CHURCH YEAR

Worship and the Lectionary Structure - A little home spun (with the help of many) theology of worship.

Throughout the Bible, several passages embody a flow: God comes to us so we can go to God.  [e.g., though he was rich, he became poor, that through his poverty, we might become rich.  God so loved the world that he sent his son so that whoever believes can have eternal life.] God approaches us through Christ so that we might have an approach to God.

The lectionary year shares this dual and sequential emphasis by being centered on two events, Christmas and Easter.  Both have a preparation phase, a celebration phase, and a living-out-the-implications phase.  Advent, Christmas, Epiphany – Lent, Easter, Pentecost/Kingdom tide.

All human problem-solving / crisis-confronting / event-celebration has this same threefold structure.  Off in their private moments when confronted with an issue, people go through this sequence quite naturally, without thinking about it: What is my problem? What is the solution?  How can I appropriate that solution.  Worship does this same thing only it addresses our concerns in relationship with God: What is our human predicament?  What is God’s Word for our human predicament?  How do we live out that Word?  For me, this is the threefold structure of worship, with or without a planned and/or printed ‘Order of Worship.’  In worship, these are sometimes called Confession, Praise and Witness, Dedication.  With every lection, and many weeks, with the unique combination of lections, I often begin reflection by asking of them these questions.  These three sequential concerns parallel the three phases in each portion of the church year.  They also parallel the classical phases of Christian Spirituality: purgation, illumination, unitive experience.

Perhaps more than many (a few colleagues have taken well reasoned, and for them, valid exception to this), I see the lectionary as holographic.  Every Sunday is a mini-Christmas/Easter.  Every Sunday courses through a three-fold realization and rehearsal of God’s action and our response.                                                                 [TOP]

Prudence suggests that creativity is stifled when we get too hung up with structure, and I try to stay aware of this.  Most of the time, it’s fun just to free wheel with the texts.  But more often than not, I’ve noticed a self-organizing principle operating just below the surface, bringing order to my chaos.  And there are many moments when I’ve sat in our little porch swing out on our back deck, and just pondered the structure of it all.

Peace,

Ron Sebring