The Sunday and Holy Day Lectionary: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Each Sunday, Anglicans gather to hear God’s Word read out loud according to a set schedule of readings called the lectionary. The first reading typically comes from the Old Testament, followed by a Psalm. A second reading, usually drawn from a New Testament epistle, follows the Psalm, and the readings culminate in a selection from the Gospels. This approach to hearing Scripture can be confusing for those new to Anglicanism and can raise several questions: what are the connections among these four readings? Where did this schedule come from? Why not go through one book at a time? To answer these questions and others, it is helpful to understand the history of the lectionary and its unique approach to the Bible.
From Torah to Gospel
Jewish Roots of Public Scripture Reading
The roots of the lectionary lie in the ancient Israelite approach to reading scripture in both the temple and synagogue. During the various festivals of the Jewish year, Israelites would gather in the temple to hear from a set group of Old Testament readings related to that holiday. In addition to these temple feasts, Israelites also gathered weekly in the synagogue to hear readers proclaim and explain a set of readings. These synagogue readings revolved around the continuous recitation of the Torah and included writings from the Prophets related to the scheduled Torah selection (or “lection”). Christians later called this process of adding lections to the scheduled Torah reading “pearl stringing,” and it assumed that, because God authored all of Scripture, each book of the Bible related to the next, just as each chapter of a novel relates to the next.
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Jesus Reorients the Reading of Scripture
When he was in synagogue, Jesus received a scroll containing one of these “pearl-strung” passages from the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1-2). After reading it, he declared that the passage is fulfilled in him (Luke 4:18-21). Later, Jesus would declare that all of Scripture is fulfilled in him (Matthew 5:17), thus reorienting all of Scripture and all of the Israelite festivals around himself. The early Christians began this reorientation process by centering the church’s festivals and the public readings of Scripture on Jesus Christ.
The Church Calendar transformed the Jewish festival calendar, with fixed readings for holidays such as Good Friday and Easter. Weekly synagogue gatherings became weekly church gatherings, with the Gospels replacing the Torah as the focus. The Church Year centered on the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the Gospels chronicle them, while Christians “pearl strung” additional readings from the Old Testament and Epistles to connect with the Gospel reading. Eventually, Christians created schedules that listed a fixed set of readings for each Sunday and Holy Day of the Church Year. The Church came to know these schedules of lections as lectionaries.
The Emergence of Christian Lectionaries
Throughout the early centuries of Christianity, local networks of churches had their own lectionaries, some with up to six weekly readings. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Church settled on a one-year lectionary, which contained only two readings and almost no selections from the Old Testament. The Reformation-era Anglican tradition featured a one-year Daily Office Lectionary for Morning and Evening Prayer covering most of the Old and New Testaments, plus selections from the Apocrypha; however, the Epistle and Gospel lection pattern for Holy Communion services on Sundays and Holy Days remained essentially the same, carried over from the Medieval Church.
A resurgence of interest in early Christian interpretation led the Roman Catholic Church to undertake a major revision of the lectionary in the 1960s, resulting in the Lectionary for the Mass. This lectionary followed a three-year cycle: Year A centered on Matthew, Year B on Mark, and Year C on Luke, while John appeared throughout all three. This lectionary reintroduced regular weekly Old Testament readings and included readings related to the Gospel passage, as well as readings that led listeners through entire books of the Bible over several weeks.
The Three-Year Cycle Today
Many protestant denominations adopted this three-year cycle of readings, with some minor changes, to form the Revised Common Lectionary. The 2019 ACNA Prayer Book Lectionary features a three-year lectionary, itself adapted from the RCL with minor revisions. This means that when Anglicans gather to hear Scripture read aloud each Sunday, they hear a nearly identical set of readings to those that Catholics, as well as Lutherans and other Protestants, hear around the world.
All Scripture and All Worship Connects to Jesus
Hearing Scripture as the Whole Church
When we think about engaging with the Bible, most of us picture ourselves quietly reading it alone, slowly going through each book chapter by chapter. While this remains a vital way to encounter God’s Word, the lectionary invites us to approach it in a much bigger way. First, the lectionary invites us to hear God’s Word read aloud within a church gathering. The Bible is the church’s book, and the whole community should receive and interpret it. Reading Scripture aloud ensures that the entire church hears from a large portion of Scripture, rather than just the passages individuals may choose to read on a whim. The church reads it together so that all gathered, both clergy and laity, must listen to and obey every single part of the Bible.
Reading the Bible as One Unified Story
Second, through the recitation of multiple selections of both the Old and New Testaments, the lectionary invites us to acknowledge that God is its ultimate author. The Bible is not just a collection of individual books that readers should treat discretely. It is a single book centered on the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Each book of the Bible connects integrally to all others, like chapters in a novel. For instance, the readings for Epiphany Day reveal to us how the Glory of God appears in and through Jesus Christ, and how the prophet Isaiah spoke of this very same Glory. The readings from the third week of Lent (Year A) invite us to see that Jesus gave the Israelites living water in the wilderness (Exodus 17:1-7), and that Jesus offers this same water to the woman at the well (John 4:5-26).
Living Scripture Through Worship
Furthermore, since the Church reads the various lectionary passages aloud in the context of corporate prayer, praise, and the reception of the Eucharist, these readings invite us to see how the Church lives out and enacts Scripture. Just like actors performing a script, the lectionary invites us to both hear and perform Scripture each Sunday. We hear passages about God’s judgment during Advent, and they prompt us to repent in corporate confession. We hear passages about manna, and about Jesus breaking bread, and they prompt us to partake in the body of Christ, the bread of life, when we approach the altar. For those looking for more guidance on how to draw out these connections, my book From Word to Worship goes through the entire Church Year, highlighting the major symbols and themes of the lectionary readings and showing how these themes are manifested in weekly worship.
Following Christ Through the Church Year
The lectionary invites Anglicans to see how all of Scripture, and all of our lives, are to be oriented around Jesus. As the four lectionary readings each week take us through the Church calendar, they call us to follow Jesus through his birth, death, resurrection, and ascension. They call us to see how he is present and active throughout both the Old and New Testaments. And they call us to participate in his life through the liturgy and sacraments. Because of the infinite riches of the Bible, we will always have more to discover, more connections between Scripture and sacrament, between Word and Worship. Let’s gather each Sunday, ready to see how all of Scripture is fulfilled in Jesus and to live out this truth in thought, word, and deed.
Image: Photo by David Pohl from Pexels, courtesy of Canva. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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