If there's a piece of the Divine Service that gets skipped in any particular congregation, I'd bet on the Psalm/Gradual.
A congregation may have already used the Psalm for the Day earlier (in which case the Gradual can be used, a brief chant or spoken response), but if they chose the Introit or Entrance Hymn for that slot, then the Psalm of the Day can be used here.
First Lutheran has typically chosen to use the Psalm of the Day as a preservice meditation for people to read and contemplate as they gather and wait for worship to begin.
In all of my lectionary research, the information I gathered on the Psalms was the most disheartening to me.
There are 150 Psalms. There are 156 Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle (not to mention common feast days like Christmas and Ash Wednesday). One would think the Psalms could get solid coverage through the lectionary.
One would think.
Of the 150 Psalms only 84 are covered in any portion. 66 Psalms are entirely absent for most congregations. If they celebrate every minor festival and feast day, they could touch upon an additional 10, making 94 of the 150 Psalms.
There are 2461 verses in these 150 Psalms. Only 1003 are used in the lectionary. That's 40.76%. We have an entire reading dedicated to this book of Psalms and we are ignoring nearly 60% of it.
Yet all that is insignificant to a greater problem: how few congregations even use the Psalm of the Day. I don't know how many congregations use the Psalm of the Day, but if that number reaches 50%, I'd be shocked. Truthfully, those in the LCMS shouldn't be surprised. If you look at the lectionary collection in our latest hymnal Lutheran Service Book, you'll find the Psalm of the Day isn't even a category listed.
Not using the Psalm of the Day is a dangerous choice because the creators of the lectionary expect you to use this reading. They do not include the Psalms in the rotation of the Old Testament readings. This means thousands of Lutherans have never heard a sermon on the book of Psalms. I don't want to proclaim it as the most important book in the Bible or pit it against other books, but it's definitely top 10, probably top 5, maybe top 3. Remember, 11 books of the Bible get ignored by the lectionary. If you leave out the Psalm of the Day, you're relegating the Psalms to the same fate as Haggai, 2 and 3 John, Nahum, Judges, and Ezra. These books don't deserve to be ignored. How much less the Psalms.
The Psalms have been a part of the church's life since its inception. Jesus quotes Psalm 22 and fulfills Psalm 69 from the cross. Peter quotes Psalm 16 and Psalm 110 on Pentecost. Paul quotes or alludes to more than a dozen Psalms in Romans alone.
Psalm 23 is requested for nearly every funeral you will ever attend, yet it isn't read on Sundays unless we use the Psalm for the Day.
The Psalms are the church's prayer book and hymnal.
Imagine if someone bought the complete works of Shakespeare and they were given a selection of weekly readings from the histories, the tragedies, the comedies, and the sonnets. Do you think they'd get a full picture of Shakespeare if they left out any of these categories?
The Psalms can teach us how to speak to God when everything is going wrong. The Psalms can show us how to be faithful when we are in the midst of terrible suffering. The Psalms can help us confess. The Psalms always point us to Jesus.
We need to use them. We need to use more of them.
