My BFF RCL

Whether you’re attending Catholic mass in Kansas City or Presbyterian worship in Pittsburgh, you’re likely to hear the same readings. No, it’s not divine coincidence: it’s the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year cycle of scripture readings employed by many Western Christian denominations.

Seeing as it’s Sunday, I figured the Revised Common Lectionary was as good a topic as any to write about. Also, I’m a little bit in love with the RCL. I have a freelance gig as a children’s sermon writer for CSS Publishing, a Lutheran publishing company based in Lima, Ohio, and have a deadline looming. Of course, instead of doing my work, I decided it was a better use of my time to research the RCL.

The reason RCL is so great for someone who works in the religious publishing field is that you can create worship resources that go with the theme of the week’s readings. RCL is used by most mainline denominations in the Western world (Roman Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, some Baptists, etc—excluding Eastern Orthodox… because, obviously, they’re not Western), so a Lutheran company in Lima, Ohio, can market its work to worship leaders of all denominations, not just Lutherans.

The basis for the RCL is summed up well in a quote from this site:

“All the faithful, particularly those who for various reasons do not always take part in Mass with the same assembly, will everywhere be able to hear the same readings on any given day or in any liturgical season and to meditate on the application of these readings to their own concrete circumstances.”

So it’s couched in flowery language, but that’s the gist of the RCL. It puts everyone, literally, on the same page.

I was surprised to find that the idea of a universal lectionary is a relatively new one. The RCL began in 1983—just shy of 30 years ago—and was based on the Roman Catholic Ordo Lectionum Missae, a lectionary put together in 1969 as a result of the Second Vatican Council.
Before the Vatican Council, most denominations used annual lectionaries unique to each denomination. Eastern churches still tend to use annual lectionaries, independent from the RCL.

The RCL is organized in a three-year cycle. The years are labeled with letters: Year A, Year B, Year C. The church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which is usually in late November or the beginning of December. Each Sunday’s scripture includes a reading from the Old Testament; a psalm; a reading from one of the epistles, or New Testament books after the Gospels; and a reading from one of the Gospels. Virtually all of the New Testament is covered in the RCL; the Old Testament, by virtue of its greater relative size, is less thoroughly represented.
Obviously.

The first three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—are basically read straight through in the cycle of the lectionary. Each year focuses on a different one of these three Gospels. The fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, does not get its own lectionary year. Part of this is due to the nature of the Gospels: while the first three Gospels have a good deal of overlapping information, John is written differently. To be brief, his writing is convoluted: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God…” They probably didn’t give him a year of the lectionary because preachers everywhere would have revolted. It’s hard enough for them to try to explain the Gospel of John the relatively few times he crops up—forget about trying to do it every Sunday for a year. (According to this guy, the actual reason is that John gets used a lot during big church holidays. I like my version better, though.)

If you're interested in bumming around the lectionary (probably after you've exhausted all the resources on usa.gov), you can check it out here, available through the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) website. If you feel compelled to look up the scriptures for each week, try Oremus Bible Browser. OBB is my other BFF. It's linked on the right hand side of this blog.