Lectionary Riches: Setting Texts Side by Side

The many lectionaries currently in use––or proposed for use––in our congregations may well confound a preacher with confusing choices. Ephraim Radner, an Anglican, points to the great benefit of the lectionaries that come to us from the ancient wisdom of the church. 

Cranmer conceived of the English prayer book in a very specific way: it was fundamentally and effectively ordered to immerse Christians in the words of scripture so that finally the words become a part of ongoing formative memory. The collects and prayers were, as far as possible, made up of scriptural phrases. The communion service itself was both about a scriptural act and story—the passion, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ—but it takes us through this scriptural reality including, in many parts, its literal words. The liturgical seasonal calendar—from Advent promise to Pentecostal gift—is a grand ordering of the church's year according to the scriptural shape of Jesus’ life and teaching. And one must not forget the hymns that, from early on in Anglicanism, engaged especially the psalms and then other scriptural texts in metrical song.

And at the center of this prayer book worship was the lectionary . . . ordering the readings for both daily and Sunday worship . . .  [T]he people would hear the whole Bible in a year, through daily and Sunday readings, and the Psalter every month. 

Having in mind a vast treasure of biblical narrative, image, and doctrine gives the church’s people both a pattern and a complex body of language for creating and sustaining faith. Radner describes the result of Cranmer’s work.

What it gave rise to is what I call “juxtapositional” exegesis or understanding, which proved deeply significant. By this phrase I mean the understanding of scripture that arises when its parts are simply and openly laid side by side each other, as far as possible without prior demands. Much of this juxtaposition arose from mental or mnemonic associations, as well as reflections upon them.  . . . 

I want to emphasize what an important resource the lectionary is. Use it; build on it; find ways of integrating it; don't dilute it. Obviously, what is optimal for scriptural apprehension is the integrated practice of memorized scripture, calendrically and liturgically ordered regular readings of key portions of scripture, and preaching that engages, over and over again, the combustive encounter of disparate texts within this continually informed vision. But the optimal has fast ceded place to the incapable, as each plank in such scriptural life has been reduced or withdrawn: reiterated listening, memorization, comprehensive exposure to the entire scriptures, assumptions of its divine power.

I don't have a solution to any of this larger problem, which is bound up with cultural changes that are difficult to resist. My purpose has simply been to show something of what is at stake in the challenge. 

Radner undertakes a careful comparison of Athanasius and Arius, and I leave it to the interested preacher to examine the full article in this issue of Liturgy. Suffice it at this point to end with Radner’s cautionary words about the vitality of the lectionary and immersion in God’s word. He asserts the importance of 

. . . hearing, learning, ingesting, and remembering the full range of texts until their coordinated power asserts itself upon our perceptions; until, that is, they emerge as figures of Christ Jesus. 

Heresy is the deliberated withering, far more even than the purported contradicting, of the scriptures.

Ephraim Radner, “Lectionary and the Figural Meaning of the Scriptures,” Liturgy 29, no. 4 (10 July 2014): 56-62.

Ephraim Radner is professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 

Lectionary and the Liturgy

The latest issue of the journal Liturgy contains a number of important essays on The Lectionary and its Readings. Martin Connell’s contribution describes the use of the Bible in his childhood Roman Catholic family life and in school, pointing out the controversies that reigned over translations and canon. Before his time, certainly, in the 1840s, the so-called “Bible riots” in Philadelphia (over what version of the Bible ought to be studied in public schools) left “at least fifteen dead, fifty injured.”

Thankfully, we do not see such overtly violent conflicts over translation and schoolroom religious instruction today. But we do have controversies over lectionary, specifically in some quarters over the use of the ecumenical Revised Common Lectionary versus other, newer, more sectarian calendars. Some are geared toward particular ethnic or cultural groups; others, to the notion that knowledge of the scriptural story (as if there was a single narrative) is necessary for the increase in the number of worshippers.

Connell points out that knowledge is not what the lectionary offers. Instead, study prepares us to be encountered by the divine presence. It is the reading itself in the context of worship that is central. 

He sets out two events of encounter with the scriptures to help us see the import and complexity not only of the Bible but of the lectionary in worship.

In an early medieval rite of baptism—Ordo Romanus XI, from sometime in the later sixth or early seventh centuries—“four deacons process from the sacristy with the four books of the gospels, with two candlesticks and a smoking thurible before them. They put the gospel books at each of the four corners of the altar.”
 . . . To the infants about to be baptized, the priest catechized, “We open for you, loved children, the Gospels.” His instruction? “Behold, the One Who Speaks is present in this very place,” highlighting the essentially social, sensory nature of the word of God: “Open your ears so that your [other] senses not be blocked.” Finally, the deacon commanded the baptized assembly and the about-to-be-baptized infants: “Stand! Be quiet! Pay attention!”

The deacon moved, “Taking up the book from the first corner of the altar at the left side, with two candles and a thurible before him, [the first deacon] ascends for the reading” from the beginning of the first Gospel, Matthew. 

Each deacon, then, read from the Gospels. Of huge importance to the reading, Connell notes, were the images of the “face” of the Gospel writers on the cover of the books––person, lion, ox, and eagle––pictures to aid the hearing. “Hearing” the Gospel is not just about hearing the words or knowing them. The ritual movements and smells accompany the meaning of the words.

Imagining that early medieval rite, I remember watching with my ‘‘God and Politics’’ class—fall 2007 with the first-year seminar, at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota—when the Republican candidates for the presidency of the United States responded to a YouTube inquirer—one Joseph Dearing of Dallas, Texas, as he held up to the screen a leather-bound King James Version of the Bible—who said, first, ‘‘The answer to this question will tell us everything we need to know about you,’’ then asked, ‘‘Do you believe every word in this book?’’ With divorced Rudy Giuliani and Latter-Day Saint Mitt Romney stuttering, hesitating, and squirming about the ‘‘every word’’ part of the query, which was reiterated by handsome host Anderson Cooper, Governor Mike Huckabee—the only guy on stage with a graduate degree in theology—rescued the others and answered nobly. The object the punchy young man held up to the screen for his question (whatever its translation) is not what the church has discerned as the medium of God’s word. God’s gift to humanity is the word of God, and the medium of the church’s gift is the lectionary, which realizes the sensory, social experience of the word, into which we were submerged at baptism and by which we are fed and convicted Sunday after Sunday.
 The baptized can trust the church’s tradition and discernment in choosing lectionary readings to arrest us, comfort us, upset us, console us, and challenge us; proclamations to punctuate the days, seasons, and celebrations of our thanksgiving. Faith indeed comes from hearing, deo gratias. Reading the Bible is inspirational, perhaps, but proclaiming and hearing the word of God from the lectionary is the voice of Christ, the double-edged sword that separates ‘‘soul from spirit, joints from marrow’’ (Hebrews 4:12). Humanity, for better or worse, is saved not by aorist and perfect tenses, or by the silent Bible, ‘‘but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’’ (Matthew 4:4).
 

Martin Connell, “On Liturgy and Lectionary: The Word of Life in the Body of Christ,” Liturgy 29, no. 4 (10 July 2014): 33-37.

Martin Connell teaches ‘‘What We Write About When We Write About God’’ at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in the Department of Theology at St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota.

An exciting proposal

The topic of the new issue of Liturgy is the connection between the church’s worship and the church’s proclamation of the essential goodness of the whole created order. This topic is approached in different ways by the five authors, but by far the most ambitious and potentially far-reaching treatment of the subject is taken by Lisa E. Dahill, in "New Creation: The Revised Common Lectionary and the Earth’s Paschal Life". In this article, Dahill invites readers to enter into a discussion about the possibility of updating the Revised Common Lectionary in order to attend more closely to ecological and environmental issues. This conversation has already begun among the members of the Nature & Ecology and the Liturgical Language seminars of the North American Academy of Liturgy and among the members of the Consultation on Common Texts. Now, readers of Liturgy are invited to add their voices.

Because the article’s information regarding methodology is essential to understanding the proposed revisions, your humble blogger will not quote them here. Instead, I leave you with Dahill’s closing questions:

Is the need for more explicit liturgical attention to ecological scriptures best met by bringing in texts not presently heard in the three-year lectionary? Or is working more intentionally with what is already present in the RCL and the Roman Lectionary ... preferable?

Do these proposed Lent and Easter C texts function well within the Lent and Easter seasons? That is, do these lessons work across the two seasons viewed as a whole, moving from Ash Wednesday toward Holy Week, and from Easter toward Ascension=Pentecost? What do these (or other) creation texts contribute, if at all, toward a fuller, communal encounter with the mystery of Christ crucified and risen than the presently appointed texts? Where, if at all, might these newly proposed texts distract from such encounter?

Do these texts work with their respective Psalms and Gospels? What effect do the conjunctions with the Revelation readings create?

How might the selection criteria named above, delineating which peri- copes ‘‘count’’ as creation texts, be modified and=or used to deepen an eco- logical focus in other aspects of worship (such as proclamation, musical selection, and the composition of new prayers)?

This article proposes a conversation, so I invite you to converse in the comments or to propose another venue. Where, and among whom, should this conversation take place?

Lisa E. Dahill (2012): New Creation: The Revised Common Lectionary and the Earth's Paschal Life, Liturgy, 27:2, 11.

Lisa E. Dahill is associate professor of worship and Christian spirituality at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.