The Lectionary.
A lectionary is a list of readings. As a spiritual discipline, a person may simply open The Bible at the beginning, and start reading. They might read a chapter or more each day. The weakness of this kind of reading is that it is the reading style of our time, the method for reading a novel, or even a text book. It assumes a narrative thread from beginning to end. However, a text book is often not read from cover to cover. It may be designed as a resource with discrete sections to be consulted at appropriate times.
The Bible is even less novel-like. With 39 "books" in the Hebrew Scriptures, and 27 in the Christian Scriptures, there are multiple authors, times, geographic locations, and theological perspectives represented. This considers only the main collection (Canon) of the books common to most Christian traditions. There are also the books not present in the Hebrew Scriptures or "Old Testament" which are often known as the deutero-canonical books. How does one read all this and make sense of it?
Christian groups have traditionally created lists of texts that are considered important to read. They sketch out some of the key planks of that group's tradition, and its understanding of the Christian faith.
One well known modern lectionary is the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used by many churches world wide. It divides the bible over a three year period, based around the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The readings are chosen to reflect the cycle of church year as it progresses from the hope for a Messiah (Advent), through Christmas, and on to Easter. Each week also has a reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Psalms, and from the letters of the New Testament. The Gospel of John is used in each year around the times of the major festivals. There are often readings assigned for special days which do not occur on a Sunday.
Many ministers preach from a lectionary. It provides a discipline which works against the temptation to avoid uncomfortable subjects and concentrate on favourite themes.
A lectionary provides an overview of the Christian tradition. Unfortunately, it also represents a particular theological and historical outlook. Some people point out, for example, that women's stories, often already marginalised in Scripture are further submerged by the RCL . The lectionary is also constructed of short readings, excerpts from the whole, so that some parts of the bible will never be read in public worship under this scheme. It also means that the wider flow of a narrative is interrupted, and perhaps divided in ways never anticipated by the authors. In their own devotions, many people will at least read from the end of the previous week's readings to the end of the designated readings of the current week, in some attempt to overcome this disintegration of the narrative.
What is the Bible?
This article was written as an appendix to one of the Lectionary Commentaries on this site. However it has wider application. There has been some slight editing of the original.
What do you think of the Bible? What is its nature? Even if you do not agree with the sketched out material below, it is clear that the way we think about it, will affect how we hear it. Comments are welcome!
There seem to be two main ways to approach the Bible. Let me summarise these in a deliberately unsubtle way, using two extremes.
One approach says the Bible is revelation in the sense that God wrote it.
The other approach sees the Bible as a human response to the history of God's revelation to people.
Both these approaches have many nuances, and perhaps they grade into each other. I do them scant justice in my description, apart from showing their essential difference as baldly as I can. But these two approaches also have significant implications in their differences.
Few people would believe God dictated the Bible word for word. However, in some sense the Bible is revelation approach does identify the words of the book as words of God. There may be errors in translation, or emphases that reflect the individual authors, and cultural artefacts, but this book is in some sense, God's word.
With this approach, after the reading in church, people literally mean it when they say "This is the Word of the Lord."
The other approach affirms that God has spoken to people. Those people have responded to God, including writing down their understandings of what God revealed to them. Other people have reflected upon their words, which we call theology and prayer. It's clear that a lot of theology, aka editing, has happened in some of the texts, before they reached the form we now call "Bible."
With this this approach, after the reading in church, some congregations say, "In this is the Word of the Lord," and they mean it.
Bearing in mind that I am talking baldly, without subtlety, let's look at the implications of the two approaches for this week's reading. In the first case, where God wrote it, John need make no apology for the way he speaks of the Jews. It is Word of God he is giving us. If there is any fault in our attitude toward Jewish people throughout history, it is only in our interpretation and application of that word.
In the second approach, if we are to take John's invitation from Jesus seriously, the bible is not just history of revelation. It becomes a vehicle of revelation to us as we seek to understand it, and struggle with it.
In this case, we may see the word of the Lord in "negative" ways. That is, "I will not respond as John did."
This may seem like we are judging scripture, deciding which to accept and which to ignore. In fact, the other approach does exactly the same; all interpretation takes authority over the text. The very fact of reading and deciding on a meaning, is to take authority over. This is a reality to which the various fundamentalisms of the world remain curiously blind.
We cannot escape this fact of interpretation. In reading scripture, our only options, again speaking baldly, are to decide to be arbitrary in our assigning meaning, or to decide to discover as accurately as possible the original meaning of the author, and how that applies to our time.
What the God wrote it approach does, is assign authority for all times to an author alive at a certain time, and then tends, usually, to assign authority to a particular interpretation of that author. Those who seek God's current revelation through struggling with our history, also risk assigning too much authority to one interpretation, especially one in tune with the fashions of the time.
For me, however, the second approach offers a greater freedom. With this second approach, thre has been more of life in all its fullness (John 10:10) .
Andrew Prior
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