Discover how using a lectionary can widen your exposure to Scripture, simplify sermon planning, and reveal connections between the Old and New Testaments.
The post How a Lectionary Can Unlock Scripture’s Hidden Connections appeared first on Bible Gateway News & Knowledge.
For thousands of years, churches around the world have organized their Sunday proclamation of God’s Word around a fixed scheduled of 3-6 Bible passages drawn from both the Old and New Testaments. These schedules, known as lectionaries, follow the seasons of the Church year from Advent through Ordinary Time, and were anchored by a Gospel passage each Sunday that took readers through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The remaining selections (or lections) were typically chosen because they related in some way to this Gospel passage.
Today, millions of Christians continue to use a lectionary to guide their encounter with the Bible at church: Roman Catholics use the Lectionary for Mass, while many Protestant churches use a similar lectionary called the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). My own Anglican Church in North America uses a lectionary very similar to both of these.
Why Should Protestants Use a Lectionary?
To many Baptists and evangelicals in America, the use of a lectionary can appear to be too limiting, stymieing the freedom of the pastor to bring the Bible to bear on the pressing faith issues of the day. But there are several reasons why churches should consider adopting some form of lectionary to guide their encounter with God’s Word.
1. It Widens Exposure to Scripture
First, because a lectionary gives a relatively fixed schedule of readings, it disciplines the pastor to preach from a whole range of Biblical texts, many of which they might otherwise avoid or ignore. When a pastor is expected to choose relevant Bible passages to preach upon, large portions of the Bible (particularly the Old Testament), are often neglected.
Most pastors I know would not actively choose to preach about the Levites slaughtering three thousand men in Exodus, or Phinehas stabbing Zimri in Numbers. There will always be more “relevant” passages to preach on! But a lectionary can help to expose the congregation to a much wider breadth of scripture, enabling them to engage with issues that may be difficult, but vital for the Christian life.
2. It Simplifies Text Selection
While pastors might find this challenging, it can also make their lives easier, because the use of a lectionary also disciplines the congregation to expect preaching to emerge out of the words of Scripture rather than the mind of the pastor.
When the pastor is expected to preach on pressing political or cultural issues, they are often placed in a bind, since ever single parishioner has a different idea of what constitutes “pressing.” Some arrive assuming they will speak on a particular headline, others assume they will speak on a different headline. Many evangelical pastors I know lament the fact that they have some people leaving their church because it is too political, and others leaving the church because it is not political enough.
Using a lectionary can help to mitigate this issue, because it sets a different preaching expectation. Parishioners know well in advance what Scripture will be discussed on Sunday, and they should come expecting the preaching to explicate these passages, no more no less. For instance, I know that on November 22nd this year, my church is going to read Ezekiel 34:11-20 and Matthew 25:31-46, and I can expect that, no matter what is happening in the world, my pastor will be preaching about the second coming of Christ and Christ’s judgment.
3. It Helps You Experience Scripture Like the Historical Church
Finally, using a lectionary invites churches to encounter God’s Word as most Christians encountered it for thousands of years. For most of history, when Christians gathered for worship, they did not simply go through one book of the Bible chapter by chapter, nor did they hear a topical sermon chosen by the pastor. Instead, they heard multiple Bible passages, from many different books, all related to each other.
This way of encountering God’s Word was not invented by Christians, but was an outgrowth of a type of ancient Rabbinical teaching, which paired together anchor readings from the Torah with selections from the Psalms and Prophets. In the Gospels, Jesus declared that all of Scripture is fulfilled in him (Matthew 5:17), and in light of this reality, early Christians simply replaced the Torah with the Gospels as the anchoring Sunday text, bringing in other passages that connected to the Gospel lection.
They did this because they assumed that all of Scripture was ultimately authored by God, and, as such, God intentionally orchestrated events in one book so that they relate to events in another Biblical book, the same way that an author coordinates symbols and events in one chapter to relate to another chapter. We see evidence of this approach to Scripture within the New Testament itself: Paul describes the crossing of the Red Sea as a baptism, and the Israelites’ reception of water through a rock as a reception of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 10).
Those who use a lectionary presume that such connections are endless, that Scripture invites faithful Christians to draw out faithful connections that are both in line with Christian doctrine and further nourish personal faith in Christ.
The Surprising Commonalities Found Across Scripture
Commonalities between persons, symbols, and events are everywhere in Scripture, and all find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The lectionary invites us to draw out these connections through the Old and New Testament selections each week.
For instance, on one Sunday in Ordinary Time, the lectionary pairs the story of Moses lifting up his staff to heal the Israelites in the wilderness (Num. 21) with a passage from John where Jesus declares that the Son of Man would be lifted up (John 4), inviting us to lift our heads high to the cross to experience heling from the venom of sin.
There are thousands of other kinds of connections each Sunday in the lectionary passages. Much of my current writings have been devoted to helping Christians make these kinds of connections without requiring them to get an advanced degree. I have found that such an approach to Scripture is more intuitive than many academic approaches and can even do more to support rather than contradict Christian orthodoxy. I invite faithful Christians of all denominations and traditions to take advantage of a lectionary to help them more fully explore the never-ending riches of God’s Word.
You can explore the Revised Common Lectionary, used by dozens of churches worldwide, right in Bible Gateway. See today’s readings here, and sign up to receive them daily in your inbox.
The post How a Lectionary Can Unlock Scripture’s Hidden Connections appeared first on Bible Gateway News & Knowledge.