What Is the Revised Common Lectionary?

I read the Bible daily on my phone. I don’t say that to brag about my piety, I say that to give you an opportunity to stand back and marvel at the wonders of our modern world. We can carry the Bible around inside of a super computer in our hip pockets. The Bible has only been available widely for a very small window and human history.

For most of the history of our faith, the Bible in written form has been rare and expensive. Most of us were taught that Gutenberg changed all that and he certainly did. But it really wasn’t until the modernization of publishing in the late 18th and early 19th century capably reduced the price of the Bible to the point where many Jesus followers could read it on their own. And with the evolution of publishing came a pandemonium of wonders and distractions. Starting with the penny-dreadful and leading all the way up to James Patterson and David Baldacci, low-cost publishing has given us many other things to read instead of the Bible. There was a small period of time where the Bible was the most prominent book in a child’s life and it was where they learned to read and write. We are way beyond that. Some might even say we are creating a generation that is beyond reading entirely, but I will refrain from offering a curmudgeonly critique of TikTok.

So, if Abraham Lincoln was president when you were born, you might have learned to read the Bible daily, even in your local school room. If Barack Obama was president when you were born, there are too many distractions that get in the way of regular Bible reading. Either way for most of human history, Bible reading was not the norm in our everyday lives. Instead, we relied on the liturgical practices of our congregations to lead us through the Bible year after year.

The author of First Timothy — many of us were taught that this was Paul, but modern scholarship generally disagrees — had this to say about reading scripture allowed:

1 Timothy 4:13

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. 

Unlike a bunch of stuff in 1 Timothy that I think you have to understand through an appropriate cultural lens, I think public reading of scripture is worth taking seriously still today. It is important to engage with our scripture in community, preferably with the help of someone trained in a mainline seminary like your pastor. But the question is how do we go about doing it? Do we just start at the very beginning and read through whenever we feel like it? I like to imagine some early Christians trying this approach and ending up reading about the flood on Easter, or the crucifixion on Christmas Day. That doesn’t seem to work very well. Do we just pick out the pieces that are our favorites or fit our worldview? I was raised in a cult-like denomination, Seventh Day Adventism, and so I am wary of this approach. Every week the local SDA pastor would preach on something that fit their bizarre worldview and seem to ignore many other sections of scripture that contradicted their worldview. So this can’t be the right way either.

The church ended up on a method of annual reading, called the lectionary, which is a word that simply means the schedule of readings. It’s a great way to match up our readings through our liturgical season and make sure that we are discussing different parts of our scripture throughout the year.

As I mentioned above, certain denominations do not use the revised common lectionary. Seventh Day Adventists, many Baptists, Pentecostals, charismatics, and several others do not use the lectionary. Without commenting on the pros and cons of that approach, I simply wonder how their pastors don’t run out of ideas and their congregants get extremely bored.

Fortunately for the good of Christian unity, and our progressing edification throughout the year, The Consultation on Common Texts is around. CCT is an ecumenical consultation of liturgical scholars and denominational representatives from the United States and Canada who produce liturgical texts and curate a three-year lectionary in common use by Christian churches worldwide.

The current membership of the CCT includes designees of the following churches or agencies:

American Baptist Churches USA
Anglican Church of Canada
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Christian Reformed Church in North America
Church of the Brethren
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod
Mennonite Church Canada
North American Lutheran Church
Polish National Catholic Church
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Presbyterian Church in Canada
Reformed Church in America
The Episcopal Church
The United Methodist Church
Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship
United Church of Canada
United Church of Christ
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod

Of course you’ll see the mainline denominations in there and generally liturgical churches. Why would so many varying denominations use the same lectionary, use the same scriptural pattern throughout the year?

There are many reasons to follow the lectionary. I find it comforting to know that my Christian sisters and brothers across the world are thinking about the same passages of scripture that I’m thinking about that week. Several times a year I can talk to a Christian friend about the same Bible text regardless of the geography of our pews and that is really yoking in faith. I imagine that consistency and confederation helps pastors as well as they can get ideas from each other at the same time. As I mentioned above, the lectionary is a great way for pastors, congregants, youth leaders and others to introduce the wide prismatic lens of all scripture rather than focusing in on your favorite memory verses. It keeps us focused on liturgical seasons, so you are not reading the crucifixion story on Christmas morning. Following liturgical seasons allows our members to enjoy the rhythms of the church and if they decide to do so, come prepared on Sunday morning, having read that weeks lessons.

If my web statistics are accurate, most of my readers finish a typical blog post here in five to eight minutes. A bite-sized way to start your Monday morning. But if you have about 16 minutes and would prefer a deeper and historical background, this video is a delightful introduction to the lectionary. And here is an eloquent overview of the lectionary from Gordon W. Lathrop writing at Working Preacher.

Why don’t I follow the lectionary in my blogging? My folx, I am just a random blogger trying to figure out life just like you — read everything here at your own risk. I follow where my whims, and I hope the Holy Spirit, are taking me depending on what I feel inspired to write about that moment for the strange collection of progressive Christians, biblical inerrantists and atheists that make up my readers. I hope my blogs help keep people on The Way, but there is nothing in this website that can replace you seeking out the means of grace on a weekly basis.