Jottings and discussion on The Baptism of Christ (Genesis 1 and Mark 1)

 

I guess we could all use some good news right now.

And that’s what Mark says he’s writing.

He begins his whole gospel – which means “good news” – by saying:

“The beginning of the gospel – the good news - about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Mark says: “Have I got good news for you!”

In fact, it’s the best news in the world ever.

 

It’s not of course good news about vaccine roll out or a falling infection rate.

But it’s not ultimately irrelevant to all that in a way.

Mark is writing about something even more important than COVID-19 – something of universal and eternal significance.

Here is a message of good news for all people everywhere, including here and now, whatever our circumstances.

It’s good news about Jesus Christ the Son of God.

And that’s exactly whom we see Jesus to be revealed to be at his baptism:

Jesus The Christ the Son of God.

 

Jesus may not save us from COVID, but he can transform our fear of death.

He can give us a life which no virus can destroy.

Jesus offers hope not just for a better 2021, eventually, if we’re lucky and all goes well, but for life and for eternity.

He promises not freedom from lockdown but freedom from sin.

Not only an end to social distancing, but an end to the distance between human beings and God.

Jesus can bring us not only to a restored way of life but to the full and complete life for which we were made, the life of heaven and the new creation.

 

Mark says his gospel is all about Jesus.

 

I wonder if you’ve ever really thought about what the Bible is all about.

 

The Bible is after all a long and complicated book – even a strange book.

It contains poems and prophecies and history and letters and much else besides.

There’s some stuff that we might say is a bit like philosophy.

There’s lots about how to live: is it law or guidance?

But lot of it is about what to do if an ox kills someone, or how to build a temple, and what foods to eat. 

There’s all sorts of strange visions about trees and stars and rivers and so we could go on.

 

One of my old University professors has written a big history of the Bible published by Penguin and serialised recently on Radio 4 which discusses the different ways in which Jews and Christians have read the Bible.

Maybe you heard some of it.

Those Jewish and Christian readings of the Bible can be very different.

And not all Christians can agree what the Bible means.

And for John Barton, who wrote this book, that’s not necessarily a problem.

It reflects the nature of the Bible itself as a collection of very human documents written by many different authors over a long period of time.

Sometimes there are tensions and even, according to Barton, contradictions between those writers.

He thinks we would be hard pushed to agree that the Bible has a single coherent message.

 

But to my mind, that is to underestimate the wonderful literary artistry of the Bible.

Granted that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all had their different perspectives and unique contributions but they have a remarkable unity.

Paul was not James.

Proverbs is different from Isaiah, Exodus or Job.

But what strikes me is the amazing way in which the Bible fits together.

It seems to me that behind the many human authors there must have been one guiding intelligence, and he must have been a genius!

That makes sense if the Holy Spirit inspired the different human writers.

 

And for me, the Bible is ultimately God’s testimony about Jesus.

That seems to be the Bible’s claim about itself – Jesus’ claim about the Bible.

The Old Testament looks forward to him; the New Testament looks back to him.

Jesus is the centre and goal of it all.

It is written that we might come to Jesus in repentance and faith and find life in him.

And in the pages of Scripture, God the Father bears witness by the Holy Spirit to God the Son.

The Bible is almost like the voice of God from heaven in our reading today saying about Jesus:

“This is my Son, whom I love.”

 

(This passage set for the Baptism of Christ would be a good reading for Trinity Sunday too, wouldn’t it, as God the Father speaks about God the Son and God the Holy Spirit comes down upon him)

 

Later at the Transfiguration, God the Father says the same thing again about Jesus and adds the instruction: “Listen to him!”.

As we read the Bible, God would have us focus on Jesus and hear his voice afresh in these ancient pages.

 

And I think we can see that the Bible is all about showing us Jesus if we think about the Baptism of Christ and our readings for today because so many of the patterns and pictures of the Bible converge on Jesus.

 

So it’s worth just noting that the Bible isn’t first of all and simply about you and me.

In fact our Bible passages today are not very obviously about us at all.

Today’s readings don’t obviously tell us what to do.

 

I guess Genesis tells us that like all of creation we were made by God.

And that’s very important.

That would change so much if we really grasped it.  

But there’s an awful lot of other detail and all the implications might not spring off the page to us.

God, in his wisdom, didn’t write the Bible as easy, simple, clear messages for us.

 

We’ve already says that Mark tells us that his gospel is good news.

But maybe it’s not immediately obvious how or why.

What sort of good news is this?

Good news for whom?

About what?

How does this account of the life of Jesus make a difference to me?

 

John the Baptist tells the crowd that the one who comes after him (whoever he is) will baptise them with the Holy Spirit.

But even when we know that Jesus is that one, what does that mean?

“Baptism with the Holy Spirit” is a bit mysterious, isn’t it?  

And does it include us?

We probably didn’t realise that we needed to be baptised with the Holy Spirit, but even if we did, how do we get this baptism?

How do we benefit from it?

 

It would be a mistake, I think, when reading the Bible to leap too quickly to apply it to ourselves.

After all, I am not an ancient Israelite.

I’m not John the Baptist or Jesus or one of the crowd that day.

We’re different from them.

Our situations are different.

 

And yet the Bible is for us.

It would be a mistake to leap too quickly to ourselves.

But also it would be pointless if we never got to ourselves.

The Bible is not just meant to be academic information about other people or other times out there.

It’s not meant to be just quite interesting!

It has to touch me in the end.

It’s meant to transform and renew us and equip us for God’s service here and now.

How do we go from the words of the Bible back then to our own situation?

 

The key to seeing how this Gospel passage relates to us is to grasp what it tells us about Jesus.

And how we relate to Jesus.  

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.

The good news is all about him.

He is good news for us today.

He is the life-transforming saving good news we ultimately need.

And this passage gives us a wonderfully rich portrayal of Jesus.

More really than we can manage to look at together today.

There are all sorts of quotations and allusions and hints of other parts of the bible here converging to show us something about who Jesus is and what he came to do and how it can benefit us.

 

We’re meant to think today particularly about the Baptism of Jesus.

Let me suggest two ways of thinking about the baptism of Jesus.

 

First, I think Mark wants us to see the baptism of Jesus as something he did for us, as our substitute, in our place.

After all, John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

But Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, whom God loved, with whom God was well pleased.

Jesus was the one who was more powerful than John who would baptise others with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus could make other people clean inside and give them new hearts.

So what was he doing getting baptised?

Surely Jesus should be the baptiser not the baptised.

Jesus didn’t need a wash!

He had no sins of which to repent.

 

And yet here Jesus stands in the place of sinners.

He took your place and mine.

As the Bible would say about the cross: Jesus was numbered with the transgressors.

The sinless one was willing to undergo a sinner’s baptism for you and me.

The Bible speaks about the cross as the baptism which Jesus chose to endure:

That’s God’s plan for Jesus.

There was no other way for us to be saved.

It’s necessary for our cleansing.  

Jesus will face the watery death of baptism for us and rise again so that we need not be sunk by our sin.

He will be plunged under the waters of God’s wrath and drowned by them that we might live in friendship with God.

Judgement will flood over him and he will come out the other side for us so that the waters might not touch us.

Our sins will be washed away by Jesus.

 

Jesus will be, if you like, a second Noah with his dove there, saved from a watery death.

We, like Noah’s family, can be saved in the ark which is Jesus!

 

But second, Jesus also acts here not only as our substitute but as our representative.

If we are believers, we are in Christ – united to him by faith, joined to him by the Spirit.

We might say that his baptism is our baptism.

We are baptised with him, in him.

What’s true of Jesus is true of us.

He is the head, we are the body – joined to him.

His death and resurrection were our death and resurrection.

If Jesus comes up out of the water alive and full of the Spirit, so do we. 

Now we are dead to sin and alive with Christ.

What God the Father says to Jesus here he says to us in Christ.

 

We’ll think again about the baptism of Jesus in a moment.

But let’s just pause over the way in which Mark introduces him in that first verse, which is a kind of title or headline:

“Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

These things are reflected in his baptism just a few verses later.

 

Jesus was an ordinary common name.

This is a real human being among a great crowd of other Jewish men and women in a real place and time.

In one sense Jesus was a very ordinary man in ordinary history – from an ordinary town at an ordinary sort of time.

He as one of us.

His baptism was real:

It was an actual event: not a fairy story.

It was full of meaning, but it wasn’t just some kind of parable or symbolic spiritual event.

It matters that the events of the gospels really happened.

 

But it’s significance that the name Jesus is a form of the name Joshua.

This is one of the many echoes of Biblical history that resound onto Jesus.  

And Jesus is a Second Joshua.

A New and Better Joshua.

The context of the Jordan river here at Jesus’ baptism perhaps reminds us of Joshua who had to lead the people across the Jordan to conquer the promised land.  

Jesus, then, is the one who will defeat our ultimate enemies and give us victory and bring us security in the promised land that we might find rest and blessing.

 

Jesus’ baptism is a kind of new Exodus, a new exile and return from Exile for a new Israel.

Jesus sets God’s people free from slavery to sin and brings us home to God.

 

Jesus, Joshua means The LORD Saves.

Jesus came to bring rescue, salvation.

The angel explained Jesus’ name to Joseph:

Jesus would save his people from their sins.

 

And he is the Christ, Son of God.

 

Christ is the same as Messiah.

Not a surname but a title – a job description.

It means anointed one.

Jesus is God’s chosen rescuer-king, the long promised one.

Our prophet, priest and king.

 

This baptism, we might say, is a bit like Jesus’ pre-ordination wash which he underwent at the age of 30, like the temple priests of Old Testament times.

This ceremonial wash marked the beginning of their ministries, as it did for Jesus.

Jesus our great High Priest is our mediator, our God-between with God who puts us in touch with heaven.

Just as the heavens are torn open here, the temple curtain will be torn open (Mark uses the same word) when Jesus offers himself as the acceptable God-appointed sacrifice so that sinners like me and you can come into the presence of a holy God without fear.  

 

Jesus is the Son of God.

He’s like Adam – the first Son of God.

The mention of the wild animals in v13 perhaps reminds us of Adam.

This passage is surely meant to remind us of the creation as we read from Genesis about the Spirit of God hovering over the waters and God speaking, as he does here again at the baptism.

So Jesus is a new and better Adam – a new humanity, a fresh start for planet earth.

 

Jesus’ work will be a work of new creation, of new life.

 

Immediately after Jesus’ baptism we’re told the Spirit sent him out into the desert.

Jesus will be obedient in the desert whereas Adam was disobedient in the garden.

 

The Son of God was also a title for Israel, the people of God, in the Old Testament.

And Jesus here is like the epitome of the nation: a faithful remnant.

Jesus is Israel embodied in one man, if you like.

Here is God’s man: the faithful one.

Again, as Israel was unfaithful in the desert for 40 years, Jesus would be faithful for 40 days in the desert.

 

Son of God was primarily a title for the Old Testament king.

It was very much like Messiah in that respect because the king was the anointed one.

And Jesus is anointed here by the Spirit of God.  

 

Like Isaac, the Son of Abraham, Jesus is God’s - quote - “son whom he loves”, which both Abraham and God the Father are willing to give up.

Jesus will be the ultimate sacrifice for sin.

 

He is like the Servant of the LORD, with whom God is well pleased.

He will act for God to bring salvation and blessing to Israel and to the nations.

 

We could go on.

 

The Bible builds up these layers of meaning so that we can see the relevance of Jesus as the king and saviour we need.

All the plans and purposes of God find their fulfilment in this Jesus.

All the promises of God are “Yes” in God’s Son.

Jesus matters to us because of what he did for us as our substitute in our place.

But also because we are in him, joined with him: he’s our representative.  

In him we are the people of God, dearly loved by God, equipped with his Spirit.

 

It seems likely that we face even more difficult and testing days ahead before the COVID Pandemic is behind us.

Perhaps more than 40 days of trial and isolation – mainly in our homes, not in the desert – though it may be a rather lonely experience for some of us.

How was it that Jesus faced his time of testing in the wilderness?

Perhaps he was encouraged by the words spoken to him at his baptism:

“You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

 

As we trust in Jesus, it might do us good and strengthen us to hear the Father say to us in Christ:

"You are my child, whom I love. With you I am well pleased."

Just listen to those words of God again and let them sink in:

"You are my child, whom I love. With you I am well pleased."

 

If we’re trusting him, Jesus has dealt with our sin, made us clean within and given us new hearts.

We can look to the Holy Spirit to equip us for all the challenging situations in to which he sends us.

May God grant us victory over temptation and may his angels attend us.

Amen.

 

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