Question:

What are the Bible readings that you post each week, and what does “RCL” stand for?.



Answer:

The RCL, or “Revised Common Lectionary”, replaced the "Common Lectionary" back in the 1980's which grew out of the ecumenical and liturgical reform efforts of the 1970's. The Common Lectionary was intended to give all catholics -- us, RC's, Lutheran's, etc -- a common ground by exploring Scripture in our Sunday worship together. It was an international and interdenominational effort. The big change for Anglicans was we *got* old testament readings (the 1662 service had only an epistle and a gospel), and it takes three years to cycle through the readings instead of one (for the eucharistic readings) or two (for the Daily Office). The three readings and the psalm were linked by a common theme. The theme was drawn from the Gospels, which were followed more or less sequentially; one synoptic per year with John for festivals on all three years. Drawing the theme from the gospels meant that the old testament stories were chopped up, and almost never heard completely or in sequence. There were other deficiencies that lead to the revision of the CL. The end result is that churches that completed their liturgical reform early ended up with the CL in their prayerbooks, whereas those who worked out of pamphlets and flyers for an extra decade got the *R*CL in the prayerbooks. From what I glean from my Liturgy e-list, most churches use the RCL and just use their bulletins to alert the congregation to the readings instead of relying on the listing in the prayer book.

The RCL includes the option of a thematic pattern of OT readings, or a sequential pattern of OT readings. The psalm is linked to the choice of OT reading; the epistle remains linked to the Gospel reading. Then, some national or denominational churches made adjustments to the RCL for their own special needs. So now within our "common" lectionary readings we have the differences between the CL and the RCL, the different choices of OT reading pattern, and the different church-specific variations. But it's a not bad attempt at consistency, none-the-less.

I get the RCL readings from the Vanderbilt Library site, http://divinity.lib.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/

The Episcopal Sunday readings (according to http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/index.htm, which is not an official church website and so could be totally out to lunch) seem to be a subset of the RCL readings. For example, last week the Episcopal Sunday reading left out the middle part of the Mark reading and skipped straight from one half of the Jairus story to the other. Next week the gospel ends at verse 6 where the RCL carries on to verse 13. The corresponding Daily Office readings are quite different -- Mark 1 instead of Mark 6 for this coming Sunday.