Year W?

Scott Anderson

Wait a minute! We’ve come to know Year A, Year B, and Year C over the years. As we’ve cycled through these cycles of readings, they have become familiar and perhaps even welcome guides to our faith practices. But Year W?

For the season of Lent and Easter—beginning with Ash Wednesday and through Pentecost Sunday—we will interrupt our regular practice of following the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) to take on a modified set of scripture readings instead. The occasion gives us a good opportunity to remember what a lectionary is and what it is for.

What is a Lectionary?
Simply put, a lectionary is an order of readings practiced by faith communities. The RCL is a three-year cycle of Sunday readings: (1) a first reading (usually from the First Testament), with a song, a psalm or canticle, that offers a response to it, (2) a second reading (usually from a New Testament letter or epistle), and (3) a Gospel reading. Year A generally follows Matthew, Year B centers Mark. We are currently in Year C, which centers Luke. The Gospel of John shows up in all three lectionary cycles, usually during the festival seasons (Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter and the festival Sundays that surround each).

It has been our common practice at St. Andrew to follow the RCL for numerous reasons. Among them:

• The practice draws us toward the church universal. It aligns us ecumenically with churches down the street and throughout the world who are reading the same or similar texts on any given Sunday.
• The selection of scriptures draws us from our tendency to explore those texts that we know and are comfortable with (a “canon within the canon”) toward a more expansive reading and a more dynamic faith and practice.
• The lectionary cycle weaves theme and meaning from one Sunday to the next and invites us into the fullness of the gospel as it is reflected in the church seasons.

The last point can be made in another way: a lectionary is essentially a curriculum—one of the most ancient within the Christian faith tradition, and others too. From the fourth century, lectionaries have been continuously shaped and used to guide the faith and mission of the church.

So, back to the initial question:

Year W?
​While the RCL cycle of readings draws out a generous selection of the scriptures, it is not comprehensive. Even in the three-year cycle some stories and scriptures are left out. Decisions have been made as to which texts best inform our faith and action. And there is always room for debate.

Wilda C. Gafney, a biblical scholar and Episcopal priest who teaches at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas has brought her voice and her scholarship to the debate. She is interviewed in a recent Christian Century article that provides some background to a project that began in 2017 with her desire to center neglected stories of women in the Bible.

She’s doing this in a variety of ways, among them,

• Finding all the passages in which women and girls are present whether named or not, speaking or not, then arranging them according to themes suitable to the liturgical seasons.
• She also went back to the original texts to translate them using language that expands people groups to make the presence of women and girls explicit, lists genealogical information maternally, and uses expansive descriptive language for the name of God instead of “Lord.”

The result is a translation that often catches our ears in fresh ways and creates a place where everyone can find themselves in the texts as fully created in the image of God. We will use the selections and original translations for the season found in her book Year W: A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church.

---