And
Now for Something Completely Different...
Well maybe not
completely...
Maybe not even
radically...
Maybe some folks
won't notice the difference?
So how about “now
for something a little bit different”?
For me the starting
point (most of the time) in planning our weekly worship experiences
is “what are the Scripture passages?” Sometimes I will start
with a specific question or theme and search out passages that match
that. But most often I take a set of passages from a list of
readings called a Lectionary [a lection is “a portion
of sacred writing read in a divine service; lesson; pericope”
(Dictionary.com) so a list of lections is a lectionary].
This pushes me to look at passages I might otherwise avoid or
ignore, and so broadens my preaching.
Most United Church
folk have gotten used to a Lectionary even if they don't know it,
such is the power of the worship planner (at least we are powerful in
our own minds). For most of my adult life I have attended churches
that used the Revised Common Lectionary in worship. The stated
intent of the RCL is to read all of the “important” parts of
Scripture over a 3 year period. And so, generally speaking, each
week it suggests a reading from the Jewish Scriptures, a Psalm
reading, a reading from the Letters, and a reading from the Gospel.
I have struggled
with the RCL since I started teaching Sunday School as a teenager.
Even then I could see that there were many weeks where the 4 passages
did not remotely link with each other, even though the Sunday School
Curriculum we used at the time [Whole People of God] went through
amazing mental gymnastics to make them appear linked. Over time I
have dealt with this issue by simply not reading all the passages on
a Sunday – which would tend to defeat the stated purpose of hearing
all the “important” [sometimes I wonder how you determine what
the important parts are...] parts of Scripture over three years but I
dislike reading a passage and then not doing anything else with it in
the service.
The other big
problem I have had with the RCL is that it tends to make it more
difficult to keep a narrative flow. Yes each year the readings
mainly come from one Gospel. And each summer the Jewish Scripture
readings tend to come from a specific story arc (this summer has been
the stories of the Patriarchs leading to the story of Exodus). But
the stories get chopped in odd places and sometime we jump around in
the Gospel and read passages out of order. As a person who both
loves stories and also finds story to be a great
teaching/learning/exploration tool this bothers me.
So now for the
completely/somewhat/sorta kinda different thing...
There is another
option. A Lutheran Seminary in the US has developed what they call
the Narrative Lectionary. Each winter/spring it follows through one
Gospel from beginning to end (though it still does not read every
verse) and then uses other stories for the rest of the year. The
hope is that we will get a better picture of the narrative flow of
Scripture, as a different way of sparking our exploration. Starting
with the beginning of September this year I will be using the
Narrative Lectionary as the basis of my worship planning. Which
means that from Advent until Easter we will be exploring Matthew's
Gospel.
The big question
is.....will anybody noticed a difference???????
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