The Challenge of Christian Ethics
The Common Lectionary prescribes a three-year rotation of Biblical passages for worship by assigning each Sunday of the year an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a Gospel passage and an Epistle reading. The lectionary serves multiple purposes, assuring that the ecumenical Christian communion is connected by hearing the same texts whether we are worshipping in a United Methodist, Catholic or Presbyterian congregation. It generally offers a full sweep of formative readings so that preachers like myself don’t land on a smaller canon of familiar and more palatable texts.