Maybe we are just looking at it backwards.

That mass is a consequence of the centripetal dynamic of gravity, rather than gravity a property of mass.

When waves synchronize, the effect is centripetal. For example, lasers are synchronized light waves.

So say there is a centripetal dynamic going on across the entire spectrum, from the barest bending of light, to the vortices at the center of galaxies, aka, black holes. With mass as an intermediate effect toward the more dense end, that our tactile minds tend to take as a given.

It's not like physics hasn't made similar errors. The epicycles used to model a geocentric cosmology really were brilliant math, as a description of what we are seeing, but the crystalline spheres were lousy physics, as explanation.