Reciting the gospel from memory
Bartolomeo
Shipmate Posts: 9
>>delurk<<
>>my it's quiet here these days<<
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Recently I attended a service at an ELCA shack where the pastor recited the gospel "reading" by memory. I don't recall having witnessed clergy doing such a thing ever before.
I am curious as to a) whether this is permitted, and b) whether it is thought to be wise.
The pastor in question is an interim pastor, not inexperienced. He followed a postmodern, evangelical, conversational style in his sermon.
>>my it's quiet here these days<<
>>wtf happened to the hundreds of posts I made in the Before Times??<<
Recently I attended a service at an ELCA shack where the pastor recited the gospel "reading" by memory. I don't recall having witnessed clergy doing such a thing ever before.
I am curious as to a) whether this is permitted, and b) whether it is thought to be wise.
The pastor in question is an interim pastor, not inexperienced. He followed a postmodern, evangelical, conversational style in his sermon.
Comments
The ELCA’s Principles for Worship (2002), Principles L-7 and L-7A, says: Does reciting count as reading? I’m not sure it does.
In my own tribe (the PC(USA)), our Directory for Worship, which defines what is required, recommended and permitted in worship, clearly presumes reading of Scripture. It says: “reading, hearing, preaching, and affirming the Word are central to Christian worship and essential to the Service for the Lord’s Day.” It also says “[t]he public reading of Scripture is to be clear, audible, and attentive to the meaning of the text. Reading from the church’s Bible conveys a sense of the permanence and weight of the Word of God, and demonstrates the communal nature of the biblical story.”
I think that last sentence illustrates why, to my thinking, recitation from memory, even if permitted, is unwise and undesirable, or perhaps could be called liturgically deficient. Reading underscores the nature of Scripture as the community’s story, the community’s inheritance and possession. Recitation calls attention to the one reciting; it risks being a performance. (It also risks forgetting the words, of course.) Reading generally puts the focus on the text, while recitation risks putting the focus on the reciter.
Or so it seems to me.
I don't think anybody here has had problems with it being considered a "look at me" kind of thing, at least that I've heard of. It's fairly well-known that other ages and cultures outdo us in the memory recitation department by huge amounts, so no reason for us to get big heads at doing a single passage or even Gospel.
I believe I have relayed before the story of the elderly priest who lost his sight but was unimpeded as he knew by heart the BCP services... right up to the point where, lacking visual cues, he selected the wrong occasional office service.
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At the other extreme I do find it a bit off-putting when priests fumble for their paperwork to read the Lord's Prayer or whatever.
These days at Our Place the words of the reading appear on the overhead screen (NIV UK version). The Bibles in the pews are also British NIV, but are now about twenty years old, and seem to have many differences from the online version. The reader may be using the online version, a pew bible, or their own bible. This can mean that wondering about variations in the words becomes a distraction from the message of the reading.
The custom was suppressed in 1966 ( post V2) and by 1969 ( my final year at ssid gulag) we were allowed home ( Canberra in my case) on the Wednesday of Holy Week.
Seriously crazy…
Reading a portion of the Gospel publicly in church, during Mass, is not the same as preaching about what has been read.
One might say that this would not be a Bad Idea today...
We still get that with Pastoral Letters from the bishop. There was one on Sunday - abysmal as usual.
To be clear, I have no problem at all with memorization of passages of Scripture. I’ve done it myself many times. And I’ve certainly seen/heard sermons given from memory. But in the context of the liturgy, it seems to me that something is lost if the lesson is recited from memory rather than read, and I don’t really see that loss as being balanced by any gain.
But maybe that’s just me, as is often the case. I’ll admit to having very firm—some might with some justification say peculiar—feelings about the lessons being read from the Bible on the lectern or the pulpit (assuming there is one), not from a pew Bible or a personal Bible or a tablet or a printed sheet.
Now that might drive me crazy. I can read the text myself or I can listen to someone else read the text, but I can’t do both at the same time. “Reading along” never worked for me in school. With a pew Bible, those who want to read along can, and others can just listen. But with a screen—depending on how prominent or discreet the screen is, of course—it’s there whether you want to read it or not, and screens can sometimes be difficult to ignore.
I suppose your unfortunate priest is obliged to read it out. Such letters are not common in the C of E, thanks be to God.
At Our Place, the readings are on the weekly notice sheet, and the lector reads from that, so what the Faithful have in front of them (if they wish to follow it) is the same as what is being read out aloud.
I find screens distracting, but that might be because I've never attended a church which used them regularly. Pew Bibles are all very well, but it takes time to turn to page 1756 or whatever in the New Testament section etc. etc., and the services are often (usually?) over-long already.
Um, but you haven't explained what's lost!
At this point you sound a bit to me like the polar opposite of a handful of pastors in my denom who have the rather peculiar idea that there is something especially effective/blessed/holy about the spoken voice, and that reading the Scriptures in any form (or signing them, or whatever) loses some ineffable ooompphh. I've always figured them for nutters, if harmless ones. Is it just that you like the way it looks when you've got someone standing at the lectern reading from the lectionary book (as it would be in my denomination)? I admit it's a pretty sight, if you can actually see the book itself--well-made and all that, nice and formal. But then, lectors in my host congregation have the habit of bringing up a piece of paper to use instead, as they have marked up the reading to make sure they get the pronunciation/emphases/whatsit just right. So they're at the lectern, but not using the proposed tool... I wince a bit, but I myself do the same thing, because I think it's worse to screw up the oral reading because I'm "winging it" without my needed helps. And so I keep my mouth shut.
Really curious why you're committed to your standpoint, though.
Lutherans have long emphasized the SPOKEN WORD over the printed word. But Nick is right, our Use of the Means of Grace does require the Word to be read out of the Bible--at least. I have known pastors who can recite the Gospel from memory. I wish I can do it. In truth we probably all know the Gospels by heart over the many years with have heard them.
As far as preaching from memory is concerned, I think all Lutheran seminaries encourage this. I will at least have a short outline with me, to help me keep on track.
A story, John McCain used to tell was when he was shot down over North Vietnam and taken to a POW prison in Hanoi, the first thing his fellow inmates asked him was whether he knew any Bible verses. In time, the inmates had compiled the whole Bible they shared among each other over the years.
It sometimes works the other way, though, of course, and one ends up with a sermon consisting largely of Waffle.
I am impressed that any of them knew Numbers off by heart
Sorry. I thought I had at least alluded to that when I quoted from my denomination’s Directory for Worship and then said: “I think that last sentence illustrates why, to my thinking, recitation from memory, even if permitted, is unwise and undesirable, or perhaps could be called liturgically deficient. Reading underscores the nature of Scripture as the community’s story, the community’s inheritance and possession.” That last sentence to which I referred was “Reading from the church’s Bible conveys a sense of the permanence and weight of the Word of God, and demonstrates the communal nature of the biblical story.”
With apologies in advance, I’ll try to unpack it a bit more.
At the outset, I recognize I come at this with a set of assumptions about context, and those assumptions might not apply in other contexts. So my concerns are rooted in how things might play out in the practices of my tradition, which might or might not carry over to or have parallels in other traditions.
Use of a lectionary book or of a Gospel book, as is the norm in many traditions, is rare in my tradition. What is typical for us is a pulpit Bible (or lectern Bible if a church has a pulpit and a lectern) that is permanently on the pulpit or lectern and that is visible to those in the pews. Some congregations have adapted Scottish practice and will have this Bible brought in at the beginning of the service. Often, decorative bookmarks hang from this Bible, drawing attention to it. (Heck, the open Bible on the pulpit/lectern is so typical for us that it found its way into our denominational seal.)
When that Bible is used for the readings, I would say it functions not just as a book, but as a sign of the place of Scripture in our worship and of the value we place on it. That is to say, the use of that Bible can communicate something about what we’re doing beyond just the words that are read.
On the other hand, when that Bible isn’t read from, then it becomes a decorative prop, which risks undercutting any claim of value. The unspoken message can be that the book is pretty to look at but we don’t actually use it. Use of the book, in the words of the Directory I quoted earlier, can convey “a sense of the permanence and weight,” while use of a printed sheet can convey a sense of impermanence and disposability.
To be clear, God is no less worshipped if the Scripture is recited from memory or read from a beautiful book or from a tablet or from a sheet of paper. And it is certainly possible to let the “we must do thing a certain way” impulse get in the way. But what we do in worship is also about forming the community, and I think it’s worth paying attention to how things are done, and whether what we do is consistent with what we say.
Never discount the possibility that I’m just weird.
Nowadays I need my reading glasses for small print, but they don't work for me at the distance of the Bible on a lectern. So I print out the reading on a sheet of paper in a font size which is suitable for me to read from.
Sometimes the preacher may request a different version for a particular reason.
In both instances I do not see how failure to use the “official” Bible is a detriment.
FWIW, the recommendation at our place is that if a sheet is printed with the reading either because a different translation is desired or to provide a larger font (the lectern Bible already has a large font), then that sheet should be placed directly on the page of the open Bible, so that it isn’t seen from the congregation. In other words, the reader has the benefit of the sheet, but the congregation isn’t aware of it.
Okay, since you seem to be a subscriber to this, I'd be grateful for citations. Why precisely do the means of grace (baptism and communion, for the non-Lutherans present--bonus debate over the status of confession-and-absolution gratis) require "the Word to be read out of the Bible"?
Because my husband, for one, recites the Words of Institution from memory, baptismal formula ditto. In fact, I don't recall a pastor I know who doesn't.
(Next post on orality and literacy will go deeper into my concerns about this)
I can see this, and I might once have shared this viewpoint. But surely this is only solid if we forget the longer history of the Word?
Printed books (which is to say, commonly available books) have only been around for about 500 years. Prior to that it's handwritten manuscripts and/or pure orality; and I take leave to doubt that all congregations before Gutenberg possessed an entire copy of the Bible, particularly in the earlier years. There are in fact entire cultures today where the Christian Church does not even now possess a written translation of the Scripture, or has only part of it; the Vietnamese people among whom I live only got it in 1911, and it's still a poor job of translation.
So how was it handed on, communally speaking? A great deal of it was by memory and recitation.
Take Paul for an example. He appears to have had the entire OT by heart (as well as various pagan poets) and wasn't terribly unusual in that, as an educated Jewish man. Jesus seems to expect basic OT literacy from his opponents, and they can't all of them have been scholars. And it's very unlikely they were carrying scrolls around with them.
Although the Scripture (etymologically "writings") has been bound up with writing from the start, it has also been transmitted and even composed orally (was it Jeremiah who had a scribe?). Fr. Walter Ong, my old teacher, would call the Israelite/Jewish culture a "scribal" culture--one where writing played an important role, but the majority of people transmitted knowledge and wisdom orally--that is, through proverbs and through textual memorization and oral recitation. (His Orality and Literacy and also The Presence of the Word are great on these topics, and how they affect human thinking and transmission of texts.)
I definitely see the value of a communal symbol of unity; but in view of the history of the Word, I'd suggest focusing on baptism and/or communion instead for a physical symbol. The printed book is ... misleading, esp. to those who know no history. (As I've learned to my cost several times, when working in a bookstore and forced to deal with a customer of the "If the King James Version is good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" type. Ouch!)
I think you raise fair points. My response would be two-fold:
First, I’d say yes, printed books are a relatively recent thing. But they are the context of our culture; we—most of us at least—don’t live in a culture of oral transmission. So our cultural expectations are part of the assumptions at play, I think.
Second, I’d look to how Jewish people treat the Torah scrolls and scrolls of the prophets in synagogue worship. (And Jesus’s reading from the scroll of Isaiah suggests the practice has been around a long, long time.) The way the scrolls are treated conveys the way those writings are viewed and valued.
And again, I’m not in any way attacking the value of memorizing Scripture. I’m talking solely about the reading of the lessons in the liturgy in the culture that most of us find ourselves in.
And while I’d agree to a point about focusing on baptism and Eucharist, my tradition would say that baptism and Eucharist are inextricably related to the Word, and in our culture, the Word is related to the book.
@Gramps49 can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that when he said “our Use of the Means of Grace,” he was referring to the document I quoted in my first post in this thread: The Use of the Means of Grace, published by the ELCA in 1997, not to the means of grace in general. And again, the relevant principle in that document relates to the reading of the lessons in the liturgy (see page 14), not to other occurrences of Scripture in the liturgy, like the Words of Institution.
In my university days, I attended a large Roman Catholic "student parish," and one of its priests had spent some time in jail for protesting at nuclear-power plants. He used the jail time to memorize the Gospels and usually proclaimed the Sunday Gospel text by heart.
While people may disagree about the propriety of reciting Scripture from memory in a service, can we agree that memorizing an entire Gospel (or more) is an impressive accomplishment?
This is an erroneous assumption, as are most assumptions about what's going on in someone else's mind.
Perhaps one thing that has come out of my autism is being so often wrong about what might be going on in other people's minds that I am acutely aware that we cannot, in fact, know.
This is a really good point.
And in Islam, the Quran is explicitly regarded to be an oral text that was revealed orally by Gabriel to the illiterate Prophet Mohammed in the cave with the instruction to "recite." The Quran is only the Quran in its original Arabic and the text is considered to be uncreated, coeternal (to borrow a Christian term) with Allah (though the Quran is not God). Memorization of much or all of the Quran in its original Arabic is an essential part of an Islamic religious education. Daily prayer in Islam involves reciting passages from the Quran from memory. Does anyone know if at Friday prayers or at other public Islamic worship services, whether readings from the Quran done by an Imam or other prayer leader are done from a specific book, whether they are exclusively recited from memory, or whether they can be done using a personal printed copy or from sheet paper or an electronic device? I have seen quote elegant bookstands (shaped like a letter x so that an open book fits in the top half of it) in mosques while traveling, but I was told that they were used for sessions of instruction outside of Friday prayers.
As for Judaism, while the entire Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) is revered and studied, the Psalms are used in prayer and worship, and readings from the prophets, histories, etc., are read in Shabbat morning worship from what is called the Haftarah portion following the Torah portion, only the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) is kept in the Ark of a Synagogue on highly revered handwritten scrolls (each scroll is called a Sefer Torah). Torah portions must be read from the Sefer Torah (there is a whole ceremony for undressing and dressing the scroll, processing with it, etc.), and the reader uses a pointer called a yad (a hand, and it is shaped like a hand) to keep one's place while chanting.
This is an interesting article on whether, for those Jewish people who consider Jewish law as binding, blind people should be allowed to read from the Torah for the congregation if they can only do so using braille or from memory (the author thinks it is permissible, at least if it is done using braille). It seems that absent any disability, a reader is required to read from the text of the Sefer Torah and not from memory. (Do many bnei mitzvah (boys and girls having their bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies) memorize their Torah portion? Of course. The Sefer Torah has no pages, line numbers, vowel markings, or indications of what syllable gets what note when it is chanted. But they need to look at the text of the Sefer Torah and use a Yad to follow along while they chant, even if they are chanting from memory.)
Of course Judaism is known for its creativity in debating how to interpret the law in extreme circumstances. Does anyone know if the Torah was ever allowed to be recited from memory for a congregation during the Holocaust if no Torah scrolls were available and/or worship had to be conducted in secret?
1. Are these oral or written concepts (or both)?
2. Do they refer to a specific text (oral or written) rather than to the message/meaning/teaching in that text or the presence or action of Christ and/or the Holy Spirit in/through that text
3. When these terms are used to refer to a specific oral or written text, is it to the text in its original source language(s), is it to the text in its original version (and was that oral or written)
4. When these terms refer to a written text, do they, especially in the context of liturgy, refer to a specific item in the worship space (a Pulpit Bible, a Gospel Book, a Lectionary, a Missal, or in Judaism, a Sefer Torah).
In Roman Catholicism, at least since Vatican II, Church documents have spoken of Christ being present at mass in four ways: in the Eucharist broken and shared, in the person of the minister, in the Word of God, and in the assembled people of God (from the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, CSL #7). Post-Vatican II church design has tried to emphasize these four ways Christ is present by having all Scripture readings happen from an ambo or pulpit (when they used to be from the altar), by having a designated "chair" for the minister to sit and preside from when not at the altar or the ambo, and by having the pews of the congregation be organized in such a way that the congregation can see each other. I'm not saying that this is the ideal to be followed for all time in church architecture, and neo-traditional churches are being built that do not follow this pattern (at least in terms of the layout of the pews). But recognizing Christ's presence in the Word proclaimed at mass seems to be a good reason to have a visible and respectable-looking Gospel Book or Lectionary that is treated with respect and placed in front of whoever is doing a reading. I would think, at least in a Roman Catholic context, the book should be open and the reader should be looking at it just in case their memory slips, even if the reader largely knows a passage by heart.
I'd love to hear about all this from an Orthodox context, or even if anyone knows about Ethiopian, Coptic, Syriac, or Armenian Churches or St. Thomas Christians in India and what their thinking is regarding all this.
I suspect they had just memorized the more relevant and well-known stuff, and this got rendered in McCain's telling as "the whole Bible".
Yes. I suspect Telford may have intended irony
Still, I wonder how much of the Bible many of us today could write down from memory. I can recite from memory a good deal (but certainly not all) of the C of E's 1662 Prayer Book Evensong, but that's not quite the same thing...
Plus of course the unknown unknowns thing. Remembering that there's a list of family groups is probably good enough for me, whereas psalm 23 should be word perfect.
I suspect it would have been good enough to convince me without a Bible. And with a Bible to be suitably impressed.
On the whole I'd say it depends on context, but liturgical gospel reading you don't want to make a careless mistake by lack of familiarisation (reading on the fly) or memory failure (no hardcopy) if you don't have too.
If I were doing a Bible reading in a church service and I knew it by heart, I would want the Bible there in front of me anyway as a prompt. In the same way that there are many hymns I know by heart, but I always open the hymn book anyway, and at the end of each verse, I look down at it even when I don't need to, so I don't look weird singing the whole thing without looking at the book (though I know one shouldn't be thinking about looking weird, but my experience is that most people don't have things memorised the way I do).
I really like the idea of people reciting a Bible passage by heart though. Then they can be looking at the congratulation more, not multitasking looking at both book and congregation. And for myself, I engage with a passage more fully if I recite it from memory than if I am reading it. If I'm reading aloud, there is a sort of disconnect between reading and semantics, because I don't multitask, and so I'm focused on the reading and not engaging with the meaning. And of course, as mentioned, not everyone can read, for all sorts of reasons. So I really like this idea of reciting from memory, so long as a preacher who memorises isn't seen as superior or super-spiritual - or indeed inferior or less spiritual. But that is down to the church community and its leaders.
IYSWIM.
Are we twins? Because I do and think all this stuff too.
I’m not saying that’s the right way and other ways are wrong—just that that’s what I was taught and what I’m comfortable with.