Goodbye to Year B, hello to Year C!
My first experience of the Lectionary was with the last few months of Year C in 2016. It was quite baffling, previously having been in churches that picked their own readings. But as I have lived with it, finding the readings for the Sunday services last year and trying to read the Gospel for the day as part of the Nazareth Community, I have grown to appreciate it. (The error in the lectionary on the 17 June 2018 was only a temporary setback).
I am thankful for those that were commissioned to produce the Revised Common Lectionary, published in 1992, by an ecumenical and international task force. I love how at services here at St Martin’s, I know that Christians in other places are reading the same selection of the Bible, and how it can build a sense of community amongst us.
This Advent, the lectionary leads us through Luke as the Gospel on Sunday mornings, with Luke 21: 25-36 today. Much of it seems to go over my head, but verse 34 caught my eye, perhaps not in the most serious way at the beginning: take care your hearts aren’t weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the cares of living. Or, as the Message puts it: ‘parties and drinking and shopping’. They seem to me to be good and fun Christmassy things. May we go about this Advent and Christmas celebrating, but with a lightness and expectation of heart, knowing our life is found most abundantly with Christ.
Georgie Illingworth
