Pastor's Corner: The Church's Bible reading plan

Have you ever read the Bible cover-to-cover?

It's true that tackling the entire Bible takes determination and time. Some parts of the Bible feel like a long car ride ... they just keep going and going and going. And other parts of the Bible feel like they belong to another religion entirely. Animal sacrifices? God smiting Israel's enemies? Rules about what menstruating women can and can't touch? Lakes of fire? How does it all relate to God, Christ, and us?

For some Christians, reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is a regular part of their spiritual life. For others, it's a goal that they hope they'll one day reach. Yet for some, reading through the entire Bible feels as impossible as keeping the deer and bunnies out of our yards. Thankfully, we've got a way to graze through the entire story of the Bible, at least the Old Testament, with something called the semi-continuous or narrative lectionary.

Many denominations, like the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Catholics, base their Sunday Bible readings on a three-year plan: the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). The RCL is why each week Lutherans in Havre and Catholics in Helena listen to and ponder the same Bible stories-both follow the RCL. The RCL provides one Old Testament reading, one psalm, one reading from a New Testament letter, and a Gospel reading. If your church follows the RCL, you get exposed to a LOT of Scripture-and not just your pastor's favorite passages!

The semi-continuous/narrative lectionary is a more recent update to the RCL. Traditionally, during the "green" Sundays of the church (also called 'the season after Pentecost' or 'Ordinary Time' ... think June-October), the Old Testament readings jump around the Old Testament, so that their theme matches the theme of the Gospel reading. With the narrative lectionary, the Old Testament readings start in Genesis and go, semi-continuously, through the entire Old Testament. The themes don't match with the Gospel reading (unless the preacher gets super creative), but the readings do guide us through the Old Testament's story of salvation. Over the three-year course of the semi-continuous lectionary, we get the full story, in order. These readings narrate the story of salvation.

This story of salvation is, as Episcopalian preacher Fleming Rutledge puts it, "the story of the God who came searching for us." Sarah and her husband Abraham didn't go searching for God; God came searching for them, and God stuck with them and their family through thick and through thin. God searched for them when they wandered in the desert after captivity in Egypt. God searched for them when they had abandoned the righteousness and justice that God asked of them. God searched for them when foreign invaders swooped in and deported Israel to distant lands. God searched for them in the form of a wandering Galilean, who healed the sick and the suffering and preached good news to the poor, and who, on the cross, opened his arms to all.

And doesn't God search for us when we wander, when we abandon justice, when we feel lost? The search that began in Genesis is ongoing, and WE are who God is searching for. And that's why we love to tell the story, and why we use the narrative lectionary to help us. Whether your church is using the narrative lectionary or not, may your Bible reading plan show you your place in the ongoing story of salvation.

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Pastor Megan Hoewisch

First Lutheran Church