A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 16A and 17A
The text: none
The between series is about the gaps in the lectionary. Because the lectionary occasionally skips passages. Sometimes because the same story gets covered at another time. Sometimes because it doesn’t seem to be necessary.
And sometimes the gospel doesn’t skip at all. It goes straight into the next passage. When I first started, I thought of it as a week off. Because…well…no gap, so no need to talk about the gaps.
These days I’ve decided to write one anyway. Partly for the sake of continuity. And partly because of the reason I minded the gaps in the first place: context.
Not an ending
Context is always essential for understanding. But sometimes the context isn’t just about connecting the parts—it’s the sum of them. And this week, we’re encountering the second half to the story we read last week. This isn’t a sequel—it’s the other half.
Years ago, when news broke that they were making two sequels to The Matrix, the Wachowskis announced that it wasn’t really two movies. It was one movie cut in half. Fans and critics didn’t know exactly what to do with it. Nobody had really done anything like this before.
They warned the viewers. When you see this first sequel, not only is this not going to completely satisfy you because you know there’s more. It won’t satisfy you because it won’t properly end. Because it isn’t a whole movie.
Last week, we got half of a story. And we probably walked around feeling OK with it. Peter guessed right. Jesus is the Messiah. Then Jesus rewards Peter. And…scene.
Perfection.
But that isn’t the ending. And this week isn’t weeks later. It’s seconds later.
From Messiah to Satan
We go from Peter calling Jesus “Messiah” to Jesus calling Peter Satan in seconds.
We’ll get into what all of this really means later in the week. But for now, our attention is on the context. And particularly for those with a big love for tradition, it is probably wise to remember that Peter’s proclamation about Jesus as Messiah isn’t like acing the SATs and getting into Harvard. And Jesus isn’t rewarding this national merit scholar with a permanent endowed chair at a university.
Part of our tradition likes to look back at this moment, quote it out of context, and be like, see—Jesus made him pope.This isn’t just nonsense. It is dangerous. It is most certainly not what is happening here. And, most importantly, doesn’t reflect what happens immediately after.
Peter rightly calls Jesus “Messiah” and then wrongly tries to protect him from dying. He goes from gaining Jesus’s trust to his ire. Not because he has said the wrong thing, but because he demonstrated that he has the wrong motives for the Kin-dom.
Rather than expand the love of God, Peter wants to stop it—by protecting Jesus. Which isn’t so much objectively wrong in the most abstract of senses, but specifically wrong in the Jesus-mission-in-the-world sense. And, let’s be honest, this utterly undermines the idea that Peter’s got the inside track on Jesus knowledge.
Preparing for this week
This is why we start with context. Because this story didn’t come out of nowhere. And last week’s wasn’t a one-off. These aren’t self-contained episodes of a Jesus show on Netflix.
The identity that Jesus claims and the one that his disciples name for him guide our vision of the Kin-dom. This is the stuff that informs our sense of mission and purpose. We start with the sense of the community-transforming power of God’s grace and love and help prepare for it’s manifestation in our world.
And not because Peter named it all correctly and then some other stuff happens. But because he named something he didn’t understand. And he couldn’t fully live into that reality.
And that sounds really, really familiar. Like it’s what we all do.