A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between the first and second Sundays after the Epiphany
The text: John 1:19-51
This week offers the strange jump from one gospel to another. And does so at great expense to chronology.
In Year C, we have, after the baptism of Jesus, the famous first miracle: the wedding at Cana, with the wine that doesn’t stop flowing. This, however, isn’t the first thing Jesus does after the baptism.
The first thing Jesus does is call disciples, which is significantly more important to the faith than this early story in John. And John’s call stories are quite different than the call stories in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke). There, Jesus runs into an assortment of fishermen, including Simon (Peter), James, and John, and famously invites them to join him, as he will make them fish for people.
In John’s gospel, we have a different vision; one that is more directly tied to the nature of John the Baptist’s relationship to Jesus—and the whole project of Incarnation. John points out Jesus to a few of his disciples, and they choose to switch over to become Jesus’s disciples. Which is totally an early example of what we now call “sheep stealing”.
Here, we also get some interesting clues about what discipleship is supposed to involve and how we might track with it ourselves. Andrew starts following Jesus and then just decides he’s going to do that. No big deal. Then he recruits his brother, Simon Peter. And then Philip comes along because he’s from the same hometown.
There’s an image in this—that I think we can far too easily fold into evangelism and lose sight of what it is or how it feels to ponder it. That invitation is key to our relationship with the divine, for sure. But it isn’t invitation to membership, but to experience, follow, participate in joy and hope.
And there are links, by geography and experience, to a place, to a community, to people who might be friends. That Jesus, too, will reach out, invite, cajole.
This collecting of disciples, of people who are following Jesus and exploring what it means, takes place before the wedding, the miracles, the stuff of our orienting and declaring important. There is before all of that, a time of gathering and committing. And when it is finished, we move along.