SANDWICHES - Enhance Your Reading of Mark's Gospel
As followers of Christ, we
look to the Bible as one of our main sources of inspiration and guides in our
lives. So it follows that we all want our times reading the Bible to be as rich
as possible.
Learning more about the
Bible is one way to help with this. It is particularly helpful when we know the
types of things that the authors of the books used to aid us in this task.
To this end I wanted to
talk about something that has enriched my reading of the gospel of Mark: Markan
Sandwiches (also called interpolations).
Essentially, what Mark
does is get one story within his gospel, and inserts it inside another story; this serves the purpose of giving both stories a greater sense of meaning. It’s
purpose is to make the reader stop and think “Mark is trying to tell us
something important here”. In practice it looks like this:
Story 1 – Introduction
Story 2 – Introduction
& Conclusion
Story 1 – Conclusion
We can see where the idea
of the sandwich comes from: Story 2 is sandwiched in between story 1.
Let’s look at an example:
Jairus’ daughter & the women with the perpetual bleed (Mark 5:21-43).
Story 1 – Introduction:
Jairus comes to Jesus, informs Him of his daughter’s illness then asks Jesus to
go with him. Jesus and Jairus begin walking to Jairus’ house.
Story 2 – Introduction
& Conclusion: A women in the crowd comes and touches Jesus, she is
instantly healed. Jesus asks who touched Him and she comes forward. Jesus tells
her to go in peace.
Story 1 – Conclusion: On
the way, Jesus is informed that Jairus’ daughter has passed away, Jesus ignores
them and goes to Jairus’ house. Upon arriving he tells the daughter to wake up;
she does.
As well as Mark using this
interpolation he also does other things to bind these two stories together:
The woman had been
bleeding for 12 years. Jairus’ daughter was 12 years old.
Jesus calls the woman
“daughter”. Jairus’ daughter is also referred to as “daughter”.
Both were considered
unclean. According to Levitical law a woman during her menstrual cycle
(Leviticus 15:19-23) and a corpse (Numbers 19:11-15) were both considered
unclean.
Both had physical contact
with Jesus – again, according to Levitical law, the other person involved in
physical contact would now have been considered unclean as well.
What are the connections
that Mark is trying to make?
When physical contact was
established between Jesus and the woman with the bleed / Jairus’ daughter, it
should have made Jesus unclean. However instead, as well as healing them, Jesus
made them clean.
Mark’s takeaway message:
In Christ, the things that were once considered unclean, are now clean. Jesus
was remaking and restoring the world – including the defeating of death.
Here is a list of the
primary Markan Sandwiches for your reference:
Whenever you are reading
through Marks’ gospel, refer to the list and look for what Mark is trying to
say through them.
I would love to hear about
your experience with any of the verses listed or thoughts you had from this
blog. Please leave your comments below.
Image Credit
Ben White
Image Credit
Thanks!
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