Welcome to Lection and Liturgy

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Welcome to Lection and Liturgy. I have backed up to this site a series of posts making a guide to the whole of the Christian Bible, aimed particularly at those who read it in public. My name's Doug Chaplin, I work as a priest and trainer in the Church of England. Everything here is written in a purely personal capacity. I hope the posts here will help people read Scripture in ways which help their listeners understand what is being read. You can read more about this site in this introductory post, and you can follow it in "book order" using this Reading Guide Index. So here it is: the Bible in 90 posts.

Some frequently read posts

The material reality of love: the letters of John

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Although there are three letters which bear John’s name, the second and third are very short, and perhaps show something of how the teaching of the longer letter is put into action in some specific relationships. Only the first letter is used in the lectionary. This letter in particular shares some significant thinking and vocabulary with the Fourth Gospel. Whether this means they come from the same person or simply the same theological circles is impossible to say. None of them give their author a name. Tradition has associated them with John the Apostle, but there is no way of knowing exactly what relationship, if any, he had with the circles from which these writings came. Detail from a portrait of John the Apostle by Alonso Cano. John is sometimes portrayed blessing a poisoned chalice. For more on this story, see the page for this picture at the Louvre. Apart from the festivals of John the Apostle and All Saints’ Day, readings from 1 John provide the second reading
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Visions, vindication and victory: the strange world of the Apocalypse

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The Revelation to John, also known as the Apocalypse, contains seven letters, which make up the second and third chapters. However, it is not itself a letter, but the only New Testament book which as a whole is in the literary genre of apocalyptic. This is a type of literary description of visions that claim to unveil the meaning of history for those in the know. 1 They often contain the metaphor of a journey through heavenly or spiritual realms with a guide. The vision at the heart of the Apocalypse is that the soft power of the Lamb’s self-sacrifice will be triumphant over the hard power of the mighty Roman empire. While readings from this book are used on a number of feast days, 1 Revelation also provides the second reading for the Sundays of Easter in Year C. Its celebration of Christ’s triumph draws out a key aspect of the Easter gospel. Readers are somewhat prone to introducing readings from this book wrongly. It is the Book of Revelation in the singular, not R
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The first papal encyclical? 1 Peter

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My title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Historically, Rome seems not to have had a single monarchical bishop until well into the second century. Nonetheless, there is a sense that, in looking back to Peter as the first pope, church tradition reflects his calling to be first among the apostles, the rather wobbly rock on which Jesus chooses to start building his church, as well as his clear association with Rome, from where this letter appears to be written. More accurately, calling it an encyclical picks up the way in which it is written to a circle of churches rather than a single congregation. Peter’s first letter is read mainly on the Sundays of Easter during year A. This reflects the way in which it begins with a celebration of the resurrection which remains the frame for the rest of the letter. There are a number of overlaps with some of the letters of Paul, in language and theology. First Peter also shares an expectation with the later Pauline letters that women an
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More perfect priest, superior sacrifice: Hebrews

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There’s a long tradition of grouping Hebrews with Paul’s letters. In the Latin and King James Bible tradition it has usually been titled “Paul’s letter to the Hebrews” as well. Despite that, it has still always been placed after the letters which stand under Paul’s name. Paul’s letters come in order from the longest, Romans, with sixteen chapters, to the shortest, Philemon, with only a single chapter. Even when Hebrews was referred to as Paul’s letter, then, its position in the New Testament put a question mark over the attribution. The style and content have persuaded most contemporary readers that Paul, whose name is entirely missing from the anonymous text, cannot possibly be the author. This, the longest of the miscellaneous letters is a single continuous argument, an exposition of Old Testament texts, with a final chapter of advice and greetings tacked on. The impression is of a sermon which the preacher has decided to turn into a letter and send to (probably) the
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