Bob Derrenbacker
14 November 2025
I’m a big fan of our Australian Lectionary.
Based on the Revised Common Lectionary, our Australian Lectionary allows us to be immersed in one of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) on a three-year rotation. Our Lectionary also enables us to experience the fullness of the Christian year together while exposing us to some occasionally difficult and lesser-known texts of Scripture. In addition, using the Lectionary is one of the few liturgical ways that has the potential to unite us as Anglicans, serving as an expression of inter-parish, cross-diocesan and cross-provincial unity and synergy. Finally, using the Lectionary is simply good liturgical practice, particularly as our Anglican prayer books presuppose its use and are designed as such.
On the First Sunday of Advent, we will begin our new liturgical Year A, with the Sunday Gospel readings largely coming from the Gospel according to St Matthew, with our first and second readings (usually from the Old Testament and the New Testament letters), along with a Psalm, read to complement the Gospel text. Year A will take us through much of the Gospel of Matthew, a Gospel that presents its own unique portrait of Jesus and distinct vision of the “Kingdom of Heaven” (a phrase that is unique to the Gospel). Matthew has reworked his main narrative source text (the Gospel of Mark), included with it extensive sections of teaching/discourse material (from a lost written source called “Q” to which Luke also had access), plus extensive material that is unique to Matthew – that is, unparalleled in any other Gospel.
Matthew’s Gospel also presents a unique structure, where it alternates between five significant sections of discourse/teaching and six sections of narrative. In fact, it appears that the sections of discourse inform and validate the sections of narrative that follow. As commentator M. Eugene Boring notes: “For Matthew, ‘words’ precede ‘works,’ since he considers teaching to take precedence over and to validate miracles, not vice versa,” in the New Interpreter’s Bible. This particular strategy is reflected in Jesus’s concluding words in the Sermon on the Mount (the first significant section of discourse in Matthew): “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Matt 7:24 [NRSVue]). Thus, in Matthew’s Gospel, the teachings of Jesus inform the sections of narrative that follow.
Matthew stands apart from the other New Testament Gospels in other ways as well. For example, it has a particular Jewish flavour – it is especially interested in presenting Jesus as a lawgiver, as a “new Moses” of sorts; it contains at least 60 quotations from (or allusions to) the Old Testament – at least twice as many as any other New Testament Gospel; and, it interprets and appropriates the Old Testament in ways consistent with first-century Jewish interpretive techniques.
Read more: Here’s what’s unique about Luke’s perspective on the Passion
Matthew also stands out in its focussed presentation of the disciple Peter. For example, in the story of Jesus walking on the water, it is only in Matthew where Peter gets out of the boat and makes an attempt to walk on water himself (Matt 14:28-31); it is only in Matthew where Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi is followed by Jesus’s special blessing of Peter as a “rock” upon which he will build his church (Matt 16:17-19); and it is only in Matthew where Peter asks Jesus asks Jesus if there are limits to the forgiveness of a sinning sister or brother (Matt 18:15-22).
On 38 of the 52 Sundays of Year A, we will hear from the Gospel of Matthew, having the opportunity to hear those themes and passages that are distinctly Matthean. On the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we will hear Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus (Matt 1:18-25); on the First Sunday after Christmas, we will ponder the story of the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem and the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt (Matt 2:13-23); on the First Sunday in Lent, Matthew’s version of Jesus’s temptation will be read (Matt 4:1-11); and, on Trinity Sunday, our Gospel reading will be the concluding passage in Matthew – the so-called “Great Commission” (Matt 28:16-20).
Then in the season after Pentecost, we will hear a number of unique and distinctly Matthean Gospel readings – the Parable of the Weeds (Matt 13:24-30, 36-43), the Walking on the Water (Matt 14:22-33), Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite Woman (Matt 15:21-28), Peter’s Confession at Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:13-20), Jesus’s words on forgiveness and the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt 18:21-35), the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1-16), and the Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matt 22:1-14). Finally, Year A will conclude on Christ the King Sunday, where will have the opportunity to contemplate Jesus’s teaching on the last judgement, where the Son of Man will separate the sheep from the goats at the end of history (Matt 25:31-46).
Thus, the Australian Lectionary provides all of us with the opportunity to be immersed in the Gospel according to St Matthew and to learn how Matthew’s portrait of Jesus is distinct and see a powerful presentation of Jesus’s vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Year A Gospel readings afford us the opportunity to be not just “hearers” of the words of Jesus, but also “doers” of them as well as we act in response to the voice of Jesus that we hear in Matthew’s Gospel.
The Reverend Canon Bob Derrenbacker is Dean and Frank Woods Associate Professor of New Testament at Trinity College Theological School.
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