may even take the shape of the amassing of religious “stuff.” Religion can get in the way as much as it can help if religion becomes the ends rather than the means.
Water baptism is nothing new. The way John does it has flair and sure gets people’s attention, but other groups perform water baptisms as a sign of initiation into their community. The idea of water cleansing someone is not novel. The reality that John’s proclamation has the effect of drawing crowds of people out from the whole Judean countryside says more about the people’s hunger and anticipation than about John’s technique. The people are ready and waiting.
In that day, there is a common belief that Elijah will precede the coming of the Messiah. There is to be a warm-up band before the concert begins. Mark, through his description of John, identifies John with Elijah (see 2 Kings 1:8). John is the one-man-warm-up band.
Many people are so captivated by his performance, however, that he has to make it clear that he is simply getting the crowd ready for the main act. His closing number is a first-century way of saying, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” He speaks of his baptism being the rain that comes before the lightning. What he offers is water. The one who is to follow him will light up the sky with fire.
“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:7–8). (What the Holy Spirit meant to those people in John’s audience is anybody’s guess.)
In Mark’s Gospel the tension between the baptism of water and the baptism of the Holy Spirit is left to the imagination. Here is a reason to study more than one of the Gospel accounts in order to obtain the whole picture.
In the other Gospels (see Matthew 3:11–12, or Luke 3:15–17, for example), John the Baptist specifies that this baptism of fire will be harsh, “If you think I am a hell and brimstone preacher, you just wait till he gets here.” John’s spirituality was a desert way of spirituality. John may have been thinking that what the Messiah would bring would be a higher volume version of this desert spirituality.
Mark says nothing of this anticipation by John. Mark keeps it simple. From reading further in the Gospel of Mark, we can see that for Mark, Jesus comes to fill life with abundance. What we have between the lines in Mark’s version of the story is a very different kind of spirituality from that of John’s asceticism. Mark’s Jesus goes to dinner parties and weddings. He speaks words about the flowers in the fields, and mustard seeds that grow into the greatest of shrubs, and does not say so much about the barrenness of the desert.
Water baptism, with its symbolic suggestion of death and new life, may be a sign of cleansing and of forgiveness by God, but it also has the ringing words of crusty old desert John as he reminds us of the letting go and emptying that is sometimes necessary for us to un-clutter the way to God. John’s view by choice and design is narrow. The desert sun will do that to a prophet.
We do need the desert way of spirituality at times. The emptying effect is good for balance, but in the Gospel of Mark, the focus is on Jesus’ understanding of a spirituality that is characterized by his words in the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is more expansive than some today would have it. The baptism of the Holy Spirit as practiced by Jesus is a baptism of fire, a fire of cleansing, and grants the person baptized the freedom to live abundantly and live out of a sense of sufficiency rather than scarcity. This is the reason that when someone is baptized in the Christian community all those who look on should hear the words, “Remember your baptism and be grateful.”
Mark 1:9–11 The Baptism of Jesus
John’s skin may be parched from the sun in the desert, but now he faces the Son in the desert. This is Mark’s “birth story.” The Son of God is “born” in the midst of the burning heat of the sun in the desert.
Mark has no soft angel’s voice telling a wide-eyed Mary that a son is coming. There is no sweet story of a babe born in a manger. The Son of God is “birthed” in the blistering heat of repentance. How Jesus comes from the womb is of no concern to Mark. Arguments about a virgin birth are washed away in the waters of the Jordan.
Jesus comes out of the waters and hears a proud father say, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” And that’s it. What happens before is left a mystery in Mark’s story. All that matters is that from that moment on this young man is now the Son of God as announced by none other than God.
There is no mention of anyone other than Jesus hearing this announcement from the clouds. While in the other Gospels the event seems to be a public disclosure, this earliest Gospel seems to imply that this is between God and his boy. This theme of keeping things quiet is woven all through the gospel of Mark. Jesus’ insistence oftentimes that people not reveal his identity is one of Mark’s trademarks. Scholars call this theme the “messianic secret” motif.
I will not go into all the speculations as to why Mark does this. Not having angel choirs announcing the birth, and foreign “kings” coming from distant countries, fits in with the more subtle nature of Mark’s Jesus.
One could ask if Mark knows of the manger tradition or the Magi tradition and chooses not to use them. The question goes unanswered for sure, although knowing about such occurrences and choosing not to use them seems to modern observers rather beyond imagining. Mark’s depiction of Jesus reflects a figure who is not explicit in advertising who he is.
Even though the writings of Mark were used by Matthew and Luke, who both have birth traditions in their accounts of Jesus, we must allow the Gospel of Mark to stand on its own. That is hard to do for people who have grown up watching bath-robed shepherds, plastic babies in mangers, and tin-foil-crowned kings. We throw the various elements of the story together and blend them like making slaw out of cabbage. That may be fine for a local church Christmas pageant, but it takes away from the unique telling of the story by Mark.
For Mark, the only birth worth telling about is the one that happens to the Son in the desert sun that day of his baptism. The story begins privately and will continue to be private until Jesus decides to go public.
Mark 1:12–13 The Temptation of Jesus
In Matthew and Luke the temptation story is a full-fledged drama. In Mark it is a couple of sentences. Mark leaves the listener asking, “What really happened out there in the wilderness?”
Mark’s version of the temptation of Jesus is a reminder of the loneliness of the true struggle of temptation. We are left alone with our thoughts of what it must be like to be in the wilderness with only the wild beasts and Satan.
This abrupt account which follows the glory of Jesus’ baptism is similar to the story of the young college football star who wins all sorts of honors and acclaim but who suddenly finds himself in training camp at the professional level. Being drafted number one by a team means having to prove oneself in the wilderness of training camp with the “wild beasts.” It may also be a lot like what it would be like to be enrolled in a boot camp. Jesus has to test his ability to withstand what is coming in the days ahead.
The text says that the Spirit “drove” him out into the wilderness. This is not a choice. The only choice Jesus has is to decline the draft. Once Jesus accepts that he is the Son, he has to face the test. I wonder what would happen if this were the pattern for those who joined up to be Christian. Rather than receiving a new member packet and a copy of the church directory, new recruits to the church would be sent to training camp.
Could it be that today we do not
