Lectionary Reflections on Mark 1:9-15

February 26, 2012

The way we find out about characters in literature is often through their interactions with others. Mark's gospel, like Matthew, Luke and John, is an attempt to answer the question, "Who is Jesus Christ?" The baptism and temptation narratives show him interacting, first with John the Baptist, then with Satan. As we eavesdrop on these interactions we find out who Jesus is and who we are to be as his followers.

The first character to appear is John the Baptist. How are we to understand what he was doing in baptizing people? The members of the Qumram community, a group of separatist ascetics in Jesus' day, practiced a ritual of washing, symbolically cleansing themselves of recent sin. It was a rite that was periodically repeated. John's baptisms with water for repentance, by contrast, seems to have been a once-and-for-all ritual. It marked its recipients as those who responded to his preaching, repented and joined the faithful remnant of those who would survive the imminent fiery judgment. John was not alone in believing in this imminent event. Much end-time speculation and writing of that time focused on a coming new order that God would initiate. It would be preceded by a time of natural disasters, and of weighing who was righteous and thus participate in the kingdom of God, and who would be consigned to judgment. John taught that people should purify themselves by his baptism of water now, so that they would be cleansed and ready to pass safely through the fires of judgment that were to fall.

Given this purpose for John's baptism, why would Jesus be baptized? The answer: to reveal who he was. The role of John the Baptist in relation to Jesus was a much discussed topic in the church of the first century, with followers of John the Baptist insisting on his precedence over Jesus. John disagreed and so asked Jesus, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" (Matthew 3:14). Jesus explains it to the puzzled John in this way "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Despite the repeated commands to tell no one, the reader of Mark knows who Jesus is. Jesus submits to baptism because of the kind of Messiah he is: a Messiah in deed, not just in word. His submitting to baptism for sin foreshadows the cross. It tells us this is a Messiah who does more than express empathy for our painful, sinful human condition. He enters into it, identifying fully with its consequences and remedies. He consecrates himself to his messianic vocation by joining the sinful multitude in the waters of the Jordan. One not too distant day from this one, Jesus will fulfill his risky vocation by a baptism into the waters of death.

Immediately after his baptism, there comes the visible conferral of the Holy Spirit accompanied by the words of the heavenly voice: "This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased." Mark's account of this experience depicts the coming of the Spirit and voice from heaven as a private experience of Jesus. In Matthew's version, a combination of quotations from Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1 is addressed to onlookers.