You Tell it From Here

Sermon by Jamie Howison on Mark 1:4-11

And so, with Christmastide and the Feast of the Epiphany now behind us, the gospel narrative jumps straight to the adult Jesus going down to the Jordan River to be baptised by John. The account we read from the Gospel according to Mark is brief, which is so very typical of the way in which Mark writes. We began just four verses into Mark—which opens with the verse, “The beginning of the good news—the gospel—of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark is the only one of the four gospel writers who opens by telling the reader that he is giving them gospel/good news, by the way, which is interesting. And then without any birth story or reference to Jesus’ childhood, Mark jumps right to the figure of John the Baptist and to Jesus’ baptism.

That is Mark’s way. His is the earliest and the shortest of the four gospels—you can read it quite easily in an hour—and the Greek of the original is not sophisticated. Whereas New Testament writers such as Paul and John were clearly well instructed and schooled, Mark writes more simply, commonly, and at times even awkwardly. The ancient tradition was that Mark received the stories first-hand from Peter, and that sometime before Peter’s death he hurried to set it all down in ink. There’s also a tradition that says Mark wrote himself into the story at the point of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, as a way of saying that like his mentor Peter, he too would have lost nerve on the night of Jesus’ arrest:

A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked. (14:51-52)

None of the other gospel writers mention that young man, and because it is pretty clear that both Luke and Matthew had Mark’s story at hand as they wrote, that they omitted this bit about the humiliated and fearful young man suggests they perhaps didn’t quite recognize the importance of that detail to Mark.

The whole of Mark’s narrative is marked by a kind hurried urgency. In Mark’s telling, everything is happening “immediately”—he uses that word twenty-seven times in his short book—and a good amount of the time Jesus’ disciples seem not have a clue about what is going on. As the musician Nick Cave comments in his extraordinary little essay on Mark:

Even [Jesus’] disciples, who we would hope would absorb some of Christ's brilliance, seem to be in a perpetual fog of misunderstanding, following Christ from scene to scene with little or no comprehension of what is going on.

And yet, Cave continues,

It is Christ's divine inspiration, versus the dull rationalism of those around Him, that gives Mark's narrative its tension, its drive.

And that tension fires right through to end of this gospel, when at the empty tomb the women simply recoil in fear and flee. That’s where most New Testament scholars believe that Mark ended his telling of the gospel, as that is where the most ancient of manuscripts end; with those women—devoted followers, who had known Jesus well—running in fright. Here the novelist and essayist Reynolds Price comments,

Mark intended to end his story as we have it, in literal midair while the women flee the tomb in terror. Such an apparently reckless last-minute abandonment by an author of his reader’s keenest final expectation is thoroughly characteristic of the kind of narrator Mark has been throughout his book. This is my story, suddenly told—you tell it from here. (Reynolds Price, Three Gospels)

And so, just a few verses in and that wild man John the Baptist just appears, clothed like a prophet of old, proclaiming “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” and preaching about the one who was soon to come, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

And then just like that, Jesus arrives from Nazareth and is baptized by John. Unlike the stories told by Matthew and John, there is not even a hint that John recognizes Jesus or that he hesitated for even a moment to baptize him. Matthew says, “John would have prevented Jesus [from being baptized], saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’, while in John’s telling, the Baptist takes one look at Jesus, and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” But again, in Mark’s typically clipped manner, it comes down to this:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

But pause there for a minute and think about the protest the Baptist raised in Matthew’s account. Why is Jesus seeking John’s water baptism in the first place? John’s baptism is clearly identified as “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” and a spiritual preparation for the coming of the “one who is more powerful than I” who will baptize in the Spirit. If Jesus is that coming one, what is he doing getting soaked in the Jordon River?

Well, I think there are at least two things at work here, one that is immediately—to use Mark’s favourite word—visible, and the other that will emerge into view as the gospel story unfolds.

Firstly, it would seem that the human Jesus of Nazareth is undergoing a kind of symbolic ritual through which his ministry—maybe even the fullness of his identity—is brought to clarity. As he emerges from the water, Jesus saw the heavens torn open and Spirit of God descending upon him like a dove. Interestingly, if you attend to the precise wording—“he saw the heavens torn apart,” not “they saw”—it would seem that this is an intensely personal experience for Jesus. That’s further reinforced by what he hears: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Now this adult Jesus—the one who had, in Luke’s wording, “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour”—is about to come into the fullness of his life’s work. And that is marked by John’s water baptism, which rather speaks to why rituals and symbolic acts figure so large in so many cultures and contexts, both ancient and modern. We need them… and in his own way, so did Jesus at that moment.

Secondly, though, I think that Jesus submitting to John’s baptism can also be understood as his first visible act of solidarity with humanity in all of its need and brokenness. What is Jesus’ steady and unrelenting posture toward those who know the ruin, needs, and sin of their lives? He touches them, engages them, forgives them, eats with them, and stands with them as one of them. That is what the Incarnation means, ultimately; that the Word become flesh and moved into the neighbourhood as the greatest good neighbour anyone could have asked for. Unless, of course, you imagined that you didn’t need the love, forgiveness, and company of this particular neighbour, which is ultimately the folly of those who reject him or push him away.

But those stories are yet to come. For now, as we recall this story of Jesus’ baptism we are best to embrace it as a story telling of his deep desire and willingness to be one with us.

Oh, and of his willingness to go not only the extra mile, but as far is it takes… no matter the cost. Mark doesn’t for a moment think that is an easy thing, for the very next verse after today’s reading ends is “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” Drove him. Buckle your seat belts, Mark is saying to his readers. This is going to be my story about Jesus, suddenly told. Listen. If I catch your attention, you may find yourselves wanting to tell it from here.