A look at the gaps in the lectionary.

This week: the gap between Proper 24B & Proper 25B
The text: Mark 10+

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This week, the gap in the lectionary is not between last week and this week, but this week and next—because this is the end of the line. Today, we get the last passage before Jerusalem. Which means all of that stuff Jesus has been predicting for the last three chapters, including this one, is about to start.

And I think we ought to have that in mind.

How easy it is to walk into a healing story without context—and without considering why this comes now. We’ll get into that later in the week, but for now, let us remember the context and keep that top of mind.

• How Jesus has predicted the Passion three times.
• The disciples have become disconnected from the purpose of the mission.
• The disciples can’t heal and don’t have any influence.
• There are other people healing in the name of Jesus.
• They still aren’t sure what they should expect to see in Jerusalem.
• They are already “good” with God by following Jesus because they have already given everything up to do it.
• And certainly more.

This is a whole sequence in which we discover much about Jesus and about the disciples. And, as it becomes even more plain over the course of events, the disciples are us. They are our way into the story. And their struggles help us recognize our own.

As we prepare for the next phase of the story, arriving at the crucible of Jesus’s encounter with empire and its vassal state of Judaea, let us hold this, too, as our story. We ought to be able to see a bit of our own stuff here, right?