Mark's Healing Sandwich

Evangelist Mark loved sandwiches.
            I don’t mean real sandwiches such as peanut butter & jelly or BLT or cheeseburger, nothing bready and with garnish. Mark’s sandwiches are a colloquial name for his storytelling style which he liked and often used.

            Mark would open one story, then he inserted another one and after finishing the inserted one, he would finish the first one. The middle story was “sandwiched” between two halves of the original one. Properly it is called a stylistic or rhetorical interpolation or intercalation.

            But it was not just a stylistic caprice. It helped to propel and deepen the meaning. Mark juxtaposed those stories so that they could help interpret each other.

           There was also another implicit benefit. This technique allowed him to present the issue from multiple angles, from several viewpoints. Our human nature leads us to perceive the world in a simplistic dualistic way either/or; It is either this way or that way; either one has it or the other has it; either one is helped or the other is helped. It is actually an example of the zero-sum game thinking.

            Mark’s sandwiches, his interpolations, show us by default that things can be genuinely both ways. By the virtue of his style he leads us from Either/Or thinking to Both/And thinking. I cannot express enough how appropriate is this style especially for the gospel message.

Join us this Sunday when we will hear and learn from one such Markan healing sandwich helping us to understand and hopefully heal our deeply wounded and hurting times.      

Pigs do swim

Pigs are excellent swimmers. I saw them swim and I know it was not an exemption. In the Bahamas there is a well-known beach where American tourists can swim along with feral pigs. It is a tourist attraction and part of many tourist brochures. The National Geographic, as well as other nature channels, made documentaries about these Caribbean beach loving pigs.

            Well, it is nothing special. In the Philippines, Ghana, Nicaragua and many other places in the subtropics and tropics there are pigs living on ocean beaches. Pigs simply love water, be it ocean, lake, muddy creek or just a puddle.

            And so, when I hear in the Gospels about a heard of pigs drowning in a lake I know that something is up. That story is not to be taken literally, there is something else is going on. It is to be taken symbolically and it has a deeper meaning.

          Join us this Sunday as we learn how Jesus challenged and overcame destructive demons of militarism, occupation and national and political oppression. Come to be empowered by the message that evil demons of division, desolation and wickedness can be overcome and cast out.