In my first year in seminary, my Preaching professor introduced me to the Revised Common Lectionary. For those of you in Baptist or other Free Church traditions, you may not be aware that Mainline (Presbyterian, Lutherans, Methodists, etc.) and Catholic traditions have used lectionaries, cycles of Scripture readings for worship, for centuries. The Revised Common Lectionary, the most commonly used lectionary, is a three-year cycle of readings of the Scriptures based on the first three Gospels (often called the Synoptics). My professor rightly believed beginning preachers could use the Lectionary’s help. After all, coming up with sermons up to 3 times per week is very challenging for even experienced ministers, much more so for rookies.
I have used the Lectionary off and on during my 20-year ministry. It is very helpful, but not without significant flaws. For most ministers, topic selection or text selection is the hardest part of preaching. What the Lectionary does is give 4 choices of texts per Sunday, 1 Gospel, 1, Epistle, 1 General Old Testament, and 1 Psalm.[1] The great part of the Lectionary is that it enforces Biblical preaching. What is the Lectionary preacher going to preach on Sunday? It will be a sermon from the text of the Bible, based on one of the 4 texts. The sermon will be formed in study of Scripture—not what the minister might like to say if left to his own devices.
Another advantage of using the Lectionary is that is forces the minister to preach from a variety of passages. Ministers often have a select group of favorite passages they preach from with regularity. Using the Lectionary makes ministers focus on passages that are often forgotten and that are sometimes uncomfortable.
So far, so good. There are significant problems with the Lectionary though. First, John has no year to itself. Why privilege Matthew, Mark, and Luke over John? Yes, John can be difficult to preach through, but John’s voice matters. Any balanced reading of the Bible would give equal weight to all four Gospels.
Another significant problem with the Lectionary is the verses it omits from the sections it chooses. The Lectionary tends to omit passages about judgment and wrath—even if it includes a narrative where judgment and wrath are mentioned. This is a key issue. Failure to include judgment and wrath in preaching leads to the idea that God has no wrath and will not judge. Not Good.
The Lectionary also excludes important texts. For example, “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord,” (Zech. 4:6) is not in the Lectionary. [2] Other great texts are missing as well. In fact, there are entire books of the Bible not included in the Lectionary. There are no readings from Obadiah, Nahum, and Haggai. Now the Minor Prophets are not frequently listed as anyone’s favorite texts, but ignoring them is deeply problematic. Also ignored or minimized are Leviticus, Nehemiah, Esther, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
Another significant problem the Lectionary faces is its inability to deal with issues believers face. In the Lectionary, there is not frequent enough space given to preach about issues like money, family, abuse, the state, and morals. When the Lectionary does give some space to address these issues, it seems to be after Easter and before Advent. Much of that time is during the summer when many of our people are on vacation. In short, the time given to address important topical issues is when the fewest of our people would be in attendance. The timing of addressing these issues gives the impression the Bible has little to say about daily life. The Bible, however, does have a lot to say about these issues. The Bible should be heard on them, regularly.
The Revised Common Lectionary could use a significant update. Adding a year for John would be a significant improvement. It would also give an additional 52 weeks to the schedule which would allow for 156 more passages to be used. Congregations could then hear from a broader variety of Biblical writers and have their faith better informed by the whole counsel of Scripture.
Another improvement would be to give more time to the Sermon on the Mount. Currently. the Lectionary gives 4 weeks of coverage to the Sermon on the Mount. In all honesty, I have no idea how to adequately cover the Sermon on the Mount in 4 weeks. Even with the 4 weeks of coverage the Lectionary omits Matt 7:1-21.
Even these steps may not help. If the problem the Lectionary is trying to solve is an individual pastor’s tendency to preach from favorite texts, it ultimately cannot solve that problem. It simply replaces the individual’s decision on texts selection to a group’s decision on texts. In this case the group is the Consultation on Common Texts, the group of scholars who produce the Revised Common Lectionary. Who is to say, though, that the Consolation’s judgment is any better or more objective than any particular individual’s? Who is to say their selections of Biblical texts would be better, broader, or deeper than a typical pastor’s? Who is to say the Consultation is immune to group-think? I know of very few groups who are. More importantly, is the Consultation’s judgment good enough to replace the judgment of the pastor who is in the congregation? I’m not sure it is.
If the problem the Lectionary is trying to solve is lack of Christian unity, I’m not sure it is helpful either. Implicit in the work of the Lectionary is that different Christians from different traditions would be reading the same texts on a given Sunday. This shared reading of texts would produce shared conversation and eventually overcome differences among traditions. Unfortunately, lectionaries have been in existence for a centuries, and shared texts have not yet yielded shared theological vision. In fact, the Lectionary is powerless to affect the issue causing most division among Christian groups: they read the same texts differently.
As for me, I consult the Lectionary, and I will frequently use the texts it recommends. The Lectionary, however, is only a tool. It is a tool with many flaws, and it needs to be reformed.
[1] There are some exceptions to the normal 4 types of texts in the Lectionary.
[2] Elizabeth Achtemeier, Preaching from the Old Testament, 123-132. Achtemeier includes long list of texts not in the Lectionary preachers should know and preach.
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