Today we begin Mark’s gospel at the beginning. Unlike
Matthew’s and Luke’s gospel, Mark doesn’t offer us any birth narratives – no shepherds,
no choirs of angels, no wise men, no Mary or Joseph or babe in the manger. Instead, Mark’s good news begins with John
the Baptist, the wild man in the wilderness.
We get one sentence, a sort of title - “The beginning of the good news of Jesus
Christ, the son of God.” Then we get what Mark tells us is a quotation from
Isaiah, though it actually is a mashup of words from Isaiah and Malachi, with a
few words from Exodus tossed in – and then we meet John.
John is a strange, memorable, charismatic character. We’re told that John appeared in the
wilderness, and that he dressed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his
waist. We might not think too much of
John’s wardrobe – maybe if we used to watch shows like “Project Runway”, we
might want to send his wardrobe back to the drawing board - but it would have
had a message for those who saw him. In
the time of Jesus, there was an expectation that before the coming of the great
and terrible day of the Lord, the prophet Elijah would appear (Malachi
4:5). In the Old Testament, Elijah was
described as a hairy man, dressed in a leather belt. (2 Kings 1:8). So
John’s appearing in the wilderness dressed as he was would immediately have
reminded his listeners of Elijah or perhaps other Old Testament prophets – just
as if we here in Philadelphia walk by Independence Hall and see a re-enactor
dressed in a colonial costume with a powdered wig, we would recognize them as
portraying Ben Franklin or George Washington or Thomas Paine or one of the
other American revolutionaries.
We’re told John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins, and that people from the whole Judean countryside and as
far away as Jerusalem, came out to see
John, confessing their sins. Now, it was
sort of funny yesterday, at least to me, but at the breakfast yesterday, we had
our Santa up on stage, but it seemed to me that most of the kids weren’t actually
all that interested in him…..mostly the kids seemed to like the breakfast and
maybe the arts and crafts, and every now and then Santa would jingle his sleigh
bells and go “Ho Ho Ho, Meeeerry Christmas” as if to remind the kids that he
was there….I felt a little bad for the guy.
But people walked for miles and miles, often traveling for several days
in many cases, and without the benefit of a Motel 6 along the way, to see
John. And they didn’t come to give John
their Christmas lists….instead they came to John to confess their sins, and to
be baptized as a sign of their repentance, as a sign of their desire to start
over. John had a real following – in
fact, the records of non-Christian historians of the time such as Josephus had
much more to say about John than about Jesus.
John the Baptist was big stuff.
To this day, the Mandeans, a small religious minority in Iran and Iraq,
continue to revere John the Baptist, and baptism is still a major part of their
rituals.
What would have drawn people so strongly to John? What would have led the people to travel so
far just to hear him rant and to get dunked in the Jordan? They came because they had a sense that they
had lost their way, and needed to start over.
Whatever they had going in their lives wasn’t doing it for them. The Roman occupation was oppressive and
limiting, and the rituals of the Temple in Jerusalem or of their local faith
communities still left them feeling empty, left them feeling that something was
missing. Indeed, it was their own sense
that their lives had become bad news, for themselves or others, that led them
to seek the good news offered by John.
As Jesus would later say, healthy people don’t go looking for a doctor;
only people who know they are sick seek to be healed. And John gave them a chance to confess their
sins, to leave the bad news in their lives behind, to reconnect to their faith
community and start over.
How about us? Are we satisfied with our lives as they are?
Or are we open to the promise, stated by John and later by Jesus, of life as it
could be? The beginning of the good news
of Jesus means recognizing the bad news in our own lives, and turning away from
it. We tend to think of turning to Jesus
as a one-time event – and indeed, there are some things such as baptism that
only come once. At least in our
tradition, if people have already been baptized, we honor that baptism and
don’t ask them to be rebaptized again. We
give thanks for every faith community that has been a part of each person’s
spiritual journey. But my experience is
that Christian discipleship, after that first big commitment to follow Jesus,
is a series of re-commitments, as we become more sensitive over time to the
brokenness in our lives and the brokenness in our society, as attitudes and
behaviors that at one time seemed perfectly ok are exposed as being deeply
unfaithful to the way of Jesus, as we turn to God over and over again for
deliverance from our own unfaithfulness and that of our society, and for
healing and renewal.
I’d like to go back to that first verse in Mark’s gospel,
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” It’s a sort of title, which we may read
before moving on to the next verse, but there’s more there than we may realize. In the culture of Jesus’ day, it would have
been read as a sort of royal proclamation.
When a new Roman emperor would come to power, there would be a similar
announcement – “The good news of Caesar Augustus” – and Roman emperors also
took upon themselves the title “son of God.”
And so by using this same language of royal proclamation, Mark was
making a political statement. The
readers of Mark’s proclamation were asked to make a choice – do we rejoice at
the good news of Caesar, or the good news of Jesus? They weren’t being asked to be loyal to
Caesar and maybe include a little bit of the good news of Jesus around the
edges of their lives….to follow Jesus was to turn away from Caesar. The same is true for us. To turn to Jesus means to turn away from everything,
in our personal lives and in our society, that is not consistent with the way
of Jesus. Before we say or do anything,
we may want to ask, “What would Jesus do?
Where would Jesus be? What would
Jesus say?” We may want to compartmentalize and say that
Jesus cares about these things over here, but not those things over there…..but
if we believe in turning our lives over to Jesus…..well, that has implications
for our whole lives, all of our lives, not just Sunday morning.
We might also ask what that title, “The beginning of the
good news of Jesus Christ the son of God”, is referring to. Is it just referring to the verses about John
the Baptist? It’s likely that Mark meant
those words – “the beginning of the good news” – about his whole Gospel. What we read in Mark’s gospel is just the
beginning. As people read Mark’s gospel
and turn to Jesus – as we read Mark’s gospel and recommit to the way of Jesus –
the good news continues in our lives. The
words of Mark’s gospel are just the beginning of the good news of Jesus, good
news which continues in our lives, if we let it. If we let it.
In a few minutes, we’ll be receiving a new member into Emanuel
Church, as we did last Sunday. It’s a
joy when new people join the community. While we do not rebaptize people, they will be
renewing their baptismal vows to reject evil and follow in the way of Jesus. As
they make promises, may we recommit ourselves to living so that the good news
of Jesus is visible in our lives. Amen.
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