A Confession

From time to time I hear people talking about some new teaching or emphasis they have discovered. Topics I have heard about recently include discipleship, missions, the public reading of the Scriptures in church and more. I confess, I struggle with my response. I am excited that they are seeing this and yet at the same time I feel frustrated, discouraged, and exasperated. Why in the world would I ever feel that way??

It would be one thing if they said, "Look what I have discovered. Don't know how I could have missed it, but I did. Now I want to recover this for me, for us etc." But they don't. They say, "Look at what I have discovered. I have discovered a new truth, hidden and unknown to the church since the apostles until now." Or, for some reason, that is how I hear it. And I wonder, "Where do you think it went? It has been around for ever and has always been emphasized. In fact, I preached and taught and emphasized this for years!" So, I confess, I have this problem.

This morning, for example, I was listening to a sermon in which the pastor quoted from 1 Timothy 4, "give attendance to reading" or, as his version has it, "devote yourself to the public reading of scripture." He was excited about his sense of being convicted by the Lord to do this. Unfortunately, as I listened, I think his understanding of this was that the pastor should be sure to preach and teach from the Bible. And he should. But this is covered in the rest of the verse, “Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.” And then he went on about how we should personally read the Scriptures and of all the benefits attending such reading. And that is also true.

And yet, sad. He read it then missed it. He said some wonderful things, but he missed the point of the verse. Now, I don’t know if they have added this to their worship since I last attended, but from what he said he missed it. This verse told Timothy and tells us to “give attendance to reading” or again, as the version he used had, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture.” This may be new to him, but this is actually older than the Church!

What? Yes! Israel had quite “the public reading of the Scriptures” program. Every year they read through the Torah, the first five books of the Bible (Genesis through Deuteronomy). They read anywhere from 6 to 10 chapters a Sabbath. In addition, they read through the prophets every two years! This explains Luke 4:16-17, “And he [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah.” He didn’t pick the text. The reading for that day was from Isaiah.

The apostolic church inherited this tradition. Hence Paul’s instruction to Timothy. The Greek Orthodox Church, who can literally trace their history back to apostolic times, still publicly reads through the New Testament, except for Revelation, every year. All liturgical churches publicly read the Scriptures - they read a portion from the Gospels, Epistles, and Old Testament. The schedule for this reading is called the Lectionary.

I remember when I was a young pastor. I was so spiritual - we worshipped the Lord and I taught the Word (unlike all the dead and liberal churches around us). But, I didn’t go in much for the public reading of the Scriptures, except for an occasional responsive reading selection from the back of the hymnbook. Then one Sunday we were visiting Mary’s folks (who were living in Jackson, MS at the time) and went with them to a Methodist Church. I secretly looked down on them as not as spiritual as they used to be and certainly not as spiritual as we were (see, I told you this was a confession). It wasn’t a great service but God emphatically spoke to me. As was their tradition, they had  a Scripture reading and a time of prayer. God opened my eyes and said, “That’s what I meant.” I discovered something, something as old as the people of God! And from that Sunday I set about to recover this for the church I pastored (always telling this story and emphasizing we were returning to ancient practice).  I chose to read through entire books and so diligently created my own lectionary. I decided that with today’s limited attention span and service times, we would read no more than 20 verses at a time. And so we read through most if not all the New Testament and some of the Old.

This is what Paul meant when he wrote, “give attendance to reading.” It saddens me that contemporary churches have, for the most part, thrown this out. As well as the pastoral prayer. Get this, C.H. Spurgeon, in his lectures to his young preachers, said the pastoral prayer should be no longer than 15-20 minutes!!! But that’s another post.

As I mentioned earlier, I do not know if this brother will institute such a public reading program or not. I hope he does, because that would be the biblical thing to do. Besides, I got carried away. This is really a confession on my part to my mixed feelings when I hear such things. After all, my blog is all about me, right? :-)


If you are interested, this is the LITURGY OF THE WORD in liturgical churches

First Reading
After the reading the reader says: The Word of the Lord.
All respond: Thanks be to God.

They sing a Psalm

Second Reading
Again the reader says, The Word of the Lord.
All respond: Thanks be to God.

The Gospel
"A reading from the holy gospel according to..."
At the end of the gospel, he says, The gospel of the Lord.
all respond: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

I find it rather amusing that while evangelical churches look down on them, the liturgical brethren have a rather high regard for the Word of the Lord!