Continuing the series on nuts and bolts of preaching, the following is from an interview with Jonathan Page, Epps Fellow at Memorial Church in Cambridge. The topic of the interview is the pros and cons of preaching on the Lectionary passages. Jonathan argues against preaching on the Lectionary. Next week I will post a rebuttal from another Massachusetts pastor.
Jonathan will be preaching at June 21 and July 19 at 10 am in Memorial Church, which is located behind the Harvard Yard. Jonathan is passionate about student outreach. During the academic year, he started a service for students in particular, which is held at 9 pm on Sunday nights. He has also written a book on missionaries, described on http://www.newenglandancestors.org/publications/45_7404.asp.
"As I understand it, the lectionary was added following the Vatican II Council. The Roman Catholic Church shifted from a one year lectionary to a three year lectionary as a result of the Council. In order to promote ecumenism, the Protestant churches began to draw up their own three year lectionaries and did their best to follow the RC model whenever possible. Finally, an ecumenical group of Protestant churches drew up the Revised Common Lectionary, which many denominations use today.
So, first and foremost, the lectionary allows all the churches of the United States and abroad to preach the same passages on the same day. Furthermore, the lectionary forces the preacher to address a broad range of texts. If you follow the lectionary, you will cover nearly the entirety of the gospels in a three year cycle, in addition to important sections of the Old Testament and the epistles.
Those are what I see as the two major advantages to using the lectionary: ecumenism and breadth of scriptural reach.
The disadvantages, however, far outweigh the advantages, especially for a liberal minister. With no lectionary, a minister is forced to choose her own scripture passages each week. This means that the minister must come up with a plan for sermons going forward. She cannot simply preach social justice each week or preach a pastoral sermon or one that is heavily theological.
As a minister looks down the calendar she must ask herself, “What does the congregation need at this point?” So the first reason to ditch the lectionary is that it forces a minister to think long term about what she wants her congregation to get out of preaching.
The second reason to avoid the lectionary is theological. The lectionary assumes that sermons should be exegetical and that all of scripture, especially the gospels, deserves to be preached. This is simply false. The Bible must be translated from its own time period into our own. Certain passages, especially the apocalyptic ones, are not relevant to the lives of modern, liberal Christians. I am not awaiting the imminent return of Jesus in the clouds. That belief is tied up in a first century worldview, which I do not believe and neither does my congregation.
Furthermore, not all passages are created equal. We all read a text from our own distinct theological viewpoint. There is no such thing as a coherent “Biblical theology.” It simply does not exist. Marching your way through the text because the lectionary dictates it leads to the lectionary determining the shape of your preaching instead of your theology. Our theology should be the guide for our preaching.
The third and final reason for avoiding the lectionary is that it allows ministers to avoid their teaching responsibility. Preachers end up looking at a text and trying to figure out something to say to the congregation that might be relevant to their lives based on that reading. Far too often, the sermons become a series of personal anecdotes around one particular story in the text. In the end the congregation learns nothing about the Bible or theology or church history.
Mainline congregations are not well versed in the faith, mostly because ministers have stopped teaching them. When there is no lectionary, when a minister must plan out what to preach and teach the congregation, when theology and not an arbitrary text drives the preaching task, congregations learn more about their faith.
Using no lectionary is difficult. It requires a lot of careful thought, but especially for liberal ministers, it is the way to go."
--Elizabeth Fels
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