….let me tell you why I think the lectionary is insufficient for shaping “Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age” or whatever your vision of discipleship is:
1. The whole Bible is not read in the Sunday lectionary.
2. Difficult texts are eliminated from the lectionary.
3. Controversial texts are eliminated from the lectionary.
4. Lectionary texts are a set up for preachers to think isogetically about preaching; in the same way, lectionary reading also allows the congregation to go for years without hearing biblical texts in their contexts.
5. The traditional idea of lectionary preaching from the previous generation makes one of two mistakes. It either only preaches from the Gospel texts thus eliminating the 2 Tim. 3:16 understanding of Scripture. There are people who can go for years or a lifetime without hearing a sermon on the Old Testament. The other mistake of lectionary preaching is to try and force a common thread through the four (or three) readings that does not exist exegetically. For every sermon I preach on a biblical text, there are supporting texts. The lectionary readings tend to force the preacher towards finding that support in the appointed texts.
Amen, amen, and amen!
Can’t agree with this. The Lectionary is a tool not a master. Ideally it is used in conjunction with personal use of the Daily Office which will indeed lead people through the whole Bible. And it is up to the priest to make sure that Scripture is taught in context.
There are similar problems with not using a Lectionary. It’s up to the discipline of the priest to make sure the whole of God’s revealed Word is taught and expounded. But it is also up to the laity to make sure they are availing themselves of opportunity to receive it.
The Lectionary is an excellent way to force one to deal with the whole of the Bible. However, it requires that one work to set the context of the passage(s) utilized in the sermon and should always be primarily contextualized in Scripture. This will require dealing with the passages left out so as to apprehend the whole of Scripture.
Each of the readings themselves should be contextualized briefly by the readers when read. This requires preparation on the part of the priest (or reader, if able). Otherwise, the readings become mere sound bytes to be culturally-bound and understood. The famous Galatians passage about equality in salvation of Jew and Greek, male and female, bond and free is the classic one to be heard as a political statement or gender statement rather than as a salvation statement. This radically alters the meaning in an American context.
I can’t agree either. The BCP or RCL lectionaries have their problems and clear biases (many of which would be fixed by a better lectionary), but in my experience – which includes 20 years in churches trying to do exactly what Shay outlines – makes me lack optimism about the alternatives. Whether we use a lectionary or make our own choices, the temptation is strong in all of us to avoid parts of Scripture we don’t understand, or don’t really like. With the lectionary at least, everyone can see at least part of what we are avoiding.
It’s funny because my hyper-Roman friends are all saying that the church needs to go back to a one year lectionary with no OT readings. I have significant issues with the RCL, especially the way that it chops up the Psalms, but I see no evidence that churches which don’t use one preach on a larger section of scripture; if they are reading large tracts of scripture, it’s because they are doing a lot of off-hours bible study. In contrast, I recall Peter Peters, one time chaplain at UMCP, had a card catalogue in his office with nine years of sermon topics, one for each reading in the BCP lectionary cycle.
Meanwhile, in two weeks I have Philemon to deal with for sermon prep.
I agree with 2, 3 and 4. The lectionary is a tool and when used properly it forces the preacher to preach on scripture that otherwise might be ignored. In fact you might consider preaching on what the lectionary leaves out. The most notorious example is Romans 1:26-27 which are omitted from the BCP lectionary.
I think one of the problems preachers encounter in using the lectionary is that much of their training in seminary establishes ‘context’ as either ‘historical context’ or ‘authorial intention content’ (understood according to modern historical assumptions, on the right and the left wing theologically — what the ‘real Amos’ thought and said, after critically establishing that). Leaving aside the RCL and its own intentions (try to read more OT, but now very selectively, of necessity; the OT is 7 times the size of the NT), the BCP lectionary operates at a different level of intentionality and context than one may see in basic OT and NT courses. These need not compete and ought to enhance one another, unless important levels of intention are never explained or defended — e.g., typology. Fortunately many newer (canonical approaches) emphasis the role of intertextuality and association, across the testaments and within them. Here the larger divine intention, in the full economy of God’s work, is allowed to surface. If this understanding of ‘context’ is given due weight, then the OT and NT selections of the lectionary begin to make sense. The irony is that the lectionary is the one thing modeling an older understanding of divine intention across the two testaments of the Bible, at a time when students are being introduced to things like form-analysis and a new lectionary is being mandated by General Convention that has a different logic (read OT lessons that have no intended relationship to the Gospel). As people note above, a lectionary is a servant not a master and it is trying to do several things at once: read all the Gospels by having a three year cycle and using John and Acts at special periods; do a roughly continuous reading of the Epistles; and read the OT as it falls in association with the Gospel. Some of these latter pairings can be found in much earlier history of interpretation contexts, before the rise of ‘critical methods’, and so remind the church of the centrality of typology and divine intention. My own view is that the lectionary is a perfect tool for teaching adult Bible study. The pulpit cannot do everything, especially in eucharistically based worship. I wish seminaries offered courses that worked to associate the lectionary with Biblical Theology and the History of Interpretation. With the collapse of investment in ‘the assured results of historical criticism’ students ought to be better able to see the riches in Theodoret, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and others. I think the BCP lectionary would make a lot more sense if one had a different understanding of the history of biblical interpretation before the 18th-19th century. Sorry for going on. I think Shay is right to make us think about this issue.
For inquiring minds:
[blockquote]Bible Verses omitted by the Episcopal Lectionary
(from a Stand Firm in Faith comment)
Post #23, these bible verses are not read through any of the lectionary cycles in the Episcopal Church: Gen 19;1 Cor 5:1-4, 9-13, 6:9-10, Leviticus 18, 20; Rom 1:26-27; 1 Tim 1:8-10.
1 Corinthians 5:6b through 8 are read.
I think the question I had for my Anglican priest was concerning verses in Romans that were not read and he said they had been revised out a long time ago, possibly the 1800’s. Sorry to be so vague.
Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
[52] Posted by Margaret on 07-30-2008 at 11:54 AM • top
A good online site for finding out when bible verses will be used in the lectionary:
http://satucket.com/lectionary/When_Will_It_Be_Read.htm
Other verses not used (interesting how leaving out some of these may have directly affected the direction of the Episcopal Church in America):
1 Cor 7:1-18; 1 Tim 5 (entirely); Titus 2:1-10; 1 Tim 2:8-15; Eph 5:22-33, 6:1-10, 1 Peter 3:1-7
1 Tim 3 (entirety); Titus 1 (Entirety)
2 Cor 11; Jude (the whole thing); 1 Tim 1:3-11; 1 Tim 4; 1 Tim 6:1-5; 2 Tim 3:1-13; 2 John (all of it); 1 John 4:1-6; 2 Peter 2; Rev 2-3;
[53] Posted by Margaret on 07-30-2008 at 11:56 AM • top[/blockquote]
The comments are helpful for my understanding. As a layman, I have benefitted from the pairing of OT readings which are paired with gospel readings they are supportive of or related to. While this doesn’t necessarily affect the scripture which is preached, I find comfort and joy knowing that as much of the Church as possible is reading (and contemplating and having their lives informed by) the same scripture each week. I wish all churches would use the same lectionary – and that non-liturgical ones would move to using it, too.
The problem is not the notion of a lectionary. The problem is the misuse (and overuse) of the Historical Critical Method and the various ideological/isogetical tools that are now mistaken for the basic Kerygma. Lectionary preaching is very valuable. My experience is that it offers the best opportunity for the sharing of a classical & catholic Christian understanding of the Faith, rather than just the delivery of “religious data,” or the particular tradition’s or individual preacher’s opinion. Skillful selection of texts reinforces the typological concepts of interpreting the scriptures found in the Bible itself and in the thinking of the Fathers. This is essential Anglicanism, in my opinion.
Lectionary preaching, because it involves human beings, is prone to problems. It needs a wise lectionary and it needs preachers formed in a classical Christian mindset and then given the skills and encouragement to apply that faith to contemporary contexts. Abandoning the Lectionary is a false hope for long-term effectiveness in Anglican preaching in the Eucharist and the Office. For other contexts/venues, it is fine. For any kind of liturgical preaching, I believe it would be a disaster to follow this line of thinking.
I think it is a good idea to offer occasional sermon series as Mr Gallard suggests–expository, focused, maybe thematic–as punctiliar interruptions of the lectionary, esp if one has multiple services.
I commented on the advantages of the “old” lectionary over the 3-year cycle on Fr Gaillard’s site. Suffice to say here that in addition to freeing preachers from the biases of our age and culture, the other thing needful is for the faithful actually to read their Bibles, and not just rely on the Sunday lections to feed them. That is a burden far to heavy for any lectionary to bear.
But realize, as did WesleyAnglican, that the Sunday lectionaries and the Daily Office lectionaries are designed to be use together. If used on a daily basis that makes for a lot of Scripture reading. Otherwise you could use a Bible reading plan to cover the entire Bible in one year.
If you have the OT and NT lessons, the Gospel and the Psalm that makes for a lot of material on any one Sunday. Particularly if you consider the Office readings fair game too.
After years of listening to what is described as “expository preaching”, I am left wondering what makes “expository preaching” different than a lecture on Scripture, and what relationship it bears to worship.
Expository is not the only legitimate kind of preaching. Moral, ethical and doctrinal preaching are also vitally important, biblically based, of course. And there are a lot of issues that people need help dealing with in a Christian way for which expository preaching may not be the best approach. And with careful, prayerful study, the competent preacher can draw connections from the appointed lections to all sorts of situations, since Scripture is a divinely unified whole and not, as the most radical historical-critical scholars claim, a disparate collection of human writings.
In some ways, I agree with Shay and in some way I don’t agree with Shay. My concern with Sunday Lections is that TOO MUCH Scripture is read and our post-enlightenment, multi-sensory type people are shutting down from too many words coming from a talking head and therefore missing it altogether. (Please let me clarify that I am not saying congregations are not intelligent enough to comprehend 3 texts and a Psalm on Sunday AM. The problem is attention span since most people are now accustomed to 30 second multisensory sound bytes for information. Whether we like it or not, the church honestly needs to adapt to this reality since the model we are using now was inherited from an earlier cultural, religious, intellectual, and liturgical movement.) If possible, I think current best practice is to focus on one text and base the music, liturgy, sermon, the whole service around that one Word from God which we as God’s people respond to through worship, song, prayer, and in most places Eucharist. Of course, tradition and the rubrics (two major Anglican “golden calves”) will be broken but I believe our people will more effectively hear, comprehend, engage and retain God’s Word. In this case, it is about quality not quantity.
I think cseitz has is most correct, from my position as a lay person, when he says the pulpit cannot do everything. My personal preference is for more thematically oriented sermon series based on Scripture. The key is to have church small groups going into greater detail each week on what was preached last Sunday. I feel that this provides a link between Sunday services and small groups and allows for more in-depth study of scripture than can be accomplished by relying solely on sermons. This still allows for Sunday school curricula that study other topics.
I wish that Dr Seitz was right and that the trend was to seek authorial intention – in his example, what the ‘real Amos’ hoped to convey. In fact the pervasive influence of postmodernism in biblical studies has brought about a situation where too many scholars believe that there is no such thing as an ‘author’ – postmodernists would say that to believe in what the ‘author’ intended implies a classical understanding, which is a form of hegemony, patriarchy etc. There is no single meaning according to this school, but only various meanings, with the shifting power structures favouring one over the other. I put ‘author’ in scare quotes because part of this interpretation would say that no one articulates outside a culture, and authors really mediate the culture.
Authorial intention would be a safeguard against such rubbish. But authorial intention on its own is not enough. We also need homiletics which is faithful to the understanding the Church has built up over the ages. An example might be the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah: I can remember politically correct experts telling me that it could not possibly refer to Jesus, to interpret it this way was unfair to Jews. Most commonly they said that we had no idea what it referred to and should be honest about that. My (silent) reaction to that is unprintable. Just as Jews would have to be faithful to their own tradition in exegesis of these passages, so too we Christians would have to be faithful to our own tradition, and explain them in the light of Christian understanding through the centuries. That’s not antisemitic: it is just being true to your own tradition and its accumulated insights and wisdom.
#17 — Postmodernity can make the reader the author, and modernity can make the ‘real Amos’ the author (identified with the whole book, or those sections the critical guild wrestles over). It will now depend on where one trains. My point had to do with the logic of the lectionary often tracking better with pre-modern exegesis. Hence the commitment from many like myself to teach it.
Hi Milton
Thanks for posting my earlier comments.
I also did a short note on the lectionary — its strengths and its weaknesses for our parish magazine. It caused a bit of a stir — and was the only piece that the Minister felt he needed to comment on (even after I had toned it down by putting on a “soft” ending.
If you are interested it is found here:
http://www.stjohnsinthecity.org.nz/about/documents/Messenger300805.doc
the article starts halfway down page 12
cseitz,
Sorry for the misreading of your intention. I also agree that post-modernity can make the reader the author. I well remember arguing/discussing? with an English teacher that we needed to concentrate on what the author intended when analyzing literature to avoid overreaching in our analysis. My teacher countered that what was most important was how we felt about the literature when we held it up for reflection in the mirror of our own experience and feelings. Kind of sounds like he would have made a good, mainstream TEC theologian. 🙂
#20 – Margaret,
You make the point I was trying to make about the lectionary very well in your article with a great quote from Bp. Wright. I am glad to see a good amount of discussion on this topic. Unfortunately we all know that the results of the last decades of preaching in TEC are dismal. My argument is for more Redemptive-Historical preaching with less of what Margaret describes so well in terms of lectionary omissions. Let the authoritative Word of God speak. Several comments above may have missed my preliminary statements concerning the lectionary that are in the fuller version of the article. I am not for jettisoning the lectionary entirely. Blessings, Shay +