A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Lent 5 & Holy Week (Year A)
The text: John 12:1-11, Matthew 4:12-20:34
In the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we are in Bethany, two miles from Jerusalem. The disciples tried to convince Jesus not to go, but he went anyway. To reveal God’s glory.
We pick up after the dramatic events of last week. When Lazarus dies and Jesus “wakes him up.”
One last night before the main event.
They make up a big dinner.
Mary anoints Jesus’s feet with expensive oil and wipes them with her hair. Super intimate. Crazy close. Her hair. I feel like people don’t take that seriously enough.
Judas butts in to make a stink about the oil. He wants to make a buck off the sale.
— And let’s take the moment to point out that people today will quote Judas here as a defense of not being generous. And then they’ll quote Jesus about the poor always being with us for the same reason. Talk about reading this wrong! —
The crowds finally catch up to Jesus—apparently he had given them the slip. And the Judean leaders who have wanted Jesus dead since chapter 7 are now planning to axe Lazarus, too. Get rid of the evidence.
Next up: Palm Sunday
Meanwhile, over in Matthew…
OK, I’m not going to recap the whole gospel. Because when we left it, Jesus had just been baptized and driven into the wilderness for the temptation.
Way too much.
But I do like to focus my attention on the last story before the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday in each gospel. Because what Jesus is showing the disciples right before always has some juice to it.
And what does Matthew show?
The mother of James and John asks Jesus to raise up her sons to his side. To give them honored seats next to the Messiah. A remarkable request for anyone. And Jesus’s response is remarkable, too. He doesn’t just say Nah. He says they don’t get what they’re asking.
And they believe they do! How human is that? Like the infamous Rumsfeldism: “we don’t know what we don’t know.” Yeah. They don’t know that they don’t know…
Then Jesus heals two pushy blind men.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to assume this reads as anti-climactic. The last thing Jesus does is another healing? Two at once? Big whup. He healed people by the thousand.
The sense of mundane here lulls my mind. It reads as so normal.
So normal that we forget it. Overlook it. Not consider it.
That he gives two men sight. That they persuade him to do it. That they make a ruckus when the disciples want to shush them.
And how does it end?
“Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him.”
-Matthew 20:34
The last act in the gospel before Holy Week is by these two. Not Jesus. Or the other disciples.
It is these two men who choose to follow Jesus.
And this is no small thing given where Jesus is headed.