More Bible? Not really.
The classic argument for the contemporary “Three-Year Lectionaries” inspired by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s is that they cover more of the Bible. In a post on Cyberbrethren, Rev. Paul McCain notes that the historic Lectionary (which, I believe, is the only lectionary authorized for use in churches of the Augsburg Confession) covers approximately 14.8% of the Bible in a single year, while the latest “Three-Year Lectionary” in use in the LCMS (as opposed to the one used by WELS, as opposed to the one in LW, as opposed to the RCL, as opposed to the… (so much for “catholicity”)) covers only 23.9% of the Bible over three years – much lower than one would expect. Assuming these statistics are correct, if a single year of the “Three-Year Lectionary” were as Scripturally rich as the historic Lectionary, we would expect the three-year total to be 44.4%. Instead, it comes in almost 20 points shy of that mark. As McCain said, “Interesting.”
Since that 23.9% is presented in a way that confuses the masses at the Mass (because the Epistle reading often is thematically unrelated to the OT and Gospel), it seems the one reason to use one of the 1960’s-inspired lectionaries is not a very good one.
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Personally, I’ve never viewed the amount of Scripture as being the best reason for using the Three-Year Lectionary, but I’ll comment on that briefly below.
Regarding the statistics that Rev. McCain posted, they are a little bit misleading. For one thing, it should be noted that the “official” “historic” lectionary, more or less alluded to in the Augsburg Confession, no longer included the use of the Old Testament at Mass. The addition of Old Testament Readings in the LSB one-year lectionary bumps up the overall percentage considerably. Furthermore, the LSB one-year lectionary includes quite a few alternative Readings, especially with respect to the Old Testament selections, but also in some cases with the Epistles and Holy Gospels (though the historic lections were always preserved and included). Also, parenthetical options were included to allow for the lengthening of the historic lections with additional verses. All of this should be taken into account, as it obviously increases the total number of verses.
What I don’t know, is whether the data that Rev. McCain shared on his blog includes the sanctoral cycle or not. If so, that would effect the overall data considerably. In terms of percentages, it would add much more to the one-year lectionary than to the three-year lectionary; since those two lectionaries share the same single Sanctoral cycle.
I do want to comment on the position of the Augsburg Confession. It asserts that the Lutherans are not doing something of their own creation, but using the Church’s lectionary (which was more or less true, though there were local variations in the historic lectionary, and the Lutherans did make some modifications here and there). It is not so much an argument for the historic lectionary per se, but an argument that the Lutherans are using the same lectionary that their opponents are; because they have not relied upon a new or separate reading of the Holy Scriptures, but confess the Gospel truth of those Scriptures. As far as the historic lectionary itself was concerned, Luther was not averse to criticizing its weaknesses and suggesting that improvements could be made, especially in the selection of the Epistles (one of the very things the LSB one-year lectionary has addressed). Aside from the particular merits or demerits of the case, one could make a similar assertion now, in our own day, regarding the use of more or less the same lectionary as the Roman Church (with some modifications now, as then).
As far as I am personally concerned, the strongest reason for using the Three-Year Lectionary is not so much its quantity of Scripture, nor its broad ecumenical usage, but the way it allows the holy evangelists to be heard in a semi-continuous fashion. This fits with the way in which the Holy Gospels were first used and heard in the Church, and it is also much closer to the ancient way in which the Holy Scriptures were read (among Jews and Christians). Aside from those canonical and historical precedents, I have found and believe that reading through each of the Holy Gospels, as is done with the three-year lectionary, serves the preaching of Christ and His Gospel well. In saying that, I have never suggested that the historic lectionary doesn’t.
Finally, with respect to the pairing of the Epistles with the Holy Gospels, these were not intentionally paired up in the historic lectionary, either, following the Feast of Pentecost. I realize that they come together very nicely in many cases, but frankly so do the Epistles and Holy Gospels in the three-year lectionary. But as for how they came together in the historic lectionary, it was by a combining of two different lectionaries (one Roman, the other Gallican, as I recall). Happily, in the case of both current lectionaries, as in the case of the numerous other lectionaries that have served the Christian Church in the course of her history, the unifying heart and center of the Holy Scriptures is Christ Jesus.
Rick- I didn’t expect you to reply, my friend, although I worried I might offend you. A brief response to your thoughtful-as-ever comment:
1) The typical argument I hear, from both pastors and laymen, is that the 3-year lectionaries offer “more Bible.” It doesn’t surprise me that you have better reasons.
2) I imagine that your sermons faithfully exposit the nuances of the gospels as you describe. I can’t cite a source, but I recall reading some Vatican II-related documents in seminary where the new lectionary was supposed to help bring higher criticism into the pulpits through the annual focus on a single gospel. In other words, I’m sure you are using it faithfully – but I have long harbored the suspicion that the whole enterprise was the work of the devil, intended to create doubt about the inspiration of Holy Scripture.
3) I have come to reject Luther’s argument about the selection of Epistle readings needing to be reformed. I think he was reacting against the legalism and works-righteousness of medieval Roman Catholicism. I am far more concerned with antinomianism, which is the dirty little secret of LCMS “confessional” preaching. For that reason (among others), I always remain with the historic epistle reading for the Sunday.
4) In fairness, I haven’t “lived” with a 3-year lectionary since my second year in the parish – but I recall a deep level of frustration regarding the epistles that I have never experienced with the historic lectionary. However, I will grant you that at times the historic epistles are not as well-paired as they could be.
Finally (and this is by no means tongue-in-cheek), I thank you for your thoughtful comment on my rant which was mostly intended to be provocative.
Your friend and brother in office,
+Christopher
You are quite right that the new lectionary was to bring higher criticism to the pulpits. This has an aspect, since it began in the Roman Church, that may not be obvious to Lutherans or anyone else who was outside of the process. Since I was unfortunately in the process, here goes.
It is not that sermons would become like the lectures one heard in The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith class. Rather, it’s a lex orandi lex credendi thing. In such classes, we came to see that Scripture is a product of the Holy Spirit, but working through the understanding of the believing community, which is now us. And we know that the believing community’s understanding, through the Holy Spirit, grows and develops. (Newman, anyone?) Therefore we must understand earlier expressions of the believing community’s understanding to be just that, not necessarily final or complete. So for example, “Jesus is risen” is a statement. It may be understood as a statement of fact. It may be too a way the believing community understands the overwhelming fact of his continuing significance for them. Either way, one may rightly say “Jesus is risen” alongside and to-gether with someone whose understanding is the other. The community is one, and it development of understanding, both historically as a body and individually in its members, grows and develops.
As the faith of the community thus exists in many stages of growth and development, so also does the community’s expression of this as it gathers to-gether for its worship. One stage or point cannot be imposed on the whole process. That would deny other stages and points and be false to the process itself. Therefore our worship must reflect the same process as our faith, and we must turn from the imposition of a single expression expression in either, and in both.
For a Roman Catholic, this is, as they say, a complete 180.
As I was taught the Roman faith and its “understanding”, what is referred to as the Protestant Reformation is more properly called the Protestant Revolt; the reformation happened within the church, not without it (in borh the ordinary and the literal sense of without), and at Trent the Church addressed the abuses the Reformers legitimately addressed and at the same time shored the Church up against the doctrinal error into which their attempt apart form the Church to reform fell by its nature.
During and after the council, it was an entirely different story. Now, the Church had unfortunately gone into its own overreaction to the Reformers’ overreaction, and it is time for both sides to get out of the 15th Century before the 20th is over. The Church had wandered from its best self into blind alleys of late mediaeval monarchialism, triumphalism and rhetorical excess at Trent, perhaps understandable at the time, but now an anachronism which obscures both the original nature of the Church and its future.
As Trent, so its worship. What before were guards insuring that neither abuse nor error would corrupt worship, and that matter, form and especially intent (the three elements of sacramental validity), the intent of the Church at worship, was guaranteed to be present — were now blind alleys of mediaeval ignorance and overreaction. This is, as they say, a sea change, a tidal change, a quantum leap. If you’re a Roman Catholic. It means that, lex credendi having changed, lex orandi must too.
In the classroom, one can change the lex credendi of future priests and professors (with a few like myself on the fence as to whether this number included them). But for the people, the community, if they are not to believe as before, they are not to pray as before, and a change in worship will effect a change in belief for the millions whereas the classes affect but a few. Therefore, a New Order must be crafted, more open to all stages of the community’s understanding, past and present — the rite itself and its calendar and lectionary, which will be a definitive turing from the previous rite that imposed one point in time on all.
(I leave out entirely the deliberate suppression of miracle acoounts for more moral teaching in the novus ordo.)
These are not my reflections. It is precisely what I was taught as the process unfolded, including by some of those involved in the process. Its fruits have now been adopted and adapted by all liturgical churches in the West, hence its “ecumenical” value. A value which is simply that the novus ordo is now the common property of all heterodox liturgical churches in the West.
We have common ground with that? Our reform was entirerly different. Rome has in no way finally come around. It has simply cut and pasted elements of the past, along with some new ones, into an ordo that serves a distinctly post-modern agenda. This is absolutely nothing like what we mean by zealously guarding and defending the mass through the retention of the received rites insofar as they do not contradict the Gospel as they had come to in places under Rome. It is to accept a lex orandi crafted to express a lex credendi that is not ours no less than looking to Saddleback or Willow Creek or some such, all of which resulting in “contemporary worship” though only the latter travels under the name.
Certainly it is possible to preach from the three-year lectionary in utter fidelity to the day’s specific contents. One can also do that from an infinite number of possible lectionaries, and no lectionary at all but the pastor’s discretion. But in that as with the service itself, one does so apart from the historic worship of the church, attempting to endow a non-Lutheran form of worship with Lutheran content no less than the “praise service” at the LCMS church down the street.
We were also taught that the what is now called the “historic” lectionary, which not only does not let each evangelist speak throughout the year but is more dervied from Matthew than the rest, does so because Matthew was the first of the Gospels, not as we have it now but in its non Greek original, so it forms the core of the readings in the liturgy where the Law was once read as it, with the other Gospel accounts after it, takes the place in the New Testament that the Law takes in the Old. Its place in the liturgy like it place in the Bible, out the window with the novus ordo.
Reading thoughout comes from the synagogue’s lectionary, where the Law is read in sequence throughout the year, as does as related reading associated with it, the Epistles now the source as the Prophets once were for the haftorah, the associated reading. There is one Law; there is one Gospel — not four. The one Gospel, anchored in the liturgy as in the Bible by Matthew, is read. Which is also why the “historic” lectionary has two main readings, as the synagogue lectionary has two main readings: Law and Prophets, Gospel and Epistle. The synagogue long ago dallied with accretions to this, a series of readings from the Writings also being used, as well as a three and a one year series, but both ideas proved unworkable and unneeded, and the two reading one year pattern (with variations here and there as in the church) being established for centuries now. We do not need to re-invent the wheel.
Finally, pastors and professors have a background atypical of the laity. For that matter, laity out here blogging about this stuff are not typical of the laity either. When the shepherds have different ideas about how to shepherd the sheep, what are the sheep to think? They’re not going to go to shepherd school to figure it out. If we present a version of the centuries-old worship of the Western church alongside something derived from 1960s Rome as OK, then why not alongside something derived from Saddleback or Willow Creek too? It we present as liturgical a hodgepodge of options a or b, this or alternatively that, then why not an option c or alternatively this other too?
In doing all these things, we have invited upon ourselves on a grand scale the rotten fruits of the mischief Luther describes on a small scale in the Preface to the LC when one does not stick to a single text. We let in by the back door, or rather the sacristy door, what we then attempt to keep out by the front door.
So much for Vatican II For Lutherans.
Terry,
Do you know of any good writings from a papist perspective on the development of the new lectionary? A friend of mine recently mentioned a book by Bugnini, but I haven’t had time to track it down yet.