So one of the things I do at our church is serve, on occasion, as lector. That means reading one or more of the readings appointed for the given Sunday.
This week was one of the special days. While usually the worst thing one faces is plowing through a lengthy passage of Paul (who never met an additional clause or twelve he didn’t like), today I got that other terror of the lector biz: the List of Names. Specifically, in the Old Testament reading, Nehemiah 8:2-10 (or an excerpt thereof) …
The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose; and beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand; and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hash-baddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand. […] Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places.
Oh, yeah, baby! Nailed it in one. Margie told me the chalice ministers all thought I should get a round of applause, and the priest echoed it (and noted that, lector-wise, the reading did what I quoted in the title), and I had several people (even at our brunch restaurant) come up and congratulate me.
It was … funny.
Hmm. Our lector had it a bit easier with the Revised Common Lectionary version:
Did you train by reading Fox in Socks?
hehehe…
Fox in Socks, such a good drinking game book, ;P
Grats on getting through all of the names Dave. That is one of the things that just reading you can zoom over, but giving a reading you have to read every name. At least you didn’t have on of the geneology chapters. 🙂
Yeah, the RCL very neatly elides over the list of names, unlike the full-blown BCP reading (which included all the bits from the RCL).