05 June 2008

"Among the reasons...

...for retaining a one-year lectionary in Lutheran Service Book, the Lectionary Committee noted the following:

* We are an historic Church and acknowledge the value of what has been handed down to us.

* It is important to recognize the value of repetition. Given the increasing lack of biblical literacy within our society and even within the Church, there may be a need in the future for a one year lectionary, with its annual repetition of key biblical texts.

* The one-year lectionary is unique in that there are a number of older resources that support it, including hymnody, sermons by Luther and others, etc."

--Lutheran Service Book: One-Year Lectionary, p. xiv

3 comments:

Timothy May said...

The resources available for the One-Year Lectionary in Christianity are tremendous and potentially inexhaustible. That the LSB retains this lectionary is a certain plus. The committee is to be commended for looking back and ahead.

Anonymous said...

Also, the lectionary was never ever proscribed to promote Biblical literacy. That is not why it was established by our Holy Fathers.

Fearsome Pirate said...

Two other reasons:

a) It only takes a couple of pages.
b) Why start a fight?

I wish we'd written our own lectionary instead of slightly adapting V2's, though. But now that we're getting rid of that slightly modified Baptist study Bible, maybe a real Lutheran 3-year series could come into its own some day.