The word "lectionary" comes from the Latin lectio, which means "reading." By the 4th Century, churches were using a schedule of scripture readings in worship.
Today's lectionaries commonly offer four weekly Bible readings designed to cover the main points in the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha in three years.
Why Do Churches Use a Lectionary?
The Consultation on Common Texts, which holds the copyright to the Revised Common Lectionary, gives many reasons for using a common schedule of Bible reading for worship, Bible study and sermon preparation, especially for ecumenical settings and groups.
Such a schedule "shows us the relationship of the readings of one Sunday with those that come before it and after it. Within each of the major seasons of Lent, Easter, Advent, and Christmas-Epiphany, the flow of the season is reflected in all the Scripture texts, taken together as a set for each Sunday," according to a statement on the organization's website.
History of the Lectionary
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a schedule for reading the Bible called lectio selecta (reading selectively). Scripture passages were coordinated with the Church calendar, so one would read the gospel stories of Jesus' birth at Christmas, the story in Acts of the descent and spread of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and so on. According to the Book of Common Worship for the Presbyterian Church (USA), some of the Reformers of the 16th Century argued that the Early Church read scriptures lectio continua (reading continually), starting at the beginning of a book and reading to the end, although the passages might have been broken up on successive days or Sundays.
Lectionaries created in the 20th Century combined the two approaches: keeping the selected readings for special days like Christmas and Easter and shifting to continuous readings in the months of the liturgical calendar called "ordinary time."
The idea of spreading the Bible reading plan over three years originated with the Catholic Church's lectionary released in 1969. This modern-day lectionary was a result of the Second Vatican Council and its emphasis on reading scripture and celebrating mass in the native language of the particular congregation, instead of in Latin. The Episcopal Church, among other denominations, adopted and adapted this three-year lectionary into its own worship practices in the 1970s.
A group of scholars and liturgists from the Catholic, Episcopal and various other Protestant Churches in the United States and Canada got together in the 1970s to agree on scripture passages for a three-year lectionary. This group, now called the Consultation on Common Texts, started with the Catholic lectionary and changed primarily the passages for the Old Testament. The group released a Common Lectionary in 1983.
The group began almost immediately collecting reactions, comments and suggestions from congregations and denominations using the Common Lectionary, and released the present Revised version in 1992.
Denominations depart from the RCL for a number of reasons and such departures are quite amicable. The RCL is a shining example of Christian cooperation. Churches all over the world — Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Latin America — now use some form of the lectionary developed by a North American ecumenical cooperative group.
How is the Lectionary Organized?
Each week's selections include a passage each from the Psalms; the rest of the Old Testament or Acts; the gospels; and the epistles (letters) or Revelation, the last book of the Bible. The three-year cycle follows the gospel of Matthew in Year A, the gospel of Mark with a little supplement from the gospel of John in Year B and the gospel of Luke in Year C, with the fourth gospel, John, interspersed among the special seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost.
Each year of the three-year cycle begins in late November or early December, on the first Sunday in Advent, the four-Sunday season leading up to Christmas. Year A begins Nov. 28, 2010; Year B begins Nov. 27, 2011; Year C begins Dec. 2, 2012.
The full schedule is available in worship books and prayer books of many sponsor denominations, as well as in the organization's book, The Revised Common Lectionary, published by Abingdon Press. The best online source for lectionary listings of the RCL, as well as denominational departures from the common schedule, can be found at The Text This Week, an online consortium of Bible study and worship sites.
Sources:
The Revised Common Lectionary: The Consultation on Common Texts, (Abingdon Press, 1992).
The Consultation on Common Texts, http://www.commontexts.org.
"Local Adaptations of the Lectionary," Book of Common Worship for the Presbyterian Church (USA), (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993).
"The Revised Common Lectionary," by Alan Lewis, The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians (Vol. 15, No. 10, December 2006).
Virginia Gilbert - A 2007 graduate of Eden Seminary, Gilbert covered education, business and police for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 27 years.
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