Un-censoring a Psalm

Can the Bible be censored? 

Churches do it all the time!
Some biblical texts are never read in worship, preached upon or even taught. 

Why? Because so many biblical passages are truly boooooring, others are difficult to understand, many more are outside of our cultural comfort zones and quite a number of them are really brutish and nasty. And thus these questionable biblical stories, laws, prophecies and prayers are not necessarily censored, but simply left out with almost the same result - spreading a simplified, dulled-down religiosity prone to manipulation and abuse.

     A large number of English-speaking congregations use for their worship and liturgy the so-called Revised Standard Lectionary. In a three-year cycle it suggests for every Sunday and Holiday four biblical readings: one from the Old Testament, a Psalm, one passage from an Epistle and one text from a Gospel. I like this system, I use it often; it is a great tool, but a bad master. This Sunday we are, for instance, to read Psalm 17. But seven verses of this Psalm are (inconspicuously) left out, never to be read and heard in worship, neglected, forgotten...
      Come this Sunday to un-censor the Bible, come to un-neglect these intriguing seven verses, come to tackle the demons of our religiosity (aggression, violence, windictivness, prayer for vengeance, dark religiosity...) and so grow stronger and more mature in faith.