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.