A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 15A and 16A
The text: Matthew 15:29-16:12
This week’s “between” passages really sound like an interlude. Especially after the excitement of Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite woman. It makes it feel like important set up for what’s to come.
This sequence has four distinct parts: two at the end of chapter 15 and two at the start of 16.
Beyond the borderlands
As Jesus leaves the Canaanite woman and her daughter renewed, he went up a mountain. It has the echoes of his attempts to escape the crowds to pray before all of this. This time, the crowds come to him. It isn’t an escape, but a place that draws them to him.
This may seem a bit coy to suggest, but it feels like a switch really has been flipped here in chapter 15. The mountain was an escape before, where Jesus would commune with the holy. But here, it is a place of communing with the holy—through healing.
Perhaps Jesus’s extending of the scope of the Kin-dom from the House of Israel to all people who recognize the God of Israel is drawing many more people.
Another feeding—this time four thousand
Matthew, like Mark, have a curious second feeding after the first. It has a different number and totally different vibe. Yet it also feels novel to them.
The skeptic may be drawn to assume it is the blending of two stories—or that there really was only one event. But this seems like a clever streak needing to play more than a necessary assessment of the story.
Narratively, it hits differently precisely because the context has changed. Jesus is not merely collecting the Hebrew people like a nativist religion. He’s seeking to heal and feed people. And this second feeding miracle comes with a new mindset.
A third confrontation
The religious leaders confront Jesus again. They confronted him about Sabbath tradition and then about hand-washing. Now they take a different approach. They demand “a sign from heaven.”
And again Jesus rejects the premise of their expectation.
This is a fascinating moment given all of the miracles that Jesus has just performed. He has healed, walked on water, fed multitudes. People all over the region can attest to these things. The signs really have been everywhere.
What they are asking for is something for them. Which seems like the honest request any of us would have. If a friend says he can do magic, you’d ask him to do a trick for you. How else can you believe he’s a magician?
Except the compelling of God’s grace as proof to a skeptic is not how it works. That’s neither the agenda or anything natural. It’s like going up to David Blaine after a performance and being like, do a card trick so I can be sure you’re a magician. The proper response would be “Dude, go to the show.”
Jesus, though, compares it to their ability to predict the weather. He’s like, You see the color of the sky and know what’s going to happen. But you look around and can’t figure out what’s going down around you? It’s a spoiled brat who demands a sign. Grow up.
So very yeasty
Once they’re alone, Jesus tells the disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees. Their conniving is proofing as we speak. The blockheads take the illustration literally, because they are focused on the feeding.
This is hilarious. Not just because they are being literal and stupid about it. And yet they look good. Because it shows what it looks like to focus on the signs that are already there—entirely unlike the leaders who wanted signs for themselves.
This all will set up the Messianic proclamation in the passage for Proper 16A. When the disciples will turn to their own interpreting of signs.