Giving Attention to Reading: The Lector as Minister

The lector is one who ministers to the congregation through the reading of Scripture. At one point in church history, the lector, or reader, was considered one of the minor orders in which persons were formally acknowledged for the exercise of gifts, or charismata, they possessed. Although reading is nowhere explicitly cited as one of the charismata, its exercise is as significant as preaching and teaching; we read in 1 Timothy 4:13: “Give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching.”

Reading the Word of God aloud can bring blessing to the one who reads and to those who hear. How is such blessing brought about? It is first of all a gift of grace. Reading is a charismatic act when done in the context of true worship – that is, when words are read aloud in spirit and truth. A worshipful act of reading is no mere playback of recorded inspiration; prophetic reading breathes again the truth present in the text being read. This representation is a poetic act of mimesis which resounds with the breath of life. The Bible does not speak for itself; God has chosen to speak through the reading of His Word. God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh; so does the Church continue by the Spirit of Christ to be the Body of Christ to the world as each Christian in his or own person presents the Word of God uniquely, whether individually or with other Christians.

The reader becomes the letter of Christ written with the Spirit of the Living God when words of prophetic proclamation are processed through the whole person. The Great Commandment, to love the Lord God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind, and to love others as oneself, is to be applied to reading as much as to all things in life. Anything less than reading with one’s whole person, in loving submission to God and others, strangles the Spirit’s flow.

Competent charismatic reading prophesies life to those ready to hear the Word of the Lord. The Christian reader is a minister of the new covenant, not of letter but of spirit. The Spirit gives life – this then is the criterion by which prophetic reading is judged. Lifeless reading is a mocking impersonation of presenting the Gospel – still born words sound monotonously ineffective and reflect gloomingly off veiled and captive minds of hardened hearers. However, reading full of the Spirit is transformative – the image of God, figured in reading the Word of God, is set in one’s imagination as an example to be followed with others as faithful disciples of Christ.

Faith come from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud words of prophecy and blessed are those who hear.