"Thus faith comes from what is heard" (Romans 10:17): how much of the Bible do people hear?

Abstract

This article is more concerned with the way the Bible is proclaimed publicly and preached than with its treatment as the object of study and teaching in the academy. That is entirely fitting in an issue devoted to commemorating the life and work of Leland J. White. For, while his career in the seminary, college and university classroom absorbed most of his energies, when he did not have another foot in the pulpit he was always concerned with how the Bible is heard or, tragically, not heard by Christian believers. Because this is true of so many BTB readers, they will readily understand the approach taken here.

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The Bible is read by millions privately--some on a daily basis for consolation, for instruction, and for guidance. In every case the reading can be understood as prayer. No one knows how many participate in a Sunday or Saturday worship service and do Bible study in conjunction with it, or in study groups apart from their public worship. One large population, surely, is that of Christians whose knowledge of the Bible is gleaned from one source only, namely regular church attendance in which they hear it proclaimed. They have either grown familiar with texts expounded by preachers who have first chosen them and then returned to the text after it was announced, or else they have heard evangelical preachers, Black, White, and Latiino, weave a fabric of texts, featuring those they have long committed to memory.

This essay is fittingly dedicated to the memory of Leland J. White, who preached so often from the selections proposed over a three-year period in LECTIONARY FOR MASS, with which Roman Catholics of the West have become familiar in the last thirty years. In increasing numbers Protestant worshipers are hearing the same or similar lections from the REVISED COMMON LECTIONARY as well as others in the First Testament between Pentecost and Advent that do not occur in LM. The revised BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER for use in the United States and Canada has its own lectionary which, like that of RCL, is based on LM. An additional mode of biblical familiarization is the set of readings proposed for the weekday Eucharist of Catholics, obviously far more extensive than those for Sundays and feasts. The lections from the Gospels go unchanged for an alternating two years but are preceded by a reading from the First Testament different in Years I and II, the odd- and even-numbered years respectively. Add to these, the scheduled sets of readings for each day suggested to Seventh Day Adventists and members of other communions by their publishing houses, and you have a rich fare of proposed private reading in pericopes or segments. Earlier Protestant America spoke of "portions" and that term is still in use.

It has often been observed that a lectionary--the form of public Bible reading that was adopted after the initial choice by preachers from among the codices or books of "testimonies" available to them--constitutes a canon within the canon. That is obvious and scarcely needs discussing. What merits discussion is how such a canon takes shape in a lectionary. Do the selections from a biblical book adequately reflect the main concerns of that book? What is the net effect of the oldest and still current practice of lectionaries, namely placing a First Testament reading in conjunction with one from a Gospel on the assumption that one foreshadows or is a figure (type) of something in the other? What is the effect on the hearer of being invited to attend to readings without a phrase or two that might supply the context of that which is to be read, raising the important question of where pericopes begin and end? It can make a large difference. In all this, the "theology" of a Testament, a book, or the whole Bible is not being raised. That is the proper word for the intellectual edifices that Christians began to erect after the year 200 on the foundation of the Bible, the liturgy, the life of the Church, and people's experience. It is a Christian word and one that Jews do not employ to describe the contents of the Tanakh, the Mishnah and Gemara, and centuries of midrashim. Although popular usage of fairly recent date has begun to speak of Pauline, Isaian, and so on "theology," a better term for the intellectual constructs of those writers is their thought or mode of proclamation. A theology that drew on them or was constructed from them came later.

Unquestionably, however, something akin to it is to be found in the way an inspired writer or writers, rewriters and editors planned a book and the persuasive intent of the stories, laws, and chronicles found within it. In every case, the direction in which a biblical book or portion of a book--the author's main purpose--can be discerned. Because of this it may be asked whether the lections, however brief, reflect the authors' overall intent in writing their various books. These specified readings and the sermon or homily that follows are meant to nourish the congregation at prayer in the rite that includes them. As excerpted and placed in conjunction with two other readings, are they likely to have that effect? Or might it be a mistake to leave to the skill of a preacher the exposition of a lection which, taken in itself, is a source of puzzlement, when in fact such exposition cannot be assumed to follow?

Although the elevation of mind and heart of people and preacher alike is the purpose of biblical proclamation, teaching or instruction is hardly outlawed. That is what the hagiographers were convinced they were doing, and so must their transmitters be. Edification in Paul's sense of upbuilding in faith (1 Cor 8:1, 10:23, 14:17) is the intent of all the readings, but the ones selected need not all be positive in tone. It is as much the business of the Bible to negate and challenge as to comfort and confirm. Lectionary choices should not have been made on a universal principle of "improving the occasion" as sometimes seems to be the case: all harsh prophetic judgments filtered out. One last observation before attention is paid to specific lections and the way they speak to each other in a ritual celebration. Public readers must be heard if the biblical portions are to be of any effect. In some communions the clergy are the sole enunciators of Scripture. This usually means that they read well, proclaiming the texts they have labored over in a way that conveys their content. Like other readers, however, they may rely on a microphone for more than it can accomplish. Or they may address the word of God to the book their eyes are fixed on, rather than to the hearers. The lectern is no place for modesty of the eyes. A serious matter is that this role is often entrusted to persons more faithful to the task than equipped for it. Only those who read much know how words on a printed page behave. Of those who do, many seldom or never read the Bible. This makes it hard for them to convey to an assembly the point the Deuteronomist or Hebrews wishes to make. The message can come to such lectors as a surprise even as they read, resulting in errors of rhythm or stress that betray the sacred writer utterly. Preachers who hear such a flawed performance while seated and ready to preach know they must repeat the passages on which their exposition depends. They are quite sure the word has been spoken but not intelligibly heard.

What the Lectionaries Choose and Why: Daniel

To a few of the shorter biblical books, then, to see whether RCL and LM convey not the theology of the book but its main message. Daniel may make a good beginning. Both lectionaries propose a reading from it only twice on Sundays in the three years. RCL reads from it on All Saints Day besides as LM does not. In what follows RCL is given first and LM's numbered Sunday of the Year after it in brackets plus the yearly cycle; thus: Proper 28[33](B). Chapter 11 of Daniel has been a detailed review of the ongoing oppression of the Jews by the Seleucid Greeks told as if a prophecy of the future. Then comes the reading: Daniel 12:1-3. The poem speaks of the upraising from the earth of the just and the unjust "at that time" (v 1), undoubtedly the "end time" of 11:35. This is a snatch of apocalyptic that may make Christians upon whose ears it has burst unannounced think: "Oh, yes, the resurrection of the dead and all that distress at the end we have heard about so often as the Church year comes to a close" (see Mark 13:24-32, LM's lection for that day). But it would have been helpful for 11:36, 45b to serve as an introduction, the bracketed insertions derived from the entire chapter: "The [Syrian] king [of the Greek empire] shall do as he pleases ... making himself greater than any god ... prospering only until ... what is determined shall take place.... Yet he shall come to his end with none to help him." Daniel is end-time oriented, to be sure, but equally concerned with the cruel attack of Antiochus IV on Jerusalem and its Temple. Congregants need to know nothing of those details to be helped by a brief snatch of the history of Judah that gave rise to the vision of what would lie countless millennia ahead.

RCL improves LM's suggested reading for the Reign of Christ [the King], Daniel 7:13-14, that tells of "one like a son of man/human being" receiving from "the Ancient One dominion, glory, and kingship" with the preparation provided by verses 9 and 10: "As I watched ... the Ancient One took his throne.... His throne was flames of fire with wheels of burning fire.... Thousands upon thousands were ministering to him ... they stood attending him." This identifies immediately "the Ancient One" as an image of Israel's God and gives the hearer an additional taste of apocryphal style. The RCL reading of Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18 on the feast of All Saints (November 1) has the young Jew who is central to the story given the name Belteshazzar, different by a syllable from the name of the prince Belshazzar, heir to the Chaldean king Nabonidus, in whose time the story is set. None of this do the hearers need to know, to realize that another story of Daniel, the interpreter of dreams, has been launched (vv 1-3). This one strikes him with terror--four hideous beasts coming up out of the sea; the blazing court of the Ancient One; a human being coming with the clouds of heaven--but all of this is omitted in the lection. There is swift progress to an explanation of the dream by one standing near Daniel. It proves to be not about the four empires under whom the Jews suffered but about "the holy ones of the Most High" who would possess the kingdom forever (v 18).

Surely the vindication of tiny Israel at the hands of the Most High is being predicted by the tale. Yet even if the few proposed readings from Daniel were to occur on successive Sundays, preachers would be hard put to explain what the writer was up to in his overall narrative. Using pericopes from it as types of the antitype of the day's gospel inevitably causes the hearer to conclude that Daniel is nothing but a collection of prophecies about Jesus Christ and the victory of the baptized (the new "holy ones of the Most High"). Is the situation irremediable, given the great bulk of First Testament writings and the limited number of Sundays over three years? Weekday worshipers get a much clearer picture, hearing during the Thirty-fourth or Last Week of the Year from Monday to Saturday the following readings: Daniel 1:1-6, 8, 20; 2:31-45; 5:1-6, 13-14, 16-17, 23-28; 6:11-27; 7:2-14; and 7:15-27. Snatches from 3:52-87 (LXX), moreover, are proposed in response to the readings in place of a psalm. The whole burden of the book is conveyed in these five days, including the Aramaic words for number, weight, and division written on the wall (5:25-28) and culminating in the clear statement that "all the kingdoms under the heavens shall be given to the holy people of the Most High," Israel, the obvious recipient of the promise. Faith in the God of that people by gentiles all over the globe becomes a believable fulfillment of prophecy by the test of whether it has come true or not (Deut 18:21-22). Can the main problem of the lectionaries be the brevity of the Sunday readings? We need to move on.

The Gospels are not an easy case of whether the extensive use of them in lectionaries retains their authors' major concerns. The reason is that, even though in Years A, B, and C the Synoptics are copiously excerpted for proclamation, the principle of selection is that each event or teaching of Jesus should be heard once in three years. This total inclusiveness was Tatian's project in his Diatessaron, but it is done without arranging all the incidents in a running narrative. The decision in favor of a three-year lectionary rather than four meant that John was to be even more fragmented than the rest, although the saving grace is the relative homogeneity of all the vignettes and homilies in that Gospel. The real cat among the pigeons is the interrupted flow of each Gospel by the seasons of Advent, Nativity-Epiphany, Lent and Easter's Fifty Days. The latter uses Acts and John in every year in an assault on the Jews of Jerusalem or the other Jews than the evangelist's Jews in his unknown home place in a way that Christians can only regret.

A Look at the First-Written of the Gospels

Mark is not only the shortest Gospel but one in which the writer's intention emerges fairly clearly as the narrative unfolds. All four Gospels present Jesus and what God accomplished through him as the object of faith. Mark does it by portraying him as not simply a wonderworker but a person who performs deeds of power (dynameis) that represent a healing of the disorder in the cosmos and in human nature. He further wishes to disclose slowly who Jesus is (the Son of God, although erroneously since Wrede's work of 1901 the Messiah). Mark is especially at pains to convey the necessity of suffering with the earthly Jesus if the hope of being raised up from the dead with him is to be realized. Everything in the Gospel leads up to the passion-resurrection drama (and it is that) of 14:1-16:8).

In what follows the LM's lections will be bracketed, but the RCL ones not, although it brackets the numerals of its Proper Sundays. The Markan Advent selections in Year B are 13:24[33]37 on the First Sunday and 1:1-8 on the Second. Since the tradition of long standing has been to use portions of Jesus' end-time discourse on the last Sunday of the Church year and the first Sunday of the next, there can be no complaint at the lectionaries' failure to depart from it. RCL does the hearer a service by beginning at verse 24 and telling what the parable about being alert is in aid of. Mark's Gospel starts from the top (1:1-8) one week later, where John proclaims that one more powerful than he will come after him. That much is repeated with John's baptizing of Jesus added (w 9-11) on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Proper [1] in RCL. Then as the Sundays unfold there is a John interpolation of 1:[35-42]-43-51 on [2], but on [3] a resumption of Mark at 1:14-20; [4] 1:21-28; [5] 1:29-39; [6] 40-45; [7] 2:1-12; [8] 2-13[18]-22; [9] 2:23-3:6. The latest possible Easter is required for all of them to occur. RCL employs 9:2-9 in the non-Roman tradition that observes the Sunday before Lent as Transfiguration Sunday. But Mark 1-2 will largely be heard in the years of a late Easter, with the important observation for LM homilists that they have the option of a woefully short reading on Sunday [9], 2:23-28. For those who read on to 3:6 there is the happy necessity of explaining why a conspiracy of Pharisees and Herodians to destroy Jesus seems to make no sense this early in the story. For while it is the culmination of four healing miracles, two of them on the Sabbath and the charge of harvesting on that day, these in sum do not warrant the drastic decision. What Mark must wish to accomplish here is give a first clue to the way Jesus is going to end. It may not be omitted if hearers are to be told on succeeding Sundays of the Mark year the plot of his narrative, a matter distinct from the plot to destroy Jesus that he contrives.

The readings from Mark on the First (1:[9] 12-15 and Second ([9:2-10]8:31-38) Sundays of Lent are chosen by LM and RCL in the first instance to identify the season as the traditional preparation time of candidates for baptism, and LM in the second the anticipation of a life of glory with the risen Lord. RCL retains the transfiguration story as an alternative but prefers the first of Jesus' predictions of his need to suffer and die, with the Markan warning not to shrink from the thought of a crucified Jesus as Peter does (8:32) or see a source of shame in failing to confess one who dies shamefully (v 38), This lectionary defers the second of the three anticipated summaries of the passion-resurrection narrative to Proper 20 [25], 9:30-37, and omits the third (10:33-34). LM at least presents the first two on successive Sundays, the Twenty-fourth (8:27-35) and Twenty-fifth (9:30-37), likewise omitting the third prediction. The threefold use of basically the same text is at the heart of this Gospel, pointing ahead to the way it will end. Homilists are helped when two of the three occur on Sundays in sequence but not when they are separated by many months. The lections on Proper 5 [10] through 8 [13] are identical in the two lectionaries if LM users read the longer version of the last-named, but the lections then begin to be distressingly brief. A casualty in LM is the elimination of the beheading of John the Baptist, which RCL has on Proper 10 [15] (6:14-29). LM's lection on this day describes the call of the Twelve (6:7-13), which RCL will have two Sundays later, Proper 17 [22]. From 10 [15] on RCL proposes longer beginnings and endings than LM, contributing much to hearer understanding. A five-Sunday intrruption for John 6 in both brings a resumption of Mark at 7:1 on Proper 17 [22]. Again, LM has serious omissions like 7:24-30, which RCL corrects, but reading every longer version of LM from 18 [23] to 28 [33] (which is the same in RCL) will convey sufficiently what this Gospel intends.

A Look at the Book of a Major Prophet

There are readings from Jeremiah on nine Sundays in LECTIONARY FOR MASS, twenty-four in the REVISED COMMON LECTIONARY including Christmas whenever it falls, Easter, and the Reign of Christ. Those in LM are in every case a prefigurement of something in the day's gospel. Some readings are found in both lectionaries, but two are given as alternates in RCL, its regular practice with LM readings between 10 [15] and 28 [33] when it has abandoned the typological principle as primary. As to Sundays in sequence, that is the case of RCL only with its interrupted lections from Proper 16 [21] (Jer 1:4-10) to 20 [25] (8:18-9:1) in Year C and again three times in interrupted sequence on Propers 21 [26] (32:1-3a, 6-15); 23 [28] (29:1, 4-7); and 24 [29] (31:27-34). The copious use of Jeremiah allows Sunday worshipers who follow RCL to grasp the genius of the book. On weekdays in LM Jeremiah is read fourteen times in interrupted sequence from Wednesday in the Sixteenth Week (Year II) to Thursday of the Eighteenth Week (1:1, 4-10 to 31:31-34). These choices convey the sense of the book adequately, although a brief homily needs to point out what the threat from the north was and how Jeremiah was right in prophesying to Hananiah that an iron yoke of Nebuchadnezzar would succeed a wooden one; also, how the LORD can declare Israel's wound incurable in 30:12-15 and immediately recant the judgment in 18-22, The parables of the soiled loincloth and the potter's clay occur in these readings but not that of the baskets of figs. Jeremiah's being threatened with death for demanding that Judah submit to Chaldea (6:1-9 and 11-16) is read on successive days. Since they are the core of the biographical passages they deserve to be heard on a Sunday from LM and RCL, as they are not. A side benefit would be the opportunity afforded by verse 15 to explain where Matthew got his non-historical exchange between Pilate and the crowd about innocence and guilt for Jesus' blood (27:24-25) with its tragic consequences for Jews over the ages.

RCL does better with its Sunday readings in sequence, as might be expected, although proclaiming the siege of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon as underway (32:1-3a) two Sundays before a reading that has them already in exile (29:1) is a bit of a puzzle. The answer is probably the wish to feature the prophet's counsel to launch on a stable Jewish life in Babylon (29:4-7) and his purchase of a field in Anathoth from his cousin as a sign of his certitude that the people will return (32:6-15). LM's choice of Jeremiahs calling on Sunday 4 (C), 1:4-5, 17-19, can be seen as a foreshadowing, in type, of Jesus' enunciation of his calling in the Nazareth synagogue (Lk 4:21-30), but the positioning of Jeremiah 17:5-8 with Luke 6:17, 20-26 can be explained only by the near identity of the prophet's verse 8 with Psalm 1:3 and the evangelist's four beatitudes of Jesus as prepared for by the psalm. Similarly, the prophet as an object of derision and reproach (20:7-9) is paired with Matthew 16:21-27 (a close copy of Mark 8:31-33) that predicts Jesus' sufferings and death. But despite his marvelous challenge to God for having duped him, he cannot hold in the word of the LORD.

An examination of the remaining typological uses of Jeremiah by LM reveals the same pattern: the prophet the target of slanderous whisperings (20:10-13), Jesus' disciples subjected to threats of death for confessing him before others (Matt 10:26-33); Jeremiah deploring that although his people are led astray by false shepherds God will yet raise up for them a just offspring of David (23:1-6) echoed by Jesus "teaching many things" to the people who are like sheep without a shepherd (Mk 6:30-34). We should not be surprised that LM tells us little of the unfolding of the prophetic book yet much about how Jesus' career was foreshadowed by a prophet's book of six hundred years before. The typological principle is not much interested in the unfolding of Israel's story with God (a diachronic view) but is deeply interested in corresponding still shots in two epochs (the synchronic outlook).

The Stories of Earliest Israel

Two books of the Pentateuch deserve a review, Genesis and Exodus. Aside from the opening lections at the Easter Vigil (1:1-2:2; 22:1-8) Genesis does not occur often on Sundays in LM. Five of the ten occasions are in Lent and are as follows: Lent 1(A), the creation and sin of the first pair (2:7-9; 3:1-7); 1(B), the covenant given to Noah and his offspring (9:8-15); 2(A), the call of Abraham (12:1-4a); 2 (B), Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son (22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18); and 2(C), the second promise of the LORD God to Abraham and the cutting of a covenant (15:5-12, 17-18; cf. 14:19). This seems a shocking disregard of the Jacob and Joseph cycles. It can be laid in part to the wide compass of the book and the correspondingly small number of Sundays available to excerpt from it. These are reduced further by the numerous lections from Samuel and Kings that contribute to the typological schema of LM. RCL sensed the importance of the omissions from Christian hearing and compensated by proposing readings from the First Testament from Pentecost to the Reign of Christ (Proper 4 [91 to 28 [33]) in each of the three years. The lections from Genesis occur on twelve Sundays in Year A and are followed by nine from Exodus, one from Deuteronomy (34:1-12), two from Joshua (3:7-17; 24:1-3a, 14-25) and one from Judges (4:1-7). None was chosen to correspond to the gospel of the day. Pursuing the inquiry that characterizes this article we find these inclusions: the story of the flood and its recession; Abram's call and migration; the promise of Sarah's child-bearing and fulfillment; God's promise to make a great nation of Hagar's son; the binding of Isaac; Rebekah as his chosen wife; the birth and maturity of Jacob and Esau; Jacob's dream of God's renewed covenantal promise; Jacob's marriage to the daughters of the wily Laban; the wrestling match terminating in Jacob's renaming as Israel; the treachery of the ten brothers to the favored Joseph; his self-disclosure in Egypt and reunion with Benjamin and the others. Some experts in the book might choose one or other tale they think move the story forward better than one chosen, but, on balance, the twelve that worshipers hear convey remarkably the progress of patriarchal/matriarchal history. Of these, the LM congregants who participate in the Easter Vigil will hear the sacrifice of Isaac read out every year but also on Lent 2(B); those at the Vigil of Pentecost liturgy, the tower of Babel tale but only a truncated version; (12:1-4a, not 1-9) of the Passover ritual on Lent 2 (A); then in common with RCL the curse on snakes for all time and their enmity with the woman's offspring for all time (3:9-15) 5 [10](B); the cutting of the covenant with Abraham (15:5-12, 17-18 Lent 2(C) in a ritual symbolic of a kept or breached commitment (cf. Jer 34:180; the three visitors on Sunday 11 [16](C). But both lectionaries stop short of Sarah's laughter, essential to the naming of Isaac (see 21:3-6) but have Abraham's bargaining with the LORD for ten just men (18:20-32) 12 [17](C). Only LM has the story of Melchizedek's offering gifts of bread and wine (14:18-20), understandably on the Body and Blood of Christ (C).

The Sunday and feast day readings from Exodus in LM are as follows: Moses at the bush, 3:1-8a, 13-15, Lent 3(C); the instruction on the way Passover is to be observed, 12:1-8, 11-14, 37-42, on Holy Thursday; the Israelites' escape from Egypt, 14:15-15:1, on the Easter Vigil; manna and quail rained down from the heavens, 16:2-4, 12-15, Sunday 18(B); water struck from the rock, 17:3-7, Lent 3(A); the story that immediately follows of Moses' hands upheld by Aaron and Hur, 17:8-13, Sunday 29(C); the LORD's promise that Israel will be a kingdom of priests, 19:2-6a, Sunday 11 (A); the ten commandments, 20:1-7, Lent 3 (B); precepts protecting widows, orphans, and laborers, and against extortion, 22:21-27, Sunday 30(A), not found in RCL; covenant ratification in blood, 24:3-8, the Body and Blood of Christ (B); the LORD's wrath and later relenting over the molten calf, 32:7-11, 13-14, Sunday 24(C); God's ricness in kindness and fidelity, Moses' plea for the pardon of sins, 34:4b-6, 8-9, Trinity Sunday (A). The omission of verse 7 from the last named that speaks of the LORD's intent to punish over generations as well as forgive is a hint of LM's tendency to soften what is hard in its lections. On balance, it conveys the narrative and the legislation of Exodus adequately, scattered over three years. RCL has five lections that LM does not employon a Sunday, notably the long opening Exodus narrative, 1:8-2:10; the others are 24:12-18 and 34:29-35. It also lengthens most of the readings it has in common with LM, leading to improved hearer comprehension. The commitment of the latter to the typological principle is followed by RCL but diminished, never abandoned, by its proposing many LM First Testament readings as alternates. The net effect is that the dozen lections of LM are almost the right ones if that limitation had been agreed on. Typology has suggested the inclusion of two of less significance than another two omitted.

An Epistle of Importance

THE LECTIONARY FOR MASS has thirty lections from Romans, the last book to be attended to, but only thirteen on Sundays and feasts. The richness and power of Paul's rhetoric in it is unarguable. Still, his concern for the Jewish-gentile tensions in the Roman church that he has learned of and his exposition of the non-necessity of certain Jewish observances for both ethnic groups as supplementary to faith is something that gained an importance in the West in the Reformation era that it had not had in the centuries before and has not had since except in Protestant-Catholic debate. There, the terms have been quite different from what Paul meant by Mosaic observance. The paucity of Jews in the church has made it largely nugatory--not the importance of faith in the redemptive mystery but the setting in which the apostle made his vehement presentation here and in Galatians. Much of Paul's argumentation comes through as anti-Law, hence anti-Jewish, to the modern ear. Happily, LM omits a public reading of 3:20 and 4:15 while RCL omits the former but not the latter. Unhappily, 2:13 is not read on a Sunday by either lectionary, nor is 7:12; and while LM worshipers never hear 3:31, RCL proposes reading verses 29-31 but only ad libitum. Finally, chapters 9-11 are probably the medulla of Romans up to which the necessity of faith without further religious practices for Jews or gentiles has led, the problem that Paul has had to face. The three chapters get scant attention in both lectionaries. This is regrettable because Christians need to hear of God's continuing love and concern for the Jewish people. Introducing the problem, 9:1-5 is read on Sunday 10 (A) in LM and on 13[18], the previous Sunday, in RCL. The latter proposes verses 5-15 one week later, a passage that is a paean to faith couched in the rabbinic mode. Both then seek a resolution of Paul's dilemma on the Twentieth Sunday by proposing respectively 11:13-15, 29-32 (LM) and 11:1-2a, 29-32. The latter improves on the former by eliminating verse 15, "For if their rejection," meaning the rejection of Paul's gospel by those Jews he has encountered over his twenty-five years of preaching, not God's rejection of the Jews that a Christian congregation can all to readily hear. It does this by substituting for it the important 1-2a, "I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!" and so on. In the choice of lections from Romans we have a case of the successful conveyance to hearers of an argument in the book that they cannot easily understand and by which they can easily be misled in light of the intervening twenty centuries of Christian anti-Judaism. The essential nature of Pauline pistis could have been gotten across by a better editing of both lectionaries. The fragmentation of 8:26-39 over Sundays 16 to 19 (A) with verses 34-55 omitted is a case in point as part of this lost opportunity.

Conclusion

The important question is, Does the typological principle counteract the expressed hope that the Christian faithful be served "richer fare at the table of God's word ... a more representative portion of the Holy Scriptures [be] read out ... in a prescribed number of years" (The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II, [section] 51)? It does and it does not. For while far more of the Bible than before has been made available to those who celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays and feasts, they must inevitably conclude the the Church's rich heritage of the First Testament covering two millennia had no purpose other than to prepare for the saving work of God in Christ. The weekday lectionary of the Roman Church conveys the self-revelation of God to Israel over time far better, as do the readings from the First Testament of RCL in summer (winter in the southern hemisphere). That lectionary fulfills the Council's hope far better than LM, whose proclaimers could, however, improve things notably by employing the longer pericopes of RCL in every case.

Sources and Resources

LECTIONARY FOR MASS. Washington, DC: International Commission on English in the Liturgy, 1969.

THE REVISED COMMON LECTIONARY, CONSULTATION ON COMMON TEXTS. Nashville, TN: Abington Press, 1992.

Bonneau, Normand. THE SUNDAY LECTIONARY. RITUAL WORD, PASCHAL SHAPE. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998.

West, Fritz. SCRIPTURE AND MEMORY. THE ECUMENICAL HERMENEUTIC OF THE THREE-YEAR LECTIONARY. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997.

Gerard S. Sloyan, Ph.D. (Catholic University of America), is Emeritus Professor of Religion at Temple University, Philadelphia, and currently serves as Distinguished Lecturer in the School of Religious Studies, The Catholic University of America and Georgetown University, both in Washington, DC (e-mail: [e-mail]). His most recent publication is THE CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS: HISTORY, MYTH, FAITH (Fortress Press). An associate editor of this Journal, Sloyan is a priest of the diocese of Trenton.