Br Alex Swain
Beloved in Christ,
I love sandwiches.
I love peanut butter and jelly (which we ate a lot of on the Diocesan Youth Mission Trip).
I love tuna fish sandwiches (which my grandma Mimi always made, and I’ve never been able to replicate).
I particularly love corned beef sandwiches (the best I’ve ever had coming from Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan).
But I especially love Markan sandwiches. These gluten-free, vegan, delightful bites fill one’s soul!
Why is that you might ask?
Because a Markan sandwich (also known as a Markan intercalation or interpolation) is a wondrous literary device found only in the Gospel of Mark! And today’s Gospel reading provides us with a fantastic example of this technique.
The Markan sandwich follows a pattern of starting a story—interrupting the story with another story—and then concluding the original story.
It follows an A1-B-A2 pattern, and today’s reading is particularly clear with this:
A1: Jesus curses the fig tree (vv. 12-14)
B: Jesus cleanses the temple (vv. 15-19)
A2: The fig tree withers (vv. 20-21)
The Gospel of Mark has roughly nine of these strewn through the text.
I learned about this back in my New Testament classes and was shocked to discover the depth which the shortest, quickest, least descriptive and most historically ignored Gospel had in its text. A treasure trove rich for pondering!
Generally, the middle (B) section offers a key theological interpretation of the (A) sections.
So what do we see happening in this oft overlooked parable?
The fig tree is often a symbol of Israel occurring 27 times in the Old Testament and 17 times in the New Testament. The fig tree is represented by the prophets (See Jeremiah, Hosea, and Joel in the link) as an object of God’s judgement against Israel, as an object who has turned from God—the source of life—and withered.
Following the literary pattern, then—the rotten heart and religious center had turned towards money and away from God. It was not producing fruit—like the fig tree. And Jesus judged the tee (in the curse from A1) and it withers (A2).
The Gospel of Mark is much more sophisticated than at first sight. I love finding these patterns in the Scriptures. It makes the depth and wonder of wading in the depths of God’s word all the richer to contemplate.
Yours in Christ,
—Br Alex
