beginning again with Kings & Chronicles

It is December 11th, and I'm at the end of week 24 in Reading God's Story, which means that I've read just about half of the Bible this year, rather than the whole thing. I've toyed with the idea of starting over in January back in Genesis since I didn't meet my goal in 2012, but I think that is just perfectionism talking! I've decided instead to read through the end of week 26 by the end of December, which is exactly half way through Reading God's Story - since there are 52 weeks total. Then I'll begin with week 27 on Tuesday, January 1st.

Right now I'm reading about the break-up of the kingdom of Israel after the reign of Solomon, which is great timing, because that is also what we are studying in our middle school Sunday School classes at St. George's. (We are using a great curriculum this year called The Story.) This is a stretch in Kings and Chronicles where there are very few stories that most people would be familiar with, perhaps with the exception of the prophet Elijah. In preparing for Sunday School last week, I realized that if someone had asked me to tell them this part of the story from memory, I would have had lots of gaps and errors! I have been pondering why we don't tell the stories from this part of the Bible as much as others. I wonder if it's because they are fairly grim; reading litanies of one bad king after another isn't much fun.

I decided to do a little research and see how often these stories turn up in the Revised Common Lectionary - the three year reading schedule we use in our services in the Episcopal Church. A quick look at the Reverse Lectionary, which lists all the RCL readings in biblical order, shows that we never read Chronicles during our Sunday services. Not once. We read a fair bit from 1 Kings but only passages about either Solomon or Elijah. We read from 2 Kings 5 times, but only 3 passages (we read a couple of them twice). The first is Elijah being taken up and Elisha receiving his mantle, the second is Elisha's miracle of feeding 100 men with 20 loaves of bread (sadly skipping over Elisha's encounter with the Shunammite widow and the raising of her son in chapter 4), and the third is the cleansing of Naaman. The rest of 2 Kings goes untold. The story of the dividing of the kingdom into two, the fall of Israel, and the fall of Jerusalem is not included. We do have a few readings from Lamentations, which references the fall of Jerusalem, but the narrative from the historical books is omitted.

The good news is that the lectionary is not the be all and end all. Contrary to the mindset in much of the Episcopal ethos, we can pick up a Bible on our own and read these books for ourselves! The Reformation has indeed occurred, thanks be to God :) However, I suspect the omission of these stories from the lectionary reflects a belief that these stories aren't as significant or palatable or easily understood as other stories in the Bible. That's too bad, because I would love to give a sermon on the fall of Jerusalem or on King Josiah. I am looking forward to rediscovering the stories of Kings and Chronicles over the next few weeks.

If you've fallen behind this year, perhaps you'll consider joining me halfway through and starting up on January 1st!