A sermon on Mark 1: 4-11 by Nathan Nettleton, 13 January 1991

At the time of the setting of our story it was felt by most educated Jews that the time of the prophets was past. The last prophet whose words had been accepted as the inspired word of God, and added to the scriptures, was Malachi, and that was more than four hundred years earlier. The prophetic voice was now silent. The words of the prophets of the past were studied and meditated upon and people looked forward to the day when their promises would be fulfilled. The final chapter of Malachi’s book opened with promises that stirred the hopes of every righteous lover of God. “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evil doer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things,” says the Lord Almighty.

What a promise. Something to look forward to. And so now people no longer looked for new prophets to speak new words from God, they looked for the decisive action of God. They looked for the promised deliverer who would reveal once and for all who God really was and put an end to all suffering, to all oppression, to all evil. The people longed for the restoration of the glory of God’s people. They were sick of being subject to foreign powers as they had been more or less continuously since Malachi’s time. They were sick of living in a land that had been repeatedly overrun and annexed by whichever expansionist state held sway at the time. They were sick of being treated like pawns in the huge power games fought out by the superpowers of their day. They were sick of being ruled over by men whose greed for power and for military and economic dominance led to callous disregard for the aspirations and livelihoods of ordinary people. They longed for the great and terrible day of the Lord when all such evil would be burned away.

But Malachi had, as his final words, promised a sign. See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. And with that Malachi had signed of and the prophetic voice had gone silent for four hundred years. Elijah. That wild and wooly prophet from centuries earlier. The lone voice for the righteousness of God in godless times, denouncing the evil government of his day and crying out for the people to turn from evil and return to God. Elijah. The one who had made famous the prophetic fashion accessories, the coat made of camels hair with the leather belt round the waist. Elijah, who spent so much time in the desert that a whole tradition of desert prophets followed his time. Elijah, the one who never died, but was taken up alive to heaven in a fiery chariot in a whirlwind. Elijah, said Malachi, would reappear when the day of the Lord approached as a messenger to prepare the way before the Lord. Isaiah too had promised a voice crying out in the desert,“Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight the roads for him.” And so the people waited and prayed and hoped.

And so Mark commences his gospel story by telling us that one day John the Baptiser appeared in the desert region preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now the content of John’s preaching is very important and we’ll return to it in a moment but it seems that Mark, like a good magazine journalist, is just as interested in telling us what John was wearing at the time. Why? Because John appeared in the desert wearing a coat made of camels hair with a leather belt around the waist, and eating typical bush tucker man food. Well, he sure got a reaction that way. The word spread like wildfire throughout the whole region of Judea and the city of Jerusalem. Soon everybody was heading out to see him. The temple in Jerusalem was supposed to be the centre of the religious life of Israel. The chief priests and the teachers of the law held enormous influence over the people and were considered to be the keys to a persons acceptance before God. For centuries many of them had capitalised on their status and commanded a privilege and a reverence from the people that was seldom matched by anything but the externals of godliness. Many people were disillusioned by these leaders, strutting around in their fine clothes, and secretly resented their exalted airs, but they were still central to the practice of the faith so what could one do about it? Without the priests, sacrifices could not be offered and you stood condemned by your sins.

But now, suddenly, a man in a camel hair coat has appeared, shaking the desert with his preaching, and the people are only too happy to head away from the temple and the priests and out to the desert in search of a new way to make straight the paths of the Lord. Everyone’s hopes and fears were stirred up. Is the great and dreadful day of the Lord about to dawn? Could this really be the promised messenger, the voice crying out in the wilderness? Photographs of Elijah were pretty scarce but the message certainly sounded right. “Coming after me is one who is far more powerful than I am. I am not worthy to even bend down and shine his shoes. I baptise you with water for repentance but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.”

People came flocking from all over the region to hear him and to be baptised. But what was this message of his really about? What was this baptism? Our other reading from Acts showed us clearly that John’s baptism was not the same as Christian baptism, so what was it? There was a form of baptism performed by the Jews prior to the time of Jesus. If you were a gentile and you became convinced that the God of Israel was the only true God and so you wanted to convert and become one of the people of God, you were required to undergo an initiation ceremony. Originally that had meant being circumcised and going through some rites of purification. But over time they decided that they needed something else because this was a bit of a problem if you were a woman. There is such a thing as female circumcision but fortunately the Jews, although not known for their respect of women, were not barbaric enough to inflict that on anyone. And so a new purification ritual was developed. It was a baptism or ritual washing and was closely related to the older purification rites. It symbolised a complete turning away from ones sinful heathen past, washing away the impurity of those born outside the community of faith. By the time of John the Baptiser it was commonplace for both baptism and circumcision to be required of male converts and universal for baptism to be required of females. This of course doesn’t mean there were people being baptised all over the place because conversion to Judaism was not that common, but at least these people who are flocking out to John were familiar with the concept and what it meant.

But with John there is something a bit new happening here. Notice where these people are coming from. In a classic exaggeration Mark says the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. These people were already Jews. They didn’t need to convert to Judaism. They were supposed to already be part of the chosen people of God. But here comes this wild man in the desert, in his camel hair coat, crying out to them, “Repent. Be converted. Make a complete turn around in your heart, your mind, your behaviour, your life. Repent.” The word comes from two older words that meant “Get a new Mind”. “You need your head changed,” says John, “And you need to be baptised as a sign of that change for the forgiveness of sins. It doesn’t matter that you are already children of Abraham. Your lives and your hearts are as sick and as twisted and as filthy as any pagan and you too need to be washed in cleansing water for the forgiveness of sins. Just take a look inside yourself and see what is really in your hearts. Just imagine if your head suddenly started working in reverse and instead of your ears hearing sounds and turning them into thoughts, all of a sudden your ears turned into loud speakers and started broadcasting your every thought to the world around you. Yeah, you know what you are really like. Turn around. Change your ways. Prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. Make straight roads for him. Get your acts together. Be completely converted. You must begin to be obedient to the will of God. You must walk in God’s ways, think God’s thoughts and live out God’s radical righteousness. You must trust in God completely. Abandon yourself to the love and provision of God. And that means turning away from every other king of help. It means letting go of whatever other securities you cling to and trusting God and God alone. And finally it means turning away from every thing that is ungodly. If you want to turn to God you have to turn away from everything else. In fact there are a lot of things you will have to turn against. Repent and be baptised for the forgiveness of sins. Become a part of a new people, a people who are living lives prepared for the coming of the Lord”

And apparently the people came. And they came confessing that they were no more righteous than gentiles and that they too needed the forgiveness of God, and confessing their sins they were baptised by John in the Jordon River. “But,” said John, “This is by no means the end of the story. After me is coming one far more powerful than me. I am not worthy even to bend down and dust his thongs. I baptise you with water for repentance, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. Prepare the way for him. You are looking for the great and dreadful day of the Lord when fire will destroy the evil. Well I tell you, you are going to get fire alright. For he who comes after me will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And that is really going to be something. My baptism is for the forgiveness of sins. It will take care of you past and allow you to stand clean and pure before God. But his baptism with the Holy Spirit will give you power for the future. The baptism with the Holy Spirit will give you the power to confront the future and to turn the world on its head. It will give you the power to face up to evil and overcome it. It will enable you to recognise the seeds of war in your own hearts and to overcome your own lust for power and for dominance and for revenge, and then empower you to stand up before the armies of the world and call for peace. It will enable you to recognise the seeds of racism in your own hearts and to overcome your own craving for privilege and your fear of being on the outside, and then empower you to stand up against the tide of hatred and ignorance and bring reconciliation. Prepare the way for the Lord. Convert and be baptised in water and prepare for the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.”

Talk about suspense. Talk about drama. Talk about expectation. And then Mark tells us At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. What? What is this? What a let down. What happened to the drum rolls and fanfares? All that excitement and then he just comes along as another anonymous face in the crowd, coming out for baptism. Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee. Nazareth is so unimportant that it doesn’t even get a mention in the whole Old Testament, Jesus from back-o-nowhere. And as for Galilee, that was the sort of place that you spat on the ground when you mentioned its name. The jails were full of Galileans. You might have well have come from Iraq as come from Galilee. But Jesus comes from Back-o-nowhere in Galilee, and as just another face in the crowds goes out to the desert and is baptised by John in the Jordan river. And that point has raised more questions than the Fitzgerald inquiry. If John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, of conversion, what was Jesus doing being baptised? Jesus we are assured had no sins to be forgiven so why should he go through a baptism of conversion?

Well let’s think about that for a moment. Don’t panic, I’m not going to say Jesus had sins to confess or anything like that. He didn’t, and I am happy to believe he didn’t. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t make a radical change at this point. You don’t have to accept the words repentance or conversion for what happened to Jesus at this time but you do need to accept that he radically changed his style at this time. Prepare the way for the Lord. Well Jesus presumably knew he was the Lord and he certainly knew that he was already here. But nobody much else did. Jesus was already about thirty years old by this time he hadn’t really made a name for himself. The previous eighteen years of his life are completely missing from our history books. Presumably he lived with his parents and went into his fathers carpentry business. Apparently his mother thought he was the messiah and he thought his mother was a virgin so they were obviously just another ordinary Jewish family. He wasn’t making any waves. He wasn’t upsetting anybody. He wasn’t getting in any trouble. He was just letting the world go on as it always had. He wasn’t challenging or confronting anything. But now he comes out to John to be baptised, to identify with the hopes for the new day of the Lord to dawn. He radically changes his style. He turns around. He converts to a new approach. And boy oh boy what a change it is. he comes anonymously but he’s not going to stay anonymous for long. Within another 7 verses we’ve got people quitting their jobs to follow him. Within 13 verses we’ve got demons screaming at him in the synagogue. Within 17 verses we’ve got the news spreading all over Galilee. Within 34 verses he can no longer enter a town openly because of the disturbance that would be caused. Within 41 verses he is being accused of blasphemy by the lawyers. And within 62 verses we’ve already got the pharisees and the herodians plotting to kill him.

You can’t tell me nothing changed. People don’t plot to kill you because you are good. They plot to kill you because you confront the evil that they profit from. Donald McKay didn’t get killed because he didn’t sell drugs. He got killed because he confronted those who did. Archbishop Romero didn’t get killed because he didn’t torture and oppress. He got killed because he confronted those who did. Martin Luther King didn’t get killed because he cared about those who lived in poverty. He got killed because he confronted those whose wealth was built on that poverty. Jesus didn’t get killed because he was righteous and loving and merciful and just. He was killed because he set about confronting and overturning a world that was corrupt and hateful and ruthless and violent.

And so Jesus goes through the waters of baptism for conversion and comes out with a new mind set, a new approach, a new lifestyle, a radical new mission to bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth. That’s what I call a conversion. And as confirmation of the beginning of a new age, he looks up and sees heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending like a pigeon upon him. Now I’ve got no idea what heaven being torn open looks like and it gives no indication that anyone else saw or heard anything. But the Holy Spirit was there hovering like a dove over the waters, just as it had been on the first day of creation, just like it had been on the first day after the flood, just like it was in our psalm earlier. Here again the Holy Spirit is present over the water signalling the beginning of a new stage in the work of God reconciling everything and everyone to himself. And a voice comes across the water from heaven saying, “You are my Son whom I love; and with you I am delighted; I am well pleased.”

Don’t you just crave to hear those words from God. “You are by beloved child and I am pleased and delighted in you.” My friends you can. Because each one of us is called to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and to be converted and to live out our faith, seeking peace and love and mercy and freedom for all people. Each one of us can go through the waters of baptism and be cleansed of the evil that was within us and be filled with the Holy Spirit to heal us and empower us to begin the healing of the world. It’s scary, its not easy, it can be dangerous and it can get you in a lot of trouble. I’ll have my face in plaster next week because I stood up for peace two weeks ago and got my nose broken again for my trouble. And that scares me because I know it could have been a lot worse and I know that next time it might be. And I’m Afraid, like anyone else. If you stick your head up someone will try to kick it and I am tempted to pull mine in and play it safe. But nothing beyond myself will ever be changed by playing it safe. And ultimately that is where my conversion will be evaluated. The Spirit comes upon me with healing in its wings for two reasons. Firstly because God loves me and longs to see me cleansed of the evil inside me and to see me healed and whole and happy. And secondly because God wants to restore my health and strength to equip me for the task of confronting the evil outside me in our world and transforming our society into the Kingdom of love and peace and freedom and justice and righteousness; the righteousness of God.

And so I can’t pull my head in because in the end that is what really matters and my life will be worth nothing if it doesn’t contribute to that task. And that goes for all of us. Maybe you’re still at the stage of the early healing and you don’t have much to contribute yet. That’s O.K. That’s how God works. Live and learn and love and grow. Jesus didn’t start as soon as he graduated from high school either. But that’s where you’re headed if your conversion and baptism mean anything. And if that’s the road you’re on then God is saying to you too,“You are my beloved child and I am delighted with you.”