Biblical illiteracy

In order to avoid the chance of preaching my colleague into a corner, I chose to preach only on the first half of tomorrow's Gospel reading. It is the introduction of Jesus by John in which he declares,

Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

I'm not preaching on the second half of the assigned reading in which John records the account of Jesus calling his first disciples.

Since I'm not preaching on that half of the reading, and because next week we'll hear Matthew's version of the "same" event, we chose to only read through verse 37. It's an interesting quandary. It seems counter-intuitive, but perhaps it is more effective to read less of the Bible in worship (while trying to include the variety of the lectionary offerings) than to continue to include as many as 4 readings each week. In a world that has become dependent on Facebook and Twitter, the volume of readings in a worship service seems to make engagement a challenge.

The lectionary was created to introduce breadth to our experience with the Bible. It's a good idea, but maybe it isn't going to make a difference in a culture that depends on sound bytes. I fear we lose the intended audience after 3 or 4 sentences. This is not to suggest that people are incapable of engaging, but we are conditioned to move way to fast for our own good. Perhaps biblical breadth is more effectively created by daily engagement in the Word rather than depending on Sunday morning worship. Of course that's easier said than done as well...