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The Evolution of a Collect

Yesterday was “Proper 10” – the Sunday between July 10th and 16th.  The Collect of the Day (which continues in the Daily Office throughout this week) is drawn from the traditional Prayer Book’s Collect for the 10th Sunday after Trinity.  This is the prayer as found in the 1662 Prayer Book:

Let thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants;
and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please thee;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

When the modern calendar was adopted for the American 1979 Prayer Book, this collect was one of several that simply disappeared.  But in 2016’s Texts for Common Prayer, where the new ACNA Prayer Book was in development, this collect returned, along with almost all of the classical Trinitytide collects, under a simple transition from “Trinity 10” to “Proper 10”.  Its wording, however, was significantly changed.  Here is the 2016 version:

Hear us, O Lord, when we cry out to you;
and that we might receive what we ask, enable us by your Holy Spirit to ask only what accords with your will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the same Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

The same three-part structure remains, but the force of each phrase is almost entirely flipped.  Instead of “let thy merciful ears be open,” we found “hear us when we cry out to you“, replacing God’s disposition of openness with God’s condescension of hearing, and replacing our humility with our cry.  The old prayer sought for us to pray for things that would please God, and the new version sought for us to pray for what accords with [his] will.  So it’s kind of the same prayer over all, but it is framed with subtle-but-significant differences.

Apparently this revision didn’t stick.  The 2019 Prayer Book instead has this for yesterday’s collect:

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants;
and, that we may receive what we ask, teach us by your Holy Spirit to ask only those things that are pleasing to you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the same Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

The key differences between the first two versions have largely been rolled back to the 1662’s wording: let God’s ears be open to his humble servants, let our prayers be pleasing to God.

But three aspects of the 2016 revision have been retained in the 2019 final form.

  1. This collect prays that we may receive what we ask instead of “that they may obtain their petitions.  This shift from 3rd person to 1st person is part of the overall preference for congregational involvement in the liturgy.  Not that the congregation is invited to pray the Collect of the Day during the Communion service, but the language of prayer on the whole favors “we” over “they”.  Our clergymen don’t pray for the people from a separated distance, but pray as a part of God’s people.  Plus there is the hope that more lay people will pray the Daily Office, and the language of “we” probably supports that mentality.
  2. The modern versions of this prayer cite the Holy Spirit as the one who enables or teaches us to pray rightly.  The classical version simply said make them pray, so this is a theological clarification.
  3. The long ending of the collect has been largely standardized in modern Prayer Books, where many of the classical forms of the collects have shorter endings.

The Collects are an important part of a Prayer Book, and I didn’t watch them very closely, myself, during the formation of Texts for Common Prayer and the 2019 Prayer Book, so little things like that are fun to discover.  I hope this “evolution of a collect” is insightful for you, too.

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Introducing the Four (!?) Books of Kings

The Daily Office Lectionary in the 2019 Prayer Book starts us in on 1 Samuel this morning.  This is the beginning of a long journey through four books with a continuous historical coverage.  In fact, the two books of Samuel and the two books of Kings are so closely related that they are known in the Greek Old Testament as the four books of the Kings (or alternatively, 1-4 Kingdoms).  This is not commonly known among English-speaking Christians today apart from the Eastern Orthodox, though it was given a shout-out in the 1611 Bible authorized under King James.

1 Samuel, or 1 Kings

Anglican Prayer Book lectionaries historically have walked through these four books in the summertime; the way ours is set up it takes us from July into November (since we’re reading from them in Morning Prayer only, and not Morning & Evening Prayer in parallel like the older daily lectionaries).  As time goes on, our lectionary does something that a couple other 20th-century lectionaries have done, and include elements from 1 & 2 Chronicles interspersed with the material from 1 & 2 Kings.  This has the downside of interrupting the continual “voice” of the four books of Samuel/Kings, but is arguably balanced with the gain of the several stories unique to the Chronicles.

A large swathe of history is covered in these four books, but, like the earlier book of Joshua, it is subject to a gradual fast-forwarding effect.

  1. 1 Samuel deals with the life of the Prophet Samuel (he is born in chapter 1 and dies in chapter 25), and the life and reign of King Saul.  In all that’s approximately 80 years of history.
  2. 2 Samuel deals with the reign of King David, approximately 40 years.
  3. 1 Kings begins with the death of David, and takes us just over 100 years, through the reigns of Solomon and 8 Judean kings and 8 Israelite kings.
  4. 2 Kings zips through close to 300 years of history, covering the demise of both the Israelite and Judean kingdoms.

In addition to that accelerating-time-coverage effect, there is also a shift of emphasis in the latter two books away from stories about the kings themselves and toward the lives of certain prophets, especially Elijah and Elisha.  Indeed the amount of material dedicated to the succession from Elijah to Elisha, in the beginning of the fourth book (2 Kings 2), is reminiscent of the attention given to the birth of Samuel (1 Sam. 1-2) and the establishment of the reigns of Kings Saul (1 Sam. 8-10), David (2 Sam. 2-5), and Solomon (1 Kings 1-2).

Besides these connections within these four books, there are also major connections to other parts of the Bible.  The Song (or prayer) of Hannah, Samuel’s mother (1 Sam. 2) is a prototype for the Song of Mary (or Magnificat) in Luke 1, and the divine provision of Samuel’s birth prefigures the hand of God in the conception also of John the Baptist and of Jesus.  King David would go on to become one of the foremost Messianic figures in the Old Testament, forever after cited as an ancestor of the Christ.  King Solomon would go on to become a subtle antichrist figure, starting off as a wise and powerful ruler and ending up an apostate tyrant whose annual income would be re-used in the book of Revelation as “the number of the beast” (1 Kings 10:14 & Rev. 13:18).  The Prophets, especially Elijah and Elisha, performed many signs and miracles that Jesus would later copy and teach about.  The fall of Jerusalem and eventual leniency toward the last king (2 Kings 25:27-30) would set the stage for the later Prophets and the Second Temple Era, a dramatically different phase of Hebrew history that led straight to the events of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So although there is much history in these books, one can see that the most fruitful readings of this material is not to be purely historical, but typological or Christological: how do these events and characters point ahead to Christ?  How is the Gospel foreshadowed?  What do we learn here about the People of God, the Church?  We will see the centrality of listening to (and obeying) God’s Word, the hopeless imperfection of man, the deadly dangers of idolatry and faithlessness, and the loving-kindness (or covenant-faithfulness, or heseð) of God.

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Customary Update: Morning Prayer

The Saint Aelfric Customary for the Daily Office of Morning Prayer has been completed.  You can read it all here: https://saint-aelfric-customary.org/customary-morning-prayer/

The idea behind this is provide guidance regarding when and how to use the various options in the Prayer Book in order to make reasonable use of the scope of resources in the 2019 Prayer Book while yet retaining a stable tether to the great well of Anglican tradition before all these modern forms came to the fore.

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The Gloria may be omitted

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On pages 107 & 125 of the Book of Common Prayer, 2019, the following rubric is found:

The Gloria or some other song of praise may be sung or said, all standing.  It is appropriate to omit the song of praise during penitential seasons and days appointed for fasting.

This in itself is not a particularly strange rubric.  The 1979 Prayer Book renders the Gloria optional, and it is already a widespread custom (rooted in Western liturgical tradition) that the Gloria should be omitted during Lent, Advent, and on other occasions of similar tone.

You can read more about the use (and even placement) of the Gloria in this article from last year’s series on the Communion liturgy.  You will also find there some notes about evaluating songs to replace it which are worth re-stating here:

  • If it is Advent or Lent, this is an excellent point at which to sing a hymn specially appointed for that season.  Or just let the Decalogue stand on its own strength!
  • At other times of the year, be sure it truly is a “song of praise”, as the rubric twice describes it.  A song of praise does NOT talk about me/us, but sings only of God – his character and his works.  The Gloria barely glances at “us”; let that set the standard for whatever replaces it.

What’s so weird about this, though?

I submit this under the banner of Weird Rubric Wednesday not because the rubric itself is weird, or even the reasons behind it are weird, but because some common executions of this rubric are pretty weird.  And it’s on a sliding scale from “okay” to “weird” to just plain “bad”.

Okay?

One approach to replacing the Gloria is to not simply put in one “song of praise,” but a whole set (say, three on average) of contemporary worship songs.  Singing multiple songs here stretches the language of this rubric – “song” is in the singular, after all – but it’s not necessarily an outright violation.  Besides, a lot of contemporary worship songs are shorter than hymns (in terms of word-count through the lyrics) so it’s not necessarily a bad idea to stack up two or three contemporary songs to form a substantial substitute for the Gloria or other single hymn of praise.

Weird?

Sometimes that “okay” idea gets taken a step further: it’s a contemporary “worship set” of three-ish songs in a row, but they’re not brief. Instead they repeat their refrains multiple times and include interludes within or between the songs for people to sing or pray extemporaneously.  This is popular evangelical worship practice, and has made its way into the practice of many Anglican churches.  If you’re going to import other traditions into the Prayer Book tradition, this is probably the least disruptive point in the Communion liturgy in which to do it, though it is worth observing that many Anglicans find contemporary pop-evangelical worship theology incompatible with historic Protestant (as well as Catholic) theologies of worship.  So music ministers and clergy alike should give careful thought to the use of music in the liturgy before stretching the rubrics this far.

Bad?

It is not normally the purpose of this blog to call out bad liturgy; there’s enough grumpy negativity on the internet already.  But occasionally problems in worship (just like problems in doctrine) do need to be confronted.  Moving from “okay” to “weird” to “bad”, the next step in this descent would be to add the excesses of Pentecostalism: speaking in tongues, inviting “words of knowledge” to be shared, and other extemporaneous expressions of charismata according to 20th-century Pentecostal theology.  Much of this runs in the face of St. Paul’s teachings in 1 Corinthians 14, let alone an historic liturgical theology, but this has been known to happen in some Anglican churches today.

So what do you suggest?

When in doubt, keep it simple and consistent.  Say or sing the Gloria for every Communion celebration on Sundays and Holy Days.  For a short mid-week service, perhaps skip it entirely.  During Lent, replace it with a Lent Hymn; during Advent, replace it with an Advent Hymn.  Or just don’t sing anything at all after the Decalogue during those seasons – there’s a lot to be said for stark simplicity in worship, especially in our culture that is over-drenched with activity and sound.

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Some history on the Invitatory

The Invitatory

The invitatory dialogue contains four couplets: two verses of Scripture (Psalm 51:15 and Psalm 70:1) the Gloria Patri (glory be to the Father), and third verse (Psalm 135:1a). In the American Prayer Book tradition, the second couplet was omitted, until 1979 when the second couplet returned in place of the first in Evening Prayer. The final couplet was omitted only in the 1979 Book. Our Prayer Book restores the full English dialogue.

The Antiphons

In the American Prayer Book of 1928, nine antiphons were added for use with the Venite on particular occasions. In 1979 that collection was expanded to thirteen antiphons. Our Prayer Book preserves those thirteen antiphons but moves the ten appointed for specific seasons or holy days to an appendix after the Morning Prayer liturgy to keep the primary text less cluttered. Only the three for general use appear here on BCP 14. Furthermore, these antiphons remain optional.

Historically, in Anglican practice, antiphons have not been a feature. They are extremely common in historic Western liturgy, however – the Roman Rite at its height of complexity having multiple antiphons for every Psalm and Canticle according to season and occasion. At their best, they provide unique “book-ends” that color the worshiper’s experience of the Psalm or Canticle according to the occasion, and enrich the Church’s life of worship. The obvious challenge, of course, is the burdensome complexity that ensues which the Preface to the 1549 Prayer Book explicitly endeavors to remedy.

By providing some antiphons on page 14 and collecting the other 10 on pages 29-30, our Prayer Book endeavors to strike a healthier balance between historical Western complexity and Anglican simplicity.

 

The Venite

The use of Psalm 95 as the “invitatory”, the invitation or call to worship, dates back at least to the Rule of Saint Benedict: it was to be prayed every morning at Matins. This was preserved in Archbishop Cranmer’s Prayer Book of 1549 and thereafter: it was called to be said or sung at Morning Prayer daily except for the 19th day of the month when it would be read as part of the Psalms Appointed, and on Easter Day when the Easter Anthem, Pascha Nostrum, was appointed instead. Furthermore, in the English Prayer Books the Venite included the “Glory be” at the end.

The American Prayer Book tradition diverged from this pattern. The Venite was now Psalm 95:1-7 followed by Psalm 96 verses 9 and 13. Furthermore, the Gloria Patri was rendered optional here. Again, it wasn’t until 1979 that the entirety of Psalm 95 was authorized for the invitatory psalm, and until 2019 that the entirety of Psalm 95 was printed in this place in the liturgy, albeit with verses 8-11 still labelled as optional outside of the season of Lent.

 

The Jubilate

In the classical Prayer Book tradition, the Jubilate Deo, or Psalm 100, was a canticle offered in place of the Benedictus, until the 1979 Prayer Book when instead it was included as an alternative to the Venite as the invitatory psalm. It was offered without rubrical directions, though one already accustomed to the Prayer Book tradition might most naturally consider the Jubilate to be a substitute for the Venite on the 19th day of the month when the Venite was formerly appointed to be omitted from the invitatory. Our Prayer Book also provides no rubrical guidance on the matter, so the same historically-minded intention may still be assumed.

 

Pascha Nostrum

The Pascha Nostrum, as indicated in its Scripture reference text, is an amalgamation of three New Testament texts strung together. Although this is an example from early Church history, Anglican liturgical practice has yielded several examples of collating multiple biblical texts into an eclectic but coherent whole for the purpose of worship.

This Easter Anthem has always been a part of the Prayer Book tradition, but its location has changed in modern practice. Traditionally, it was placed among the Propers (the Collects and Lessons), for Easter Day; since the 1979 Book it has been placed here within the Morning Prayer liturgy.

Originally this anthem was appointed only for Easter Day. The American 1892 Prayer Book uniquely added the Gloria Patri to it. The 1928 Prayer Book authorized the option of using this anthem throughout the Easter Octave (that is, from Easter Day through the First Sunday after Easter). The 1979 Book expanded this further still, appointing it for every day in Easter Week and making it optional every day until the Day of Pentecost. This has not changed in the 2019 Prayer Book, though the wording of the rubric has been altered.

There is also a custom in some places of using the Pascha Nostrum in place of the Gloria in excelsis Deo near the beginning of the Communion service, under the modern rubrics that allow other hymns of praise to take its place. Especially in church cultures where the Daily Office is not publicly offered, this can be an effective way of introducing elements of the Office liturgies to the congregation. Such points of contact and familiarity will prove helpful when teaching people to pray the Office.

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Jesus Loves Me / Solid Rock

It’s one of the classic “little kid” Christian songs that cradle Christians in many traditions learn…

Jesus loves me, this I know
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong;
they are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me!  Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.

Complete with a cute little melody, it’s the perfect song for young kids to learn, enjoy, and promptly grow out of and cast aside in favor more exciting music.

Obvious repetition aside, this Hymn for Children is worth a fresh look.  First of all, it has more verses that a lot of us never heard as children.  In the new hymnal Magnify the Lord, or Common Praise 2017, it is #431, and has four verses.  Here are verses 2-4.

Jesus loves me – this I know – As he loved so long ago,
Taking children on his knee, Saying “Let them come to me.”
Yes, Jesus loves me… etc.

Jesus loves me – loves me still, Even when I’m weak and ill;
From his shining throne on high, Comes to watch me where I lie.
Yes, Jesus loves me… etc.

Jesus loves me!  He who died Heaven’s gate to open wide;
He will wash away my sin, Let his little child come in.
Yes, Jesus loves me… etc.

What this hymn is doing, quite simply, is setting out a theological truth in verse 1 and then exploring the biblical evidence in the next three which verse 1 claims.  So verse 2 looks back to the ministry of Jesus, during which he directly welcomed children; verse 3 brings that biblical love back into the present and highlights his continual care and watching-over; and verse 4 points us into the future, towards our death in the following of Christ’s death.

Hopefully this gives you a newfound respect for ye olde Jesus Loves Me.  But if you still think it’s silly, consider the song printed right before it (#430) in the same hymnal:

My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

This classic hymn, only 25 years older than Jesus Loves Me, is remarkably similar.  It, too, has a repetitive refrain with a message that is only one small step away: from “Jesus loves me” to “On Christ… I stand.”  This first verse is conceptually just as simple as Jesus Loves Me, and its melody is equally basic.  If all you ever heard of this hymn was its first verse, it probably wouldn’t be quite so beloved among adults as it is today.

Even more interesting, when you look at how the lyrics unfold, Solid Rock follows the same structure as Jesus Loves Me:

  1. Basic theological premise
  2. Looking back to Jesus’ example to back up or explain the premise
  3. Applying Jesus’ example to the present
  4. Pointing to the future – death and resurrection

With that in mind, now read verses 2-4.

When darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on his unchanging grace;
In ev’ry high and stormy gale, My anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand… etc.

His oath, his covenant, his blood, Support me  in the ‘whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand… etc.

When he shall come with trumpet sound, O may I then in him be found,
Dressed in his righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before the throne.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand… etc.

The same pattern is found in both hymns.  Yes, the first was written especially for (and about) children, and the second is clearly more “grown-up” in its word choice, language, and range of biblical allusion and reference, but both hymns are solid expositions of the Christian faith.

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An Exegesis of the Invitatory

The Venite, Psalm 95, is the historic standard “invitatory”, or call to worship, and even a cursory glance through its text reveals its aptness for the role.  The opening words “O come,” are followed by three “let us” statements, each giving different angles toward defining worship: singing, rejoicing, thankfulness and gladness, approaching God, and particularly using psalms.  The next verses provide reasons for worshiping God: his greatness and kingship, his ownership of all creation by virtue of being its Creator.  The result is a return to the opening verse: “O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.”  The emphasis on physical posture and gesture is not only symbolic of the disposition of the true worshiper’s heart but also instructive for the postures of right worship; indeed, one of the biblical terms for worship literally means “fall down before” or “prostrate.”

The tone of the second half of Psalm 95 turns suddenly to a dire warning against ignoring God’s voice and hardening against him.  The Exodus generation is invoked as an example of those who so spurned the Lord and received punishment for their rebellion.  These verses point back specifically to Exodus 17, and are in turn picked up for further explication in Hebrews 4 & 5.  The worshiper is reminded of the obligations of worship: praise is empty when not accompanied with (or followed by) obedience to the One who is praised.  Many Old Testament Prophets had strong condemnations for those who participated in divine worship but practiced unrighteousness, and Psalm 95 is our most prominent reminder within the liturgy of the Church that we, too, must practice in our lives the same faith we profess in the congregation.

 The Jubilate, Psalm 100, is a functional substitute for Psalm 95 but does not contain all the same elements.  A few similar phrases are found – 100:2 and 95:7 are almost identical – and the same invitation to worship the Lord is extended, but Psalm 100 lacks the “warning” verses, providing instead only the briefest hint in the words “it is he that has made us, and not we ourselves.”

The Pascha Nostrum, as indicated in its Scripture reference text, is an amalgamation of three New Testament texts strung together, the word Alleluia (or “praise the Lord”) interspersed as an antiphon (a repeated word or phrase) between each section of the canticle.  Like the invitatory psalms the Pascha Nostrum invites people to worship – “let us keep the feast” – but instead of grounding the reason for this invitation in God’s kingship or ownership of the world as its Creator, it instead points to the new creation inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.  The “warning” text of Psalm 95 is similarly transposed here: rather than dwelling on the danger of apostasy this canticle draws the Gospel connection between Christ’s death and the Christian’s death to sin.  This warning is not the cold hammer of the Law, but the healing embrace of the Gospel.

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Filling in the Blanks: Judges

Unlike its predecessor Joshua, the book of Judges gets almost full coverage in the 2019 Prayer Book’s Daily Office Lectionary.  Only the last five chapters are omitted.  If you want to “fill in the blanks” and read those skipped chapters, this Customary’s Midday Prayer Lectionary starts in on that material today.

So let’s take a look at what’s going on here.

The book of Judges is, mostly, a history of twelve judges (six major, six minor) who ruled the tribes of Israel in the period of history before the rise of the monarchy under Saul and David.  The last five chapters, however, are kind of like two appendixes, stuck on as additional stories that take place somewhere in line with the centuries outlined in the majority of the book.

Chapters 17 & 18 tell the story of Micah and his Levite priest, providing a sort of origin story for the rife idolatry that took hold over the tribe of Dan from early times.

Chapters 19-21 tell the story of a Levite and his concubine (legally, his actual wife, but called a concubine because Levites don’t have tribal land allotments to pass down or inherit) and of a holy war against Benjamin that results when she is brutally raped and killed.

Why are these chapters omitted from our lectionary (apart from the generic reason that you’ve got to squeeze the Bible into one year somehow)?  This time we don’t have an easy out: the original Prayer Book lectionary of the 16th-18th centuries included the entire book of Judges, so ours is a reduction of coverage, not an expansion, as is usually the case.  Ours is an improvement over what’s in the 1928 and 1979 lectionaries, but it’s not a full restoration back to the 1662 standard.  Why?

Without insight from the Liturgy Task Force, I can only guess.

The story of Micah & his Levite “priest” is a wicked story, telling of the descent of a whole tribe toward notorious apostasy.  It is a “bad example” story, with very little good in it for a Christian to seek to imitate.  Perhaps it was thought that there are enough examples of sin in the biblical literature already, that this episode was ruled expendable to make room for more immediately edifying readings elsewhere.

The story of the Levite and his concubine, the crimes against her, the resulting war and subsequent insanely sinful plans to rescue the tribe of Benjamin from extinction, is also quite low in “good examples.”  It’s a brutal story, perhaps the most vivid account of rape in the Bible – it may be that the current cultural climate would benefit from careful study of a story like this, rather than public reading.  There are also a number of concepts and events in this story that are difficult to understand without particular instruction and explanation: what it means for the Levite to have a concubine, why he chopped her dead body into twelves pieces and mailed them around the country, why genocide seemed like a good idea, and why more rape and abduction seemed like a good solution to prevent the genocide.

There may be something I’m missing here; terrible as they are, these are stories I would not have chosen to drop from the daily lectionary.  Still, every Bible-in-a-year plan or daily lectionary is going to have its shortcomings somewhere; I’m not going to say this one’s absolutely perfect.  So if you want to read those skipped stories, consider picking them up in Midday Prayer over the coming week or so.

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Filling in the blanks: Ezekiel

I’m posting this a week later than I probably should have… maybe that was a mistake in my pre-planning.  Anyway, back on June 21st we read Ezekiel 47 at Evening Prayer, and then didn’t come back for its final chapter, 48.  Before that we’d skipped chapters 44-46, and 41-42, which I briefly explained and summarized in a video that Friday.  But there’s more: chapters 19-32 were skipped; that’s about 30% of the book gone right there.  Chapters 38 & 39 also were omitted.  Altogether, approximately 45% of Ezekiel is not in our daily lectionary.  The evangelical reader is probably annoyed right now.  “What gives?”

If historical precedent is any consolation….

  • less than 18 chapters (38%) appear in the 1979 Book’s daily lectionary
  • about 16 chapters (33%) appear in the 1928 lectionary
  • maybe 13 chapter (27%) appear in the 1922 lectionary in the 1662 Book
  • nearly 23 chapters (47%) are in the 19th century’s lectionary in the 1662 Book
  • only 12 chapters (25%) are read in the ORIGINAL Anglican daily lectionary

So with us reading 55% of the book, that’s a massive increase compared to every Prayer Book before ours.

But of course, someone who is not as optimistic about the wisdom of the Church and the value of the Prayer Book is still going to argue: what’s “wrong” with so much of Ezekiel?

I’m not going to analyze, explain, and defend the mentality of each prayer book in our history, other than to say that Ezekiel is one of the least-accessible Prophets to read fruitfully without a great deal of study, and so when it comes to the public daily reading in the churches it is more profitable to spend time on other portions of Scripture that are more readily understandable and clear to the people in the pews.  That said, let’s take a quick look at what the 2019 Prayer Book’s daily lectionary omits.

Chapters 19-32 are a series of oracles, prophecies of condemnation and judgment, against Jerusalem, Israel & Judah, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt.  They vary in style and tone, and there are few “famous” images among these chapters, such as the Ohola & Oholiba parable for the unfaithfulness of Israel & Judah.  These aren’t “unimportant” chapters, as such, but they are “redundant” with a fair bit of the Prophetic Corpus of the Old Testament.

Chapters 38-39 form the prophecy against the mysterious Gog and his land, Magog.  This has been interpreted in many different ways, pointing to the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, and even to a yet-future world power in the End Times.  When it comes down to it, this is not mere prophecy, but apocalyptic literature, which comes with its own special interpretive challenges.  I suppose that the restoration of the book of Revelation into the daily lectionary has mitigated the need to to rely on its even-more-puzzling Old Testament forebear.

Chapters 41-42 and 44-46 are basically a series of pictures in prose form.  Here we find the lengthy description of the New Temple, which I talked about in the video post linked at the beginning of this article.  Chapter 40, in the lectionary, is sufficient for giving the reader the “establishing shot”, to use a TV/movie term, and chapter 43 describes an event or scene there.  The rest, omitted, do provide additional prophetic insights of course (they are scripture), but the majority of that material is a slow slog through a lot of measurements and repetitive formulae.

Chapter 48, similarly, is an extension of the information in chapter 47; together they describe a map of new tribal allotments.  You can read more about that here if you like.  For the Christian, the important lesson is in the promise of God that he will bless his faithful people; the specific land boundaries are simply images that prefigure the perfection of the New Heaven & New Earth, so grinding through all the geographic descriptions is not strictly necessary for getting the point across.

That said, if you are a “completionist” when it comes to reading the Scriptures, you can always pick up this Customary’s Supplementary Midday Prayer lectionary to fill you in on the missed chapters of Ezekiel, scattered throughout the summer.