Of lections and lectionaries – again

As it stands now the format of the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) is as follows.  The RCL covers a three-year cycle that begins with Advent and runs through Ordinary Time.  The lectionary designates the years (creatively) as years A, B and C.  Year A begins with Advent of 2016, 2019, 2022 and so on.  Year B follows the three-year plan and comes around again in Advent of 2020.  We are currently in year C which began with Advent of 2018.  The ABC designations cut down on the confusion that having a lectionary that covers most of a given year starting the previous year can cause.

The Old Testament readings in year A concentrates on the Genesis/Exodus material.  Year B covers much of the David and Solomon narrative.  Year C generally come from the Major Prophets.  In each of these cycles there is material from other books, but these three themes dominate.

The intention of the Psalter selections is that they offer some kind of commentary on the Old Testament reading.  At times they repeat or intensify the OT lection.  But at other times they offer a contrasting point of view.  But together the OT and Psalter for a given day usually provide an expanded treatment of a topic.

The epistle readings are semi-continuous through individual books.  However, they do not follow canonical order.  Several weeks of readings from Philippians follows over a month of selections from 1 Corinthians in the current cycle, for example.

The gospel readings provide a year-long consideration of one of the synoptic gospels.  Year A is the year of Matthew.  Year B follows Mark.  Year C is the year of Luke.  The RCL scatters readings from the Gospel of John throughout all three years.  This is especially the case in Advent, Lent and Holy Week.

The RCL follows an ancient church practice of substituting readings from The Acts of the Apostles for the OT lessons in the season of Easter.

There are some alternative readings, frequently for the OT and Psalter, but for some of the other categories throughout the lectionary as well.  These are not so readily resourced as the primary readings.

The RCL readings follow the Christian liturgical year.  So, there are seasonally appropriate readings for Advent, Christmas, the Season after Epiphany, Lent, Easter and the Season after Pentecost.  The two seasons of Ordinary Time (so named because the lectionary designates the Sundays of the Season after Epiphany and the Season after Pentecost as “the second Sunday after the Epiphany,” or “the fourth Sunday after Pentecost,” rather than Sundays “in” or “of” a particular season, as is the case in the rest of the year) are of indeterminate length year to year.  This is because Easter Day does not fall on the same date each year.  It can occur as early as March 22 and as late as April 25.  Since Lent commences 46 days prior to Easter (on Ash Wednesday), and since The Epiphany is always January 6, that means that the length of the Season after Epiphany differs in length year to year.  By the same token, the earlier the occurrence of Easter, the longer the Season after Pentecost (which comes fifty days after Easter) will be.

One of the early difficulties with the common Lectionary was that with as many as nine Sundays after Epiphany or as few as four, there had to be nine readings available for the season.  Some churches were chopping the extra readings off the first of the list, while others were omitting the readings from the latter weeks in shorter seasons.  The same decision existed for the time after Pentecost, and again, some resources skipped the earlier Sunday lections while others took readings off the conclusion of the list.  In the revised iterations, the lectionary designates readings for Sundays that fall between a certain set of dates, no matter when the seasons begin or conclude.

We’ll wrap this up tomorrow.