A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Epiphany 3A and Epiphany 5A.
The text: Matthew 4:24-25 (and Matthew 5:1-12).
There’s an old tradition of celebrating Jesus’s Presentation at the Temple on February 2. So when that falls on a Sunday, many of us celebrate that rather than the appointed reading for that Sunday. This year, that would have been the portion we know as The Beatitudes. So this week, we get a slightly bigger gap in the lectionary than normal.
The regular gap between Epiphany 3 and 4 is just two verses at the tail end of Matthew 4 (I’ve included the preceding verse for context):
“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
In terms of narrative, this is like a montage scene.
It’s the fast forward to the next part of the story, skipping over stuff that is important, just not exciting. And the reader goes Yeah, yeah, we get it. Jesus is getting super popular. And we do this because we have a real comfort with the ubiquity of fame in our culture.
Fame in the postmodern world is not just a crazy thing, but actually pretty common. Local newscasters, high school athletes, and public figures all possess a kind of celebrity. Millionaire YouTubers and viral teens on Instagram and TikTok bring versions of fame and notoriety into any, and in a sense, every home.
And I think this version of notice, awareness, popularity, and downright fame blind us to what the pre-public media days actually looked like. Not just before the internet, but before cable, before TV, radio, and newspapers. And also before suburbs and coffee klatches and PTOs.
Our sense of fame is easy—not just because our media tools make it so. But because all of our avenues of communication make it so. The way small-town gossip, meeting at diners, stealing secrets at Bible study, spread fame and notoriety easily and quickly.
We take all of this for granted. And we shouldn’t. Because these are the very tools disciples use to also spread the good news.
Jesus is Popular
The popularity that Jesus garners isn’t fadish; it’s fanatic. In the classic sense. Fanatic now makes us think of crazy ditto heads, but it is merely the longer form of the word fan. And what makes someone a fan is that they become devoted to a common cause with other people.
Every sports fan gets this idea intuitively. That’s why we don’t actually call people who jump on the bandwagon fans. Not until they essentially get baptized and get on the team. Because fans don’t show up only when the team is winning. Fans know losing. They scour the transaction and rumors pages to see what players their team is picking up. Fans don’t just care during the postseason or even the season. They even care in the offseason.
But the thing about being a fanatic isn’t just a certain level of commitment—though that’s the tangible part. Observers become fanatics when they hear or see something that makes them turn and decide. They want to devote part of their waking attention to a cause. That can be a sport. It can also be matters of justice, the arts, or relationships, too.
Fanatics are devoted.
And that devotion comes when they buy into a really important and life-changing idea or feeling or cause.
These people flock to Jesus because he is offering something they’ve never ever seen before. And that is what matters here. Jesus didn’t post a viral video. He didn’t make a miracle one time and people didn’t spontaneously go: miracle = my eternal devotion. This is nothing at all like that.
Jesus went everywhere, taught in every synagogue and cured “every disease.” And people started to notice. Not that he said one thing one time and people liked it. He proclaimed the coming kin-dom of God over and over and people started to listen. And then they started to open up to it. And then they started to believe it. Then they told friends about it. Started following him, wanting more.
And that’s how a movement is born.
Two more things worth mentioning
Most people would probably lean heavily on the second of this gap’s two verses. This is the one that points out where Jesus’s great crowds come from. Matthew explicitly states that they come from the North and the South and the East and the West; from Jewish and Gentile territory. And, because we get kind of absolutist about this stuff: even outside the region.
This may be splitting hairs too finely, but a big part of the Jew/Gentile thing for Christians through history has been to think of it as Jews vs. NonJews. Again, our modern minds have an easier time abstracting some of these distinctions, but we might remember the mindset from 2000 years ago.
Their scripture reminded them that Hebrews weren’t to mix with Canaanites. So there’s a sense that the Jew/Gentile divide is far less a general statement and a far more specific statement than we often think. Because the Hebrew people were never alone in the region, or truly in command of “their” land. They shared it with non-Hebrews. Gentiles.
So there is a very real sense that Jews and Gentiles is a way of contrasting literal neighbors from the same land.
Matthew’s list in naming people is a little like this:
People from the Jewish hinterlands, from the Greek regions, from the Jewish holy city and all the big city Jews, and even people from outside the region.
It’s a little like naming the divisions of the people in this community and then reminding us that we are “Hautians” because the movement included people from the rest of Indiana. Or there are all these diverse groups of people in this state — and throughout the country.
We’re divided at this level, but there’s this other division out here. And then Matthew turns that division around by saying all these people are following him. In diversity: unity.
And then the Beatitudes
The other part of the gap is the gospel for Epiphany 4. I’ve written frequently on the Beatitudes, so if you want to dive into one of those, go right ahead.
The context, though, needs to remain present in our thinking.
A context that began with Jesus’s baptism and his sudden lure into the wilderness to be tempted. There he is compelled by the devil to take every shortcut to earthly power and Jesus refuses. Jesus vocalizes that shortcuts to power, just as power itself, are an affront to God’s will.
This focus on power—on the way humans would wield it against each other—is the Godly clouds in the air surrounding these passages. Because Jesus calls disciples who have no power. In fact, Jesus goes outside the usual system to find nobodies to be his students.
He calls them disciples and promises them something akin to equality with him.
And then he goes everywhere. Teaching. Healing. Transforming how people encounter God and their neighbors. And when a huge crowd is around, he goes up a mountain and tells them about humility, compassion, deep love for our neighbors, doing the brutal and dangerous work of making peace. That is the very work of God.
And if you do this work, you are beloved, inheritors, the very salt of the earth.