Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
Now that we’re back in Ordinary Time, it means we’re in the half of the year when we read the gospel more or less in order. We start in Advent, which highlights the beginning of the story, then Epiphany gets into the start of Jesus’s ministry. Lent and Easter jump around, taking us, ultimately, to the end. So the return to the narrative in Ordinary Time is usually close to where we left off in Epiphany.
As much as the highlights are familiar to most followers, there is something important in the ritual of reading through the gospels in order that helps us see the whole as greater than the sum of its parts. Because none of the four canonical gospels is a greatest hits album—each is itself a story with a narrative structure that reveals much along the way.
This past week, I made a big deal out of part of the story the lectionary skipped over (which is covered in another part of the lectionary) of Jesus stilling the storm. This isn’t just a crazy thing that we learn about Jesus in the abstract. It is a moment that changes how the disciples see him ever after. And it comes at a time when we might be starting to think this is just about healing people and not transforming the world.
The story builds upon itself. And the more we attune ourselves to this building, the more we can get out of it. This was the the principal character of the Bible study I led several years ago—to help people learn the bigger story by practicing the telling of the story. Not because anyone in the group was dying to tell the story themselves, but so they could learn the story well enough to connect it. The funny thing is that it works like magic.
With love,
Drew+
