Scrapping the Lectionary, Keeping the Seasons? (Post III)

Let's say there was no such thing as the Lectionary. (There isn’t for all practical purposes to 98% of the American populace. Let's say you're a preacher, there is no Lectionary, and you wanted your post-modern people to get a good grasp on the Bible.

What would you invent? What would you teach? How would you teach it? What would you preach? How would you preach it? What kind of a balanced set of readings would you choose that made some logical scope and sequence sense to the Biblically illiterate masses? At the Biblically illiterate mass?

If you were setting out to invent something to fill a need, the first question a prudent theologian/preacher/teacher/social systems change agent might ask would be:

A. What are we trying to accomplish? (If we don’t know where we are going, any road will take us there.)

The second question is a pulse check, and is rather important:

B. Who do we have to work with? (What is the basic starting point with regards to the people's  experience/knowledge base/frame of reference)

The third:

C. If we had to start with what we’ve been dealt – B -  what might the best ways be to bring the good folks from where they are currently to where we want them to be? Let's start with A...

THE GOAL: Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that the preacher/leader’s goal is Biblical literacy, a thorough knowledge and love of the Word and Will of God, the understanding that God still speaks today through the Word working to transform lives and bless the world in, with, and under God’s people, the church. Let's add a goal that the people are touched so deeply by their encounter with the Word that they take what is heard, learned, and absorbed out the doors and into action in the real world every week.

THE REALITY: Looking at the hand we’ve been dealt, the reality is that the bulk of the seasons of the church year are unknown, unobserved and irrelevant to our culture. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. My friend Monty always like to say, “You don’t have to live in reality, but you ought to visit it once in a while.” The reality is, the seasons of the church year are only the seasons of the church. Not of the culture. The two seasons the culture still understands are:

Advent/Christmas
Easter

They don’t really understand Lent, Pentecost, Transfiguration, Shrove Tuesday, or the day of Holy Innocents and Martyrs. (My anniversary. My wife and I still don’t know who’s who after 30 years of marriage).

If they only know Christmas and Easter, let’s keep these two seasons and treat them as “temples to the unknown god”, telling people what they’re here for and claiming them back for Jesus. So, where do we start?

Advent/Christmas

To American society, Advent starts unofficially as soon as the Halloween candy goes on sale November 1 and officially at midnight on Thanksgiving weekend on the sidewalk outside  Best Buy. Four weeks of Advent will work for the culture. Santa’s already ringing bells. Thus it will work for the church.   We can keep Advent and keep reminding the folks over and over and over that it’s the birthday of Jesus,  that our modern history is still recorded by the BC and AD (even BCE is but one step from the question “what started the common era), and that Jesus is the reason for the season and his birth is the one central, pivotal event of human history. Santa never died for anyone’s sins. He was simply and clearly a good man who honored the Almighty Baby Jesus with acts of love and charity... Not a jolly old elf.

Let’s keep Advent. Society has a frame of reference, and we can turn it into a frame of reverence.

Lent/Easter

To society, Easter starts unofficially when the chocolate bunnies and new spring line and colors come out at Walmart and officially at 4:59 pm on Easter weekend. Seven weeks of Lent don’t mean anything. More Americans can tell you what happens in New Orleans on Marti Gras than can tell you what Fat Tuesday meant or what it was supposed to launch... The fasting and penitence of a whole season to honor Christ’s suffering and sacrifice for sin.

Let’s keep Lent. Society still sees Ashes walking around on foreheads and that logo can become a new moniker for launching annual weeks of sacrificial loving and giving leading up to the Empty Tomb and a proclamation of freedom and hope.

Pentecost?

The only other argument for a church season I’d keep would be Pentecost. It’s the Birthday of the Church. People understand Birthdays. But to have a whole season of it – one that starts 50 days after an Easter that is calculated by its relationship to an astronomical full moon somehow relating to the full moon at the time of Jesus’ resurrection – I don’t think so.

Let’s keep the Pentecost Sunday celebration, and scrap the season. The WHOLE of the church year should be about new life, new growth, the power of the Holy Spirit to touch lives and the “see how these Christian’s love one another” that took the pagan culture by storm. (You can argue theology until you’re blue in the faith... Er... Face. But you can’t argue love!) Let's not have a season of Pentecost.

Let's have a church of Pentecost.

So, there you have it. I’d teach three seasons, and the rest of the year teach the Bible in a logical scope and sequence from one end to the other. Do it once a year, once every three years or how many years you think it will take to do a decent, understandable, thorough job. That part if up to you... although I have my own little spreadsheet on a three and four year lectionary that I think would be reasonably effective and rather fun to try if anyone wants to look at it.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Insights? Threats and complaints?

I'm all for it.

It's go time.

Comments

[Sherri Harris]

I am leading a group on Sunday evenings this Fall studying the church calendar. I would like to recommend a book Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church by Laurence Hull Stookey. It is hard not to be a fan of the church calendar after spending time with Stookey!

I will try to post a more thoughtful response to your ideas on the calendar - but am headed off to a choir retreat this morning, so it will have to wait for later. Blessings Rich

[Rich Melheim]

Good point.

We don't need a season of Epiphany.

We need a church of Epiphany.

[justme-leena.blogspot.com]

I'm compelled to share that I think the start of Epiphany is as important as the start of Pentecost. The last church I served held a "Twelfth Night/Three Kings" celebration focused on Following the star and ultimately staying committed to following Jesus. Now that Advent & Christmas and stories of Baby Jesus are over we can't just put Jesus in the closet with the Nativity set. We keep Jesus out and find and follow him. You can still teach the Bible in a logical scope and you don't have to keep the season of Epiphany. Just Keep that 12th night... like the first day of Pentecost and be a church of Epiphany.