Michael Niebauer on How the Lectionary Connects Scripture with Worship

Interview with Michael Niebauer

What is a lectionary? 

Broadly speaking, a lectionary is simply a schedule of Bible selections (called lections) that individuals or churches read on specific days of the Church calendar.  

Most Catholic and Protestant churches use a 3-year lectionary cycle to structure their Sundays and major Church holidays. This lectionary typically features an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, and New Testament reading, and a Gospel passage. The Roman Catholic church’s lectionary is called the Lectionary for Mass, while Protestant churches use a very similar, though slightly modified, version called the Revised Common Lectionary. Anglican churches use either the Revised Common Lectionary or a modified version of it from the Book of Common Prayer. 

You open the book describing your experience of growing up and hearing Scripture read regularly, but without ever grasping how the readings fit together. How did that experience inform From Word to Worship?  

While I have spent my entire life attending churches that utilize a version of the 3-year lectionary, I almost never encountered preaching that attempted to draw out the connections between the four different Bible readings each Sunday. Most pastors just preached from the Gospel or ignored the lectionary altogether in favor of a sermon series. 

This is a fairly common experience for many people who attend traditional churches. I have found that most people who attend traditional services have a vague sense that the lectionary readings are supposed to be related to each other and the church season, but they can’t articulate what that connection is. Because of this, I think many of the readings, particularly the Old Testament readings, just become background noise. From Word to Worship is trying to help out people who have had this kind of experience. 

Who is this book for? What do you want your reader to walk away with? 

The book is meant for anyone who attends a church that uses one of these 3-year lectionaries. It is meant to help Christians see the connections between all four lectionary readings each week, as well as to see how they are connected to both the Church Calendar and the liturgy. It progresses through the major themes of the lectionary from Advent through Ordinary Time with the hope that people can use the book as a kind of companion and guide as they walk through the Church year in their local congregation. 

Ultimately, I want someone who reads From Word to Worship to be able to show up to church on Sunday and intuitively grasp the connections between the scripture they hear and the worship that they participate in. 

What’s a common misconception about the lectionary that your book sets out to correct? 

I think some people are worried that the use of the lectionary will make it difficult for new or non-Christians to understand the weekly sermon, or that it obscures the basics of belief. But the lectionary is actually quite, for lack of a better term, “seeker sensitive.” Issues surrounding repentance, faith, and baptism are weaved into almost every part of the Church calendar, and an astute pastor could easily draw out these themes in their preaching if their congregation is full of non or novice Christians.   

The early church was quite happy to read the Old Testament in an interconnected way—for example, they saw the Red Sea as “about” baptism. How does the lection help us read scripture as an integrated whole? 

Many modern interpreters treat the Old Testament like a movie prequel: interesting for die hard fans, but not essential to the main event. Much of this stems from our treatment of the Bible solely as linear history, as a story that progressed from beginning to end. While the Bible is such a story, it is much more.  

Since the Bible is written by God, who is outside of time, each passage of scripture can refer to things in the past, present, and future, all at once. So the story of the Red Sea can simultaneously be a story about Israel escaping slavery in Egypt and a story about our own escape from slavery to sin through baptism in Christ. 

The lectionary invites us to read scripture this way. It puts OT and NT passages together so that we see these connections, and so that all parts of scripture can nourish our faith in Christ.  

You show how the church’s liturgy and worship are deeply integrated with scripture—can you provide an example? 

In the appendix of From Word to Worship I include a brief sermon on the readings for Lent 4B. The readings pull together the story of the venomous stakes from Numbers 21 and Jesus’ declaration that he would be lifted up in John 3. These passages are inviting us to see how we are healed from the sinful venom we have ingested by the wood of Moses’ staff and the wood of cross. The readings really zero in on that connection between ‘lifting up’ and God’s mercy.  

This is why we lift up a processional cross each Sunday—it is an invitation for us to lift up our eyes alongside of the Israelites in the wilderness and likewise experience the mercy of God displayed on the cross.  

This simple liturgical action of lifting is thus meant to be a moment to actually live out these scriptures, to do what scripture says.  

For a pastor in a non-liturgical, evangelical church that has never used a lectionary at all, what does the lectionary have to offer?  

One of the best things about the lectionary is that it sets clear expectations for the Sunday sermon. Both pastor and congregation know well in advance what the readings will be, and they know that the sermon will be based on those readings. The sermon flows out of scripture, rather than the scripture flowing out of the topic chosen by the pastor. 

I know many evangelical pastors who feel a constant pressure to preach about the political issues of the day. They deal with angry parishioners who feel like they are either preaching too much, or too little, about politics. But the lectionary frees pastors to just preach from a given set of scriptures rather than a random set of news headlines. Parishioners in turn can show up with a clear set of expectations for what the sermon should be about. 

Tell us something about you that only your friends or family would know. 

I love music, and used to play string bass in various jazz, pop, and country bands. Steely Dan is my favorite band, and I have worked their music into sermons more than any pastor should. Much of my appreciation of music has bled into my writing—I believe God created melody and harmony in music to teach us about the various complementary ways to read scripture. 

Michael Niebauer explores these themes more fully in his book From Word to Worship: How the Lectionary Welcomes You into Sacred Time Through Story, Symbol, and Sacrament.  

Michael Niebauer is director of Heritage Mission, an initiative that trains leaders to start worship services in care facilities. He is the author of Four Mountains: Encountering God in the Bible from Eden to Zion and the award-winning Virtuous Persuasion: A Theology of Christian Mission.