Friday, August 20, 2010

St. David's News & Notes, August 20, 2010

Blessings to you all this week. My family and I are back from a wonderful week of camp. We are looking forward to launching into a wonderful season of school and, God willing, cooler temperatures.

I trust we will notice the upcoming temperature changes, and suspect that we will welcome the cooler weather (come on October!). I want to let you all know about another upcoming change that may or may not be noticeable to some of you. And, as to whether or not it's a welcomed change, I'd be happy to hear your responses, positive and negative.

The change will be two-fold, (1) a new lectionary (schedule of Sunday Bible readings), and (2) a different Bible translation (the New Revised Standard Version).

The lectionary we have been using is found in the back of our Book of Common Prayer 1979. It's a three-year lectionary that has been in use since the Prayer Book was revised. As of coming Advent we will be required to use the Revised Common Lectionary.

The Revised Common Lectionary is very similar to that of the BCP 1979. Most of the changes bring it more closely into line with the lectionary used by the Roman Catholic Church. The main difference is that it includes various options in selecting Old Testament lessons which, oddly enough, make it less "common." The option I'm choosing is the one that keeps us closest to what we've been doing. For those of you who would like some additional information about the Revised Common Lectionary, click here.

The other change will involve a change in translations from the RSV (Revised Standard Version) to the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version).

When I arrived, both churches were using the NRSV for most of the readings and the RSV for the gospels. The bulletin inserts were also in the NRSV. Since our Gospel books were RSV, I standardized all the readings in the RSV translation and ordered different inserts as well. That change went quite smoothly. I trust the change back will be just a smooth.

A few more notes on Bible translations:

I preach out of the ESV (English Standard Version) and you may have noticed that the link I use for our upcoming readings is to the ESV website. By the way, you may click this link for daily readings from the Prayer Book Daily Office lectionary from the ESV translation.

I think the best translation is whatever translation you will actually read.

In my sermon preparation I usually translate the passage from the Greek New Testament (with many helps) and reference the RSV, ESV, NRSV, NASB (New American Standard Bible), NAB (New American Bible), and NET Bible (New English Translation, click here for more info) as I work through the text.

For study I recommend using multiple translations: at least one word-for-word (i.e. ESV, NASB) and one thought-for-thought (i.e. NIV, NLT).

Click here to read a short, informative article about Bible translations. The article also contains a helpful graph comparing the various translations. Click here for a graph comparing Bible translations.

Here endeth this particular lesson (because this Bible nerd could go on and on!).

Readings for Sunday, August 22 are:
Isaiah 28:14-22
Psalm 46
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:22-30

Our regular weekly Wednesday evening Bible study is on break until after Labor Day.

Our regular weekly Wednesday evening 6pm Mass has resumed following my week of vacation.

Blessings,

Fr Greg+

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