Recently, a wonderful question landed in my email inbox:
Why do we read the Old Testament, Psalms, Epistle, and Gospel every week in church?
One of the gifts of our liturgical tradition, a gift that we share with the Orthodox, Catholics, Lutherans, and others, is the use of the lectionary. Every week, a cycle of readings prescribes what Scripture we hear in church. While some of the details of the how the lectionary works have changed over the years, one thing has stayed the same. The church, not the clergy, chooses the Scripture we read publicly in worship. This means that what we hear proclaimed as the Word of God isn't down to our whims or personal preferences - we all have to wrestle with the Bible together, in its entirety. What's more, using the lectionary means that we hear from all parts of the Bible, and not just our favorite bits.
We read the Old Testament…
…because it is the story of God's enduring faithfulness in choosing Israel to be his people, and as Christians we read the Old Testament as those who in Jesus Christ are grafted onto the promises of Israel. Not to take them over, but to take our part in a conversation and a covenant that has been going on long before us. The Old Testament also reminds us that there is one God, and that the God we see revealed in Jesus is the same God who called the prophets and let Israel out of bondage.
We read the Psalms…
…because they are our greatest treasury of songs of worship. But they also remind us that the life of faith is a life of joy and sorrow, anger and reconciliation, tears and shouts of joy. John Calvin says that in the Psalms, "there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror." Another very ancient way of reading and hearing the Psalms is to imagine that Jesus is the one speaking. Try it sometime and see if your experience of the text changes!
The Epistles…
…connect us to the very earliest churches, and in them we see that the first Christians encountered the same challenges that we do today. They are some of my favorite parts of Scripture, as they set out what it means that God is with us and for us in Jesus. When we say that they are "the Word of the Lord," we acknowledge that they are inspired by the Holy Spirit and can speak to us now, just as they did for the first readers.
Finally, we hear the Gospel —
…the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. We stand for the Gospel reading as an acknowledgement of their place at the heart of our faith. But, having heard the other Scriptures read as well, we also acknowledge that they don't stand alone. They stand within the story of God's acts: past, present, and future. Scripture helps us to interpret Scripture, and the more we can explore the relationship between the texts in the Bible, the more we can grow in relationship to the one who inspired them.
Do you have a question about the Bible, theology, or the church? Email me!