Sandwich Generation

We just finished lunch.
I usually have a salad…others have leftovers…some want a sandwich.
Even with a sandwich there is variety.
Peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese, tuna fish, chicken salad.

When a child eats a sandwich, very often they will remove the crusts from the bread.
Some like their sandwiches cut right down the middle…some like them cut diagonally.
When my youngest was a toddler, she liked her sandwich cut into four triangles.
However you make them…or eat them…the sandwich is a staple of our diet.

But it also is a phase of life!

The Sandwich Generation…a reality for many families.

Taking care of aging parents while taking care of your own family.
There are many families in this stage of life right now.
Torn between taking care of the ones that took care of you…and the responsibilities of your own household.

A living sandwich.

We get a glimpse of someone who did just that…and he was an apostle of Jesus.

Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. So He bent over and rebuked the fever and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.
(Luke 4:38,39)

What kind of man has room in his home for not only his wife, but his brother, and also his mother-in-law?
What kind of man cares for all of them and still follows Jesus as one of His apostles?

Jesus did not have a home of his own, but the Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus came home to Capernaum. (Mark 2:4).
That home was believed to be Peter’s house…close to the synagogue…believed to be the house where the men lowered their paralytic friend through the roof.

Peter was a sandwich man.
Peter cared for his wife, while caring for his mother-in-law.

Hospitality was incredibly important in Jewish culture.
Not only important…but expected.
Though I imagine him to be a brawny fisherman, Peter had the necessary tenderness to care for his family and shepherd the sheep and the lambs Jesus asked him to care for.

How difficult to be a sandwich.
Being the meat in the middle…while the two things you care about are the pieces of bread.

Jesus was also a Living Sandwich.
He was the meat in the middle…the Mediator between God and man.

I have revealed You to those whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours; You gave them to Me and they have obeyed Your word. Now they know that everything You have given Me comes from You. For I gave them the words You gave Me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from You, and they believed that you sent Me…Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name, the name You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one. (John 17:6-8,11)

God the Father…bread.
Believers in Jesus Christ…bread.
Jesus…center.

If we are called to be a living sandwich, we are in good company.
Peter.
Jesus.

Feed My lambs…Take care of My sheep…Feed My sheep. (John 21:15-17)

I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me. (Matthew 25:40)