Back in May, we had some great moments on our CME weekend on preaching, led by Pete Wilcox, Canon Chancellor at Lichfield Cathedral. I have been meaning to blog these thoughts on lectionaries for some time, but somehow never got around to it. Anyway, finally, …
Now don’t get me wrong: We’re not just looking at things as mundane as whether a centralised lectionary is a good thing. (Pete has a very high regard for preaching, and his tour of Lamentations was most helpful.) Nevertheless, I thought his 5 pros and cons on this issue were well thought through, and were helpful. I offer them here in case they help anyone thinking through these questions.
Pros
- Gives a sense of solidarity with their brothers and sisters around the world.
- Churches that use the lectionary have a greater volume of Scripture read than those who don’t.
- The liturgical year is valuable in itself.
- A congregation isn’t limited by the imagination of the preacher to select passages.
- Every preacher will be forced out of their comfort zones.
Cons
- Many lectionaries seem to be poorly chosen. Either the compilers don’t know their Bibles, or didn’t devise it for preachers. E.g., Omitting Revelation 22:18-19! Or Acts 16:16-34 as a reading: too short as a look at Paul’s visit to Philippi, but too long to tackle in more depth because it contains 3 scenes.
- The readings can feel repetitive. Not John 2:1-11 again!
- The multiplicity of readings invites the preacher to try and refer to too many of them, so that we get a lowest common denominator theological musing rather than an expository sermon.
- It can tend to atomisation, looking at isolated passages out of their context, such that people don’t grow in their grasp of the message of whole books.
- The lectionary allows for insuffucient scope to respond to local needs.
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Comments
I like it!
Thanks, James, that's really helpful.
I get the feeling that 1-5 on the pros are good things that we all need to work on, but that none of them need a lectionary to be implemented.
Similarly, on the cons, 1-4 aren't problems intrinsic to a lectionary, they just need a good lectionary and good activities beyond the Sunday homily, especially 4.
5, though, leaves me thinking that there's no way round it, unless Sunday worship stops being the locus of the main authoritative address from our Father to his children. Presumably, one could say that congregations won't always have such urgent needs to be addressed on this one specific thing right now so that with occasional departures from the lectionary, the lectionary is still the staple.
What did it leave you thinking?
Steffen
Conclusions...
It gave me serious pause for thought.
You're right about con number 5: One simply has to be free enough to depart from the lectionary whenever required. But we do this anyway don't we? Even if our "lectionary" is "Romans 1:1-7 this week, 1:8-17 next week, and 1:18-32 the week after" we still depart from that if pastoral needs require us to. At least, I have done.
The tough thing to hold together is Pro 1 and Cons 1-2. How do we maintain the catholicity of a lectionary, but solve the problems that exist in the Revised Common Lectionary? The thing about the RCL is its genuine catholicity - it's not just a Church of England thing. In fact, the C of E version of it re-inserts some of the missing verses to improve it. But as soon as we write our own to plug the defects of the RCL, we aren't reading the same portions as other C of E churches, let alone others considered more widely.
Agreed. My gut thought is
Agreed. My gut thought is that we might do it by finding other ways to maintain catholicity.
There must be other ways to observe the church calendar without letting it drive the ministry of the word, for instance?
Saying the creed and emphasising that we're approaching all the saints in heaven gathered in festal assembly with thousands upon thousands of angels (Heb 12:22-23) during our worship strikes me as more obviously catholic than a common lectionary.
Catholicity
Sure.
I know there are drawbacks (and therefore the clause "considered as a factor on its own" is a fiction), but: Considered as a factor on its own, wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where we can ring each other up on a Tuesday, and we're seeking to live in the light of the same passage of Scripture because the churches we each belong to both shaped their worship around it the Sunday before?
Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where you can ring up any Christian brother and sister, anywhere in the world, and know the same thing in advance.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to open Operation World, or Evangelicals Now, or the Barnabas Fund website, and pray for persecuted or suffering Christians, whose name we don't know or whose name is all we know, but be able to pray for them to draw specific comfort (or to persevere in specific obedience) arising from specific Scriptures?
As I say, I know there are drawbacks. So that's never a factor on its own. But considered on its own, doesn't it have appeal?
The Calendar
Yes, we could observe the church calendar in other ways that allowing it to drive the ministry of the word.
But: "Drive" is an emotive term. It no more "drives" the ministry of the word than does the pastor who chooses which book to work through sequentially next. Drives in the sense of shapes which portions of Scripture we dwell on at which times of year. But the word drives the church because, having picked the portion, we submit rather than stand over it. And besides, the word drives the calendar in the first place. We get a rhythm of
or
because the word gives us that rhythm.
[Now it's time for what I've been reading to be really transparent to some readers:] I'm against "church calendars" because to call it a "church calendar" implies that the church has another, religiously-neutral, calendar whereas on Sundays we have another. It implies we have another rhythm to our lives other than the ones Scripture gives us, and then we impose the "church calendar" onto our more foundational one.
So I don't want to refer to "incarnation, life, death, resurrection, reign, Spirit-filled church, advent" as "the church calendar" but as "the calendar". At which point, how can the calendar that drives our lives not shape our reading of Scripture. Even if we read passages about the death of Christ at Pentecost, we do so breathing Pentecost air which moulds how we hear them. So having a lectionary shaped by the calendar is not as reductionistic a thing as always reading Acts 2 on Pentecost Sunday. But to have a lectionary that is not shaped by the calendar is somehow to imply that the word speaks a different language from our calendar, which I'm against.
So, can we observe the church calendar without letting it drive the ministry of the word? I distinguish. Yes we can, because any portion of Scripture is fitting at any time of year. No we can't because both calendar and word are so foundational to our lives' rhythms that they cannot be divided.
Or am I drawing unwarranted conclusions?
On balance pro
James has established, I believe, that Pros 1 is a real plus, not easily achieved by other ways of organising the Scripture readings in a local congregation.
Pros 2 is generally true, even if some churches which use the lectionary don't read all of it. The advantage is not only the amount of Scripture read but the fact that there is always OT and NT and regular exposure to the Gospels and Psalms.
I do not think Cons 1 is all that serious in practice. If I was in a group responsible for devising a lectionary I might be more vocal about the problems of specific lectionaries but as a preacher I can always choose to add a few verses or focus on a narrower selection and I don't think this would compromise Pros 1.
Cons 2 arises in particular with high festivals and is a problem for non-lectionary churches as well, I believe, but can be addressed to some extent by focusing on one of the other readings for a change.
Cons 3-5 are really about the knowledge and skills and inclinations of preachers. Preachers who focus on expository preaching more than biblical theology may find it easier (on the congregation as well as the preacher) to preach through biblical books, those who are keen on biblical theology and have a good enough general understanding of the Scriptures may well find lectionary preaching better suited for the task. The application to local needs is hardly easier from a set text which does not come by way of an agreed lectionary and in extremis one can always depart from the plan.
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