Lection and Liturgy

With the psalms, this series reaches the book of the Old Testament most heavily used by Christians. It is the most quoted in the New Testament, and most read, sung and prayed in the life of the church. The Lectionary for Mass, which became the basis of the Revised Common Lectionary, reintroduced the psalms to celebrations of the Eucharist, and did so in a particular way. Older eucharistic services, whether the Latin Missal or the Book of Common Prayer, only had an epistle and gospel reading, with chants or (eventually) a hymn between the two. When the new lectionary introduced an Old Testament reading (linked to the gospel) it also introduced a psalm which in some way responded to the Old Testament reading. People are invited to respond to the word of scripture using other words of scripture. The pattern of speaking scripture to God, and hearing scripture from God was typical of forms of daily prayer, which many people meet, in a rather different way, in Anglic...

The third main section of Old Testament and apocryphal books is something of a grab bag, whether we focus solely on the undisputed books, or include the deuterocanonical ones as well. For some people, poetry is the dominant characteristic, although much of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are prose. For others, wisdom is the primary emphasis, although it is not the most obvious category for many psalms, nor for the love poetry of the Song of Songs. The Hebrew books are all classified by Jewish tradition under the miscellaneous third category of Writings. They are the books that are not Law or Prophet. Christians might add to that classification, saying they are the books that are not Law, Prophet or History. Nonetheless, poetry is the predominant form, and wisdom a frequent emphasis. It has become the custom to print poetic passages as lines of verse, unlike the older tradition of the Authorised Version. Perhaps this is most obvious in Bibles which are printed like oth...

There are a few carefully selected stories from the two books of Samuel which occur in the lectionary. There is a larger number in those churches which use the continuous Old Testament lectionary. This wider selection is not surprising, as these books tell the story, often quite critically, of the establishment of the Israelite monarchy. They also present a warts-and-all picture of the man who would come to be revered as the ideal king, David of Bethlehem. King David Playing the Harp (detail), Gerard van Honthorst, 1622, via Wikimedia Commons The book begins with the story of Samuel’s birth to Hannah and Elkanah, though Hannah, desperate to conceive, is the main character. Her story, and that of the eventual birth of her son as an answer to prayer, is echoed by Luke when he comes to tell the story of Mary and Elizabeth at the beginning of the gospel. Hannah gives her miracle baby, Samuel, back to God and he is brought up in the sanctuary at Shiloh. He grows up to become a ...