not a true daily lectionary in the formal sense , I find the attatched Orthodox (OCA) daily bible read list very helpfull

 

I am trying to read through the Psalms right now along with my regular Bible readings.

 

Somewhat off-topic but this is something I never thought I would see. I was raised in the Churches of Christ (sometimes called Campbellites -which is pejorative). They are a product of the American Restoration movement which also yielded such fruit as the SDA and Mormons. They are essentially an Anabaptist sect with an American flare and open hostility to traditional Christianity (heavily influenced by Charles Finney as they evolved). Some of my old friends are now using lectionaries. Even in that fundamentalist hive, they realize that most people are not reading the Bible methodically. Also, they have discovered the value of preaching from a pre-determined passage.

I first witnessed this in about 2013. My old friend and colleague Daniel H moved to Michigan's UP and began working through the Gospel According to St. Luke methodically for almost a full year. Recently, another old CoC friend has gone so far as to put his congregation on the RCL (although he isn't using it quite as intended).

 

Great start! Next step is to try praying the psalms rather than simply reading them. I'm not trying to be pedantic, it's just that in historic Christian spirituality the psalms things to pray (and/or sing), so reading them is only a step in that direction. This is where most modern protestants miss the boat regarding the psalms.