Valerie is a 42-year-old, single, Reformed Christian lady who lives in Baltimore. She doesn't remember a time
before she knew and loved Jesus, but she does remember accepting John Calvin into her heart in March of 2000.
Valerie is a member of Christ Reformed Evangelical Church in Annapolis.
Though her career aspiration is to be a housewife, Valerie has not yet found anyone suitable who wishes to hire
her for employment in that field (or, more properly, anyone suitable has not found her), so in the meantime she
earns her daily bread working in communications -- editing, writing, print design and website management.
Lectionaries
As noted previously, I try to read through the coming Sunday's lectionary selections during the week before. (Our congregation uses the BCP lectionary, but lately we've been subbing in the sermon text for one reading -- OT, NT or Gospel.) But weeks like this make me bristle. The reading in 1 Timothy 2 stops suspiciously before St. Paul's instructions regarding women in worship. A selection from Mark 9 last year skipped verses 44 and 46, both of which say, "where 'Their worm does not die And the fire is not quenched.'" These passages do not appear elsewhere in the 3-year cycle. What other politically correctifying and nice-ifying is going on, me wonders? I love the idea of a lectionary, of God's people systematically hearing His whole counsel over the course of a few years, but is there one that actually includes every inspired word of the Bible? (And leaves out the apocryphal ones, for that matter. A couple weeks ago Ecclesiasticus mysteriously became Ecclesiastes in our worship service, with the selection beginning and ending in odd places.) If anyone is aware of other options besides the Book of Common Prayer Lectionary and the Revised Common Lectionary, I'd be very keen on hearing about them.
Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 3:49 PM
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12 comments
12 Comments:
On September 20, 2007 4:53 PMAnonymouswrote... You're in a CREC, right? It begins to sound positively Episcopalian. What does your pastor say? ~Eleanor
On September 20, 2007 4:58 PMValerie (Kyriosity)wrote... Well...this post wasn't really meant to be a comment on out congregation's practice, though I will probably bring my concerns to The Powers That Be at some point. Right now I'm just interested in what folks out there might know about other options.
On September 20, 2007 5:14 PMpentamomwrote... I don't know any alternatives, and that's always been my discomfort with lectionaries. In theory, it's a great idea. In practice, they always seem to omit stuff. And while the lectionaries we have most widely available may make those choices for modernist reasons, they all do it for one reason or another.
Somebody needs to design a real whole Bible lectionary.
On September 20, 2007 5:39 PMValerie (Kyriosity)wrote... Any takers on Jane's idea? Perhaps a first step would be simply to go through and expand the current readings that have been truncated. I wonder how much Scripture that would leave to be inserted?
Another lectionary feature I'd like to see is a Sunday-only schedule. I have no problem with celebrating other holy days, and following the general flow of the church calendar would be fine, but I'd like the lectionary to be focused on Lord's Day worship.
On September 20, 2007 9:41 PMJATBwrote... I know the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod has their own version of the RCL: they are with us for most of the year but there are some departures here and there. I'm not really up on all the ins and outs of it, but we get our children's bulletins from Concordia, and they produce an RCL version and an LCMS version.
I prefer the RCL to the BCP lectionary. No, it's not perfect, but I think it's better than me just picking out my own soapboxes week after week.
On September 20, 2007 9:45 PMThe BadgerMumwrote... The 1979 BCP actually has the best I've seen. The 1928, the REC, and the Lutheran lectionaries all leave out a lot more than the 1979 does.
But really, it seems that it wouldn't be too hard for a reasonably knowledgable person to preview a month or two in advance and make suitable corrections - be sure that verses aren't skipped, and use real Scripture instead of the apocrypha when it shows up, which really isn't all that often.
On September 21, 2007 8:34 AMThe BadgerMumwrote... Yes, I thought it was - I remembered the very things you were complaining of. I just meant to point out that what you're already using is the best available that I'm aware of.
On September 22, 2007 2:01 PMpentamomwrote... I'm not sure it's quite as simple as going over it and sticking in a few verses here and there that are left out in a reading. That's the most obvious problem, but if I remember correctly, there are actually significant portions of scripture completely left out that would have to be worked into the schedule somehow.
On September 22, 2007 3:43 PMValerie (Kyriosity)wrote... Right. That's what I meant by "first step" -- there'd be much more to do after that. But if we first reinsert what has obviously been cut for politically correct reasons, then look at what's left and figure out what to do with it: add another year? lengthen the readings in the three-year cycle?
Here are some tidbits I found while searching today:
On September 23, 2007 2:46 PMThe BadgerMumwrote... Tip for folks who don't have Excel - you can save that last file Valerie liked to above, and then use Google's spreadsheet to read it.
Open Google Docs under "New" select "Spreadsheet" under "File" select "Import"
HTH
On September 23, 2007 2:54 PMThe BadgerMumwrote... Even that list skips a lot. I guess the author left out the passages that don't appear in any of the lectionaries listed, but still - it would have been informative to see all those gaps.
I notice they tend to leave out the geneaologies. I always wonder how "old earth" creationist account for the very detailed descriptions of the early chapters of Genesis, if the Lord actually meant for us to read them as myth rather than a straightforward historical account of things that really happened to individuals who really lived.
