The verses left out

For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page, which includes Maitland's current Living by the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.

I decided to write about the Joel reading in my Century column for this week, because I find his language and imagery—like that of many of the prophetic books—so rich and inspiring. But if I were preaching myself (not that I ever have to) I would probably choose to address the omissions from the Jeremiah and Timothy readings.

The creators of the lectionary decided to leave out Jeremiah 14:11–18 and 2 Timothy 4:9–15. They might be able to justify truncating Jeremiah on the grounds of length, but only just. And slicing up the epistle leaves us with a very short reading, just six verses. The Gospel reading is even shorter, but it is complete—a full parable with nothing easily connected on either side. And the semicontinuous cycle’s first reading includes 10 long verses of Joel.