A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 9A and 10A
The text: Matthew 12:1-50
This week, the lectionary skips over all of chapter 12, which contains a few essential stories. Some of it won’t be missed, particularly the middle with the deception of the leaders. We cover this thoroughly. The rest is stuff we really always need to keep top of mind.
After condemning the generation for focusing on the wrong stuff, Jesus proceeds to flout Sabbath law. This is a kind of active learning situation—Jesus pushes those around him to see what he means in practice.
Focused on the wrong things, the leaders will focus on the wrong things about Sabbath. Namely letting people suffer on the Sabbath.
Few things orient us to our faith as Christians than this teaching. We often see it as rules versus belief. But that isn’t quite it. It isn’t one over the other or one as the priority.
Jesus offers an exception to the rules while also reminding us that the rules themselves are interpretations.
In other words, rules aren’t always good and they don’t originate from God. What does is honoring the Sabbath. How we do that is entirely an act of interpretation.
At this point, I find most Catholic teaching too rigid and most Protestant teaching self-serving. Our more modern approach of selecting a typography for interpreting meaning serves us poorly here. None of it works well. Because we usually avoid what Jesus is getting at:
We’re all focusing on the wrong stuff.
So these aren’t universal truths he’s offering about the Law. He’s showing us how we mess it up. And we continue to mess it up in the exact same way.
Time to Move
This teaching gets Jesus in real trouble. It’s the tipping point for the religious leaders. So they conspire to destroy him. Which is something Jesus isn’t big on, so he bugs out.
Jesus also tamps down the notoriety, telling the crowds that track him down not to talk about him. This isn’t the time yet.
Whether the crowds listen to this or not isn’t the next step in the story. There is someone in need. Just like curing on the Sabbath, need is need. So they bring Jesus to someone possessed by a demon. And healing them leads to more frustration with the leadership.
This, too, is an opportunity for our own confusion. The demonizing of the Pharisee, classifying the name as synonymous with hypocrite, displays our penchant for typological ordering over listening to Jesus.
Making things fit in molds, universal statements, trying to figure out what is “good” and “bad” is used as a tonic for what ails us—and not the salvation from our imprisonment.
The True Kindred
The chapter ends with the troubling teaching about family, identity, and the mark of faith. When Jesus’s mother, brothers, and sisters come to see him and he rejects them.
This is the double-whammy which confuses our doctrines. First, in the acknowledgement that Jesus’s Mom had more kids. Then in planting the seeds of eroding the beloved nuclear family. Again, one part frustrates orthodoxy and the other orthopraxy. Catholic tradition and Protestant practice.
The temptation, once again: universal statements to explain the discomfort away.
In the end, however, is a Christ telling us to follow God’s command about Sabbath, liberation, hope, and love.
And as we see how those things violate the orders of the time, we recognize what love in the midst of such discouragement require a different orientation. And a different sense of family.