At General Convention in June 2006 a new Sunday Lectionary was adopted. This lectionary, called the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) will replace the one found in the Prayer Book on pages 887 through 1001. Trial use of the Revised Common Lectionary began in 1983 and it will become the official lectionary beginning with the first Sunday of Advent 2007.
As Andy Langford, a Methodist clergyman in Charlotte, NC writes: “A lectionary is a calendar of the Christian year and a table of scripture readings…a lectionary creates a pattern to structure a Christian life on a temporal calendar, and provides a sequence of Bible passages to flesh out the calendar. Lectionaries have existed from the first four centuries of the church…The Christian calendar came first. The earliest Christians first celebrated Easter, then Pentecost, then Epiphany, then Christmas, then Lent and Advent, and finally
other special days that rounded out the Christian year. Obviously, each of these days had associated readings from the Bible, and thus the lectionary took shape. By the fourth century, the Western lectionary took the shape that most English-speaking Christians in the West would recognize…While all Roman Catholics. Lutherans, and Episcopalians use the lectionary each week, other denominations like United Methodists use it about 70% of the time, and most Southern Baptists would never consider using one.”
Langford continues: “There are in the United States two major lectionaries. The first was the Roman Lectionary…created in 1969…and then revised in 1981. This lectionary…is essentially the same lectionary one finds in the Episcopal and Lutheran books of worship. (This) lectionary is a three year calendar that essentially bases each Sunday on a particular Gospel lesson, and then chooses an Epistle reading, and Old Testament reading based on the Gospel reading….
The second major lectionary is The Revised Common Lectionary created by an ecumenical liturgical group called the Consultation of Common Texts. This was first published in 1983 and revised in 1992…. both lectionaries are:
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intended for the weekly Lord’s Day celebration…
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include three readings plus a psalm as a response to the Old Testament;
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affirm the Western calendar of two Christological cycles: Easter and Christmas
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(have a) three-year pattern: Year A, Matthew; Year B, Mark; Year C, Luke; with John used during the high holy days in all three years;
The Revised Common Lectionary believes that the Roman Lectionary (and thus the one in the Book of Common Prayer) does not treat the Old Testament as a significant document except through the lens of the Gospels. Instead the RCL reads the Old Testament in the Sundays of Ordinary Time (after Epiphany and after Pentecost) in semi-continuous ways…For example, in the first year of the lectionary, Year A, the RCL reads stories from the creation, to
the patriarchs, to Moses and finally to Deborah. Many of these stories are simply never read in the (current) lectionary.
The Revised Common Lectionary also:
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is based on the New Revised Standard Version for its versification;
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keeps more (passages) together
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includes significantly more passages that include women
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has completely revised the psalms as responses to the Old Testament lesson.”
