Key points:
- Starting with Good Friday and into the Easter season, United Methodists and other Christians have new recommended Bible readings during worship.
- The revisions of the lectionary seek to help stop the use of Scripture to justify discrimination and violence against Jewish people.
- Scholars also hope to help worshippers understand Jesus in his Jewish context.
When they attend Good Friday services on April 3 this year, many United Methodists can expect to hear Christ’s crucifixion recounted in a different way.
Instead of the traditional reading from John 19:1-42, many church services will use a Gospel account that chronicles the entire Passion — Mark 14:1-15:47.
The change is part of recommended revisions to the lectionary — the Bible readings included in worship — that aim to stop the use of Scripture to justify discrimination and violence against Jewish people.
The revisions, while more than a decade in the making, come as the Anti-Defamation League reports a surge in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. since the start of the Israel-Hamas War in October 2023.
The FBI documented 1,938 hate crimes against Jewish people in the U.S. during 2024 — the highest number since the federal law enforcement agency began collecting data on hate crimes in 1991. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 2024 — the most recent year with FBI data available— saw 11,679 hate crimes overall, the second highest number on record.
All of which makes it more urgent for churches during Christianity’s most sacred season to reconsider how they present Bible passages historically wielded to falsely blame Jewish people for the Crucifixion and distract from Christ’s saving work.
Learn more
The Revised Common Lectionary operates on a three-year cycle with Year A focused on readings from the Gospel of Matthew, Year B on Mark and Year C on Luke. Selections from the Gospel of John are scattered throughout the three years. Currently, United Methodists and others who use the Revised Common Lectionary are in Year A of the cycle.
With that in mind, the Consultation on Common Texts is asking churches to use its provisional update for a trial period of three years.
“The goal of the lectionary is to, over the course of three years, invite congregations to delve into and wrestle with a wide breadth of the biblical texts,” said Lisa Hancock, who represents The United Methodist Church on the consultations.
While some stories are left out, she said, the Revised Common Lectionary “is really a way that United Methodist churches can be accountable to wrestling with the full text instead of the texts that maybe we’re most comfortable with or that maybe we don’t want to be challenged on.”
Ask The UMC has an overview of the changes.
The changes are the work of the Consultation on Common Texts, an ecumenical group of scholars and denominational representatives from the U.S. and Canada who curate the Revised Common Lectionary used by United Methodists and other Protestants in worship week by week. The Revised Common Lectionary is so important that the Book of Discipline, the denomination’s policy book, encourages its use in United Methodist churches around the globe.
In addition to offering an alternative Gospel reading for Good Friday, the consultation now recommends readings from the Old Testament as the first readings for every Sunday during the 50-day Easter season instead of Acts. This use of the Hebrew Scriptures places Jesus and his disciples in their Jewish context during this holy season.
The consultation has moved the Acts readings to the long season after Pentecost that United Methodists call Ordinary Time.
In a report on its provisional update of the lectionary, the consultation writes that the problematic use of the word “Jew” — especially in John and Acts — “has contributed to a common misreading of the Gospel story.”
The consultation points out that Jesus did not die because of the behavior of non-Christian Jewish people but because of decisions made by Roman officials and the sinfulness of all humanity.
The consultation also calls for Christians to repent of actions the church has taken against Jewish people.
“We must acknowledge how we and members of the church before us have discriminated against and mistreated Jews,” the consultation writes. “We need to seek ways to amend our personal and communal understanding of Scripture that shapes our attitudes and behavior toward the Jewish people.”
The consultation began considering the changes after the Rev. Susan Auchincloss, a priest in the Episcopal Church, submitted a petition in 2012 through Change.org.
"In a time when interfaith relations matter more than ever," she wrote, "this petition asks those responsible for the cycle of readings to eliminate defamatory passages from the lectionary,"
She told United Methodist News that she first started thinking about anti-Judaism in the lectionary after reading “Constantine’s Sword” by Catholic writer James Carroll. But the life-changing moment came, she said, when she was leading a Good Friday service and a Jewish friend was in attendance.
“I couldn’t help but hear the readings through his ears,” she recalled. “I sat there squirming with shame and guilt up there by the altar.”
Auchincloss’ petition first came to the Rev. Taylor W Burton Edwards, who was both the United Methodist representative and secretary of the consultation at the time. Burton Edwards, who now oversees Ask The UMC for United Methodist Communications, has written an overview of the alternative readings.
Auchincloss credits Burton Edwards, who was consultation chair by the time they met, with graciously welcoming her to the group’s meetings and listening to her concerns. The consultation also received counsel from Jewish scholars in its review of the lectionary.
“I applauded how seriously they took the concern I had raised,” Auchincloss said.
With regard to the provision update, she added, “I can only say that what the CCT has done far surpasses anything I could imagine.”
As a continuing at-large member of the consultation and a working pastor, Burton Edwards said he has used the alternative readings in the congregations he has served during the revised lectionary’s development.
“They’ve been much appreciated, and we are still using them,” he said.
Lisa Hancock, the current United Methodist representative to the consultation, said the revisions recognize “that how the texts talk to each other, both in a single service and across a season, are incredibly important.”
Hancock, Ph.D., is the director of worship arts for United Methodist Discipleship Ministries. She came aboard the consultation in 2023 when it was nearing the completion of its work.
“My feeling about these changes,” she said, “is that they were done with a lot of authentic discernment around how we stay true to what is within the biblical text and recognize some unfortunate cultural readings that have happened over centuries.”
For example, the lectionary’s previous recommended Good Friday reading — John’s account of Christ’s trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, and death on the cross — blames Jewish people collectively for the Crucifixion.
In contrast, Mark offers a more straightforward account that limits its negative depictions specifically to the betraying Judas, the denying Peter and the Jewish chief priests who push for Jesus’ execution. Mark’s Gospel also makes clear that these priests both work with Pontius Pilate and lead far more privileged lives than most Jewish people in Roman-occupied Judea. After all, Peter denies he knows Jesus to one of the high priest’s servant-girls.
The differences between the Gospel accounts likely reflect the times and circumstances in which they were written. Mark, the oldest Gospel in the Bible, was written around A.D. 70, while John was written decades later.
Subscribe to our
e-newsletter
As the consultation notes in its report, Jesus' early disciples were just one of “multiple competing groups within the larger family of Judaism.”
These included the Pharisees, who focused on applying Jewish law in daily life; Sadducees, who made up most of the priestly class; the followers of John the Baptist, who emphasized the Kingdom of God; and the Zealots, who hoped to incite rebellion against the Roman Empire.
The consultation notes that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, — often called synoptic because they look alike — “preserve some of the complexity of Judaism in the time of Jesus.”
John’s Gospel came about at least a half century after Jesus’ earthly ministry at a time when the Christian church was beginning to part ways with the Jewish synagogue. John’s account generally ignores the close connections of Christians to other Jewish groups. It also refers to Jewish people who opposed Jesus’ teachings as "Jews" in a disparaging way.
That being said, passages from John continue to be part of the lectionary. In fact, John 20:1-18, in which the risen Christ appears to Mary Magdalene, remains a suggested reading for Easter Sunday.
Hancock and other church leaders hope Christian leaders keep that context in mind as they head into Good Friday, whether they use the new recommended lectionary or offer a non-lectionary service around the seven last sayings of Jesus, meditating on Christ’s last words on the cross offered in all four Gospels. Such a Tenebrae service typically includes multiple verses from John.
This year, all seven black women United Methodist bishops in the U.S. plan to lead the “Seven Last Words of Jesus” Good Friday service at St. Mark United Methodist Church in Hanover, Maryland.
Hancock said she thinks such a service can be a meaningful way to remember Christ’s passion.
“It all depends on our intentionality, about how we are presenting the text in multiple ways,” she said.
“I think anytime we can contextualize that — not in just what was happening then, but how we intend to respond to that now is incredibly important for our congregants, even if they’ve heard it many times.”
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
