Day 20: How Mark Tells a Story – The "Sandwich" (Mark 3:20–35)

By Sindhu Nadarajan · Monday, October 12, 2026

Entering the passage

Before we look closely at what happens in this passage, we pause to notice how Mark tells it. He is a careful storyteller, and one of his favorite techniques is what modern scholars call intercalation, often nicknamed the "sandwich." He begins one story, interrupts it with a second story as the filling, and then finishes the first. The two stories are meant to be read together, each shedding light on the other. The Church Fathers never used the term "sandwich," but they did read and explain these stories together.

The shape of the sandwich

• The top slice (3:20–21): His relatives set out to seize him, saying, "He is out of his mind."

• The filling (3:22–30): The accusation of the scribes and Jesus' answer to them.

• The bottom slice (3:31–35): Jesus tells who is his brother and sister and mother.

A word on "his brothers." St. Bede the Venerable explains that they are not to be thought sons of the ever-virgin Mary, nor sons of Joseph by a former marriage, but rather his relations.

What the sandwich reveals

Placed side by side, the two stories show two very different groups misreading Jesus. His relatives say, "He's lost his mind." The scribes say, "He's possessed." One misunderstanding comes from closeness and worry; the other comes from a hardened heart that calls the work of God evil. Mark wants us to see that being near Jesus, whether by family ties or by religious learning, does not by itself mean truly knowing him.

The bottom slice gives the answer. The true family of Jesus is formed by doing the will of God. Those who should have been "insiders" end up standing outside, while those sitting at his feet, eager to do his will, are welcomed in as brother, sister, and mother.

Here we are invited to look at Mary. Mark doesn't include Mary among the relatives who came to seize him. Mary, more than anyone, is the one who does the will of God: "May it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38). St. Augustine puts it this way: "Mary is more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ, than in conceiving the flesh of Christ." Her motherhood would have been of no profit to Mary had she not borne Christ in her heart after a more blessed manner than in her flesh. She belongs to Jesus twice over, by blood and, more deeply, by obedience. She is the perfect model of the family Jesus describes.

A way of reading

This first sandwich teaches us how to read the rest of Mark. Whenever Mark interrupts a story, we can slow down and ask: Why are these two placed together? What does one tell me about the other? We will meet this pattern again with Jairus' daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage, the fig tree and the Temple, and Peter's denial during Jesus' trial.

We will reflect on the filling of the sandwich tomorrow.

Ponder

• Where am I close to Jesus in outward ways (practice, knowledge, ministry) but still at risk of misreading him?

• When has worry or a desire to protect led me to try to "restrain" what God was doing in me or in someone else?

• Born anew in Christ through Baptism, we become like him by imitating how he does everything: always according to the will of the Father. Where am I still doing things my own way rather than the Father's way? Let me ask for the grace of such a transformation.

Closing prayer

Lord Jesus, you look at those seated around you and call them your family. Free me from the misunderstanding that keeps you at a distance and from the hardness of heart that refuses your work. Like Mary, your mother, who bore you first in her heart, teach me to discern the will of the Father and to do it. Amen.

Remembering St. Carlo Acutis

St. Carlo Acutis, whom we remember on October 12, became a true member of Jesus' family by doing the Father's will in ordinary daily life and through the Eucharist, his "highway to heaven." Neither his youth nor his illness held him back.

St. Carlo Acutis, pray for us.