A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 20A and 21A
The text: Matthew 20:17-21:22
This week, we enter a difficult part of the lectionary. When we receive Jesus’s Temple teachings without the looming specter of Holy Week. Without the impending nature of the crucifixion. It’s there in text, just not in our churches.
I can’t help but feel disembodied from the tension of the moment. And I worry about what this does to our reading.
You know that I obsess about context. That, without it, we are fundamentally lost within the character of the text.
Here, though, I feel this distance from the cross is doubly dangerous. As if these are mere teachings. Spritely ideas that come out of Jesus’s mouth like things we all should know.
What’s missing is the hostility, the shame, and the trickery Jesus is facing. And similarly, the sense of urgency and forcefulness in this.
These teachings aren’t abstract, wise statements—suitable for polite company, while explaining the workings of the world with innocuous grace. Jesus is shaming hostile leaders, winning over crowds who haven’t met him before, and hoping his followers are keeping up.
Nothing about this should hit us as easy, comfortable, or (actually) normal. These are teachings with multiple audiences, some of whom he knows will reject it.
In short, these are not the words of a man at a dinner party ensuring everyone will like him. These are words of a man facing a crucifixion. And some people in that crowd are looking forward to that.
Mind the Gap
Last week, we jumped from discipleship talk into a parable about money and generosity.
Immediately after that parable about ensuring everyone has their daily bread, Jesus predicts his death a third time (20:17-19).
The mother of James and John (who is apparently traveling with them?) seizes the opportunity to get her boys attention with the master. She kneels before him, offering their lives in service to the cause.
This is a strange sort of figure in history: an inverse version of the “Mama Bear” stereotype. Rather than protect her children, she seeks to have them die. Of course, for a cause, for nobility, and stature.
In literature and history, these mothers have different kinds of motivations, often tragic, misguided, or selfish. Often no less selfish than the mother seeking to protect her own children before others. But it is the cruelness of it that makes the whole thing strange.
The request, however, is not Jesus’s to grant. Nor is it received well by their peers.
But Jesus’s response reorients the moment as much as it is about cooling people’s jets.
Jockeying for position is the way of the world, not of Jesus. So put an end to “best disciple” nonsense. And don’t think that any one is better than any other. Because greatness in the Kin-dom isn’t about one’s power, but in one’s weakness.
The Last Act
The last thing Jesus does before venturing into Jerusalem is the healing of two blind men.
As a lover of Scripture, I find it strange that the last act before Jerusalem is so unheralded by the faithful. It is the sort of thing that should illuminate. Yet we tend to go, Yeah yeah yeah; more healings.
It is a compelling, but slightly cryptic moment. And it is also Matthew’s story to tell.
Jesus is leaving Jericho—famous for its falling walls and for its proximity to Jerusalem. And two men who are blind ask for mercy. Jesus asks them what they want him to do. They ask for their eyes to be opened. And Jesus, compassionate, heals them.
The obvious connections, of scales removed from their eyes like walls coming down are valuable. As is the more subtle invoking of a more passive orientation toward God. That the people didn’t bring the walls down, God brought the walls down. Similarly, the men’s words are passive: “Lord, let our eyes be opened.”
The theme of opened eyes as they enter Jerusalem, leads us to two related concepts: understanding and witness. These are clearly not the same. Nor do they always go together. We can understand without being there and we can witness something without understanding.
For me, however, this final action before the final act, is ripe with foreshadowing for the faithful. And it centers our minds on the matters of the Kin-dom.
Jesus heals, yes, but he does so to restore. He does so with compassion and often in response to bold requests. He also honors people who place his ministry in context. Like when they call him Lord and Son of David.
Lastly, and perhaps this is mere reverberations from the text, but these two men come to Jesus as a pair. And the work Jesus gives his followers is to go out in pairs. Our work isn’t solo. So perhaps these two who witness the love of God in Christ will maintain a partnership.
The first days of Holy Week
Then we have Jesus enter Jerusalem in what we commemorate as Palm Sunday.
In Matthew’s telling, Jesus heads to the Temple the same day. And not just to peak in. It is the “cleansing” with the overturning of tables and driving out of the dovesellers.
The focus of his ire is certainly exploitation. And his words reveal the rot he seeks to expose. Jesus refers to the house of prayer becoming a den of robbers; a concept that connects a two-headed sin. One is the protection the Temple leaders offer the Romans and the other is the leaders themselves. For they collude in exploiting the people for financial gain.
There’s a reason Jesus talks about money.
Afterward, he leaves the city, to spend the night in Bethany. Then, in the morning, he curses the fig tree. Other gospels offer a more direct connection to the Temple. This one offers it as an expression of faith.
The disciples ask how it can wither instantly, and Jesus responds with: faith. He asked for it and it happened. Ask for God to move a mountain, and it goes.
Remembering confrontation
When Jesus returns to the Temple the next day, he is greeted by people eager to hear what he has to say. Most because they will be amazed. And of them, most of those will be totally up for it all.
But some aren’t planning to be amazed so much as horrified. They plan to be outraged. So anything is going to sound like heresy.
And the topics for the teachings and interrogation will vary, but their substance is mostly revealed in the very first question: about Jesus’s authority.
They will attempt to talk about God’s authority and will speak well of wanting to abide it. But that isn’t really the motivation. They’re heresy-hunting. And to them, God is the supreme authority and Jesus has none—regardless of the words and actions.
Much of Jesus’s ministry is about revealing—opening the eyes of people who are blind. Opening the eyes of people wanting to see. And most people who encounter Jesus want to see. But these people don’t. Not because they are of a group or because we don’t like them or because we believe they are incapable.
Jesus invites and they reject. This is their opportunity for Jesus’s compassion.
We can certainly recognize the similarities with our own neighbors today. The connections are obvious. But I think, especially with the gospel of Matthew, it helps to see Jesus as not writing people off. He doesn’t think people have a defective character or a destiny to be condemned. Nor does he wish anyone to be condemned.
Matthew’s Jesus does want us to understand that there are consequences, however. That, while God’s mercy is eternal, and we should be continuously merciful to the penitent, there are consequences to unrepentant lives.
Precisely because exploitation is sin and generosity is love. And restoring us all is the goal.