Beginning in Mark

It seems like the hardest thing to do is start. It’s true of most everything.  I’m tempted to say that restarting is harder but that’s just a version of starting.  You’re starting over.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s semantical.  But starting always seems to be the hardest part.  It can be especially true of writing sermons.  I can sit and stare at a blank page for hours like I did this week. But it seems like once I get going - once I get an opening, I can just go.  Starting a sermon series like we’re doing this morning adds even more pressure to the process because we’re still in a feeling out process here.  I’m still trying to find the best way to connect with you from up here.

Part of me wants to bombard you with all this background information and historical and literary context to understand Mark which makes me worried half of you may fall asleep. And another part of me wants to give you stories and illustrations about a few specific verses like a normal sermon, but I’m afraid we won’t really learn much about the Gospel of Mark as a whole and this sermon series will feel like we’re just wandering around looking at things without any real direction or purpose.  I even thought about having two sermons ready for this morning - one of each - and taking a vote on which you wanted to hear.  Wouldn’t that be fun?  Instead, I’m wasting our time talking about how starting is hard and I didn’t know what to do.  So, let me tell you on what I decided up front and we’ll just go from there.

This week, I’m going to put out a video on our Youtube page which I’ll share via e-mail and Facebook that will give us a good overview of Mark and the historical context that I think is important. I’m going to be going over a lot of this information today at adult forum which is a great place to ask questions and we can discuss it.  And I’ll make a few of these informational videos as we go along.  And these sermons  on Sunday will be… well… They’ll be the absolute most honest I can be reflections on Mark’s message and what he really says.  And we’re going to look at what Mark specifically teaches about Jesus and the Christian faith.  And what we’re going to find is that Mark challenges some basic assumptions we’ve made - or at least I’ve made - about the Gospel and even about church doctrine and dogma.

Now, you don’t have to agree with me or what I say throughout this series.  I don’t always agree with me.  And we can have good conversations about it.  But let me tell you how I’m choosing to approach our endeavor into Mark.  I had a great mentor named Dr. Ross MacKenzie who told me to subvert all belief when studying scripture.  Essentially, forget everything you know or think you know and approach the text as though you know nothing about it, read what’s actually on the pages without reading into it the Sunday school lessons or what we’ve been taught in church or what doctrine or tradition teaches us, note the questions that come up for you and then research the questions to find out how that author would answer them.  And as I’ve been trying to do this while studying Mark, I find some very challenging questions coming up that I’m not sure I’m going to be able to answer adequately but I want to share them with you and struggle through them with you.

Now notice, I’m not claiming to have the answers - let alone the correct answers - so I welcome the disagreement and conversation.  We’re going to model healthy dialogue here and we’re going to attack and struggle with ideas - not people or each other.  Partly because the world needs more safe communities like this one to model what that looks like. And the God’s honest truth is this is one of the first churches I’ve found where I think we can really do this.  That’s to say that yes, I’ve received push back or challenges to sermons here as every preacher does in every place but it’s always been in the best possible way! Ok.  Enough intro and disclaimers.  Let’s hop in to this and see what happens.  I’ve begun now and starting is always the hardest part.

Tomorrow I’m starting on another project that I’m really excited to work on and share with you. - I’m calling it my day-off project -   I’m interviewing different people I know personally who have been and are really influential in my thinking lately.  People who challenge me to look at my life and faith and theology differently and more deeply. And one of the questions I’m going to ask our Christian brothers and sisters in these interviews are what are the absolutely essential things someone needs to believe in order to be Christian?  And I bring that question up because it’s directly inspired by my studies of Mark for this Sermon series - especially coming out of the Christmas season. Because Mark - which is the first gospel that was written - starts his gospel in a very interesting place.  For him, the start of everything - the beginning of the good news or the Gospel of Jesus Christ - happens at the Baptism of Jesus.

Mark doesn’t talk about Angels or stars or shepherds or wise men or virgins or anything connected to Christmas.  He starts at baptism.  He makes zero mention of Jesus’ birth.  Paul who was writing from 40-60 makes zero mention of Jesus’s birth.  The Gospel of John doesn’t mention it either.  In fact, the Gospel of John starts with Jesus in this world at the same place Mark does - at the baptism.  In fact, the ONLY new testament writers to ever make mention of Christ’s birth are Matthew and Luke and the two accounts differ in a lot of ways. Two places in the entire New Testament.  That’s it.  And so part of me wonders - does one NEED to - I mean NEEEEED to believe in the birth of Jesus as recorded in Matthew and Luke in order to be a Christian?  Or can one begin where Mark, John, and everyone else begins, at the baptism of Jesus?

And what’s also amazing about the baptismal accounts - do you like how I’m just leaving that question about the birth dangling? But what’s amazing about the baptismal accounts of Jesus is how that story develops and why it’s so important to read carefully over the texts like my mentor Dr. MacKenzie suggests.  If we read Mark’s account closely - if we slow down and pay attention - only one person sees the holy spirit descends.  Jesus.  Mark says as Jesus coming out of the water, he saw - HE saw the spirit descend like a dove.  Matthew agrees with this account and makes it even more explicit saying that the heavens were opened TO HIM - meaning Jesus -  and HE SAW God’s spirit descend.  But where Matthew differs from Mark is Matthew has God addressing the whole crowd saying “This is my son…” Instead of “You are my son…” like Mark does.

Now, Luke does something different too.  Luke seems to suggest that at least everyone being baptized witnesses the spirit descend on Jesus if not everyone who was there.  But Luke agrees with Mark in that God directly addresses Jesus with the “you are my son…” again instead of telling everyone, but there’s a much stronger implication in Luke than in Mark that everyone probably heard God saying it.

And then John, of course, goes off the rails in his Gospel and we don’t even see the baptism of Jesus.  We just have John the Baptist recalling the event saying that HE - meaning John the Baptist - saw the spirit descend on Jesus and even more than that, John the Baptist didn’t know who in the world Jesus really was until God tells him.  John 1 verses 32-34 read like this:  And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.”  In the Gospel of John, we don’t even know if Jesus saw the Spirit descend or if he heard the voice of God. We only know that John the Baptist does.   So it was just Jesus or just John or everyone or God knows who, who saw what happened? We don’t get a clear picture and we don’t really know.   

Now, here’s what they all agree on:  Jesus was baptized. John the Baptist baptized him.  The holy Spirit fell on Jesus. God says who Jesus is. And maybe most importantly, John the Baptist, all four Gospel readers, The Apostle Paul, and every writer of the New Testament agrees that in Jesus we have a fulfillment of the Isaiah prophecy of a messiah who is to usher in a new era, a new reign, and a new way of being in the world.

And so I wonder, family, if I’m totally 100% honest with you, I wonder… If I set aside everything I know and think I know about Church and Doctrine and I just look at scripture here… I’m not saying Christmas isn’t important but between his birth and his baptism - if I were to just look at scripture and pick which is more important, which is more pivotal, which should be more foundational to our Christian faith, I have to think that there’s something deadly important about his baptism and this Isaiah prophecy that scripturally outweighs his birth by quite a bit. It’s the first thing Mark wants us to know about Jesus.  It’s ground zero.  It’s the foundation on which Mark is going to build everything.  And the question that’s really nagging me that I’m not sure I have an answer for yet but I’m hoping we’ll find it together throughout the coming weeks is why?  Why is this so paramount and foundational for Mark? And why does Mark want it to be for us as well?

Throughout the first half of his Gospel, Mark puts a sense of urgency on everything.  He uses the word “immediately” 8 times in the first chapter alone. He’ll use it around 43 times throughout the entire Gospel depending on what translation we use.  Things are happening NOW.  And Mark will constantly refer to “the way” - everything has to do with this journey. And he uses “the way” in both a literal and metaphorical sense to mean the way of Jesus - not only of going where Jesus goes but DOING what Jesus does… Even John the Baptist selects a passage from Isaiah referring to Jesus as being the one who prepares the way and makes the way of the Lord straight.

So, if I were to do as my mentor said and subvert all belief - if I had to set down everything I’ve been taught and know about baptism and what it means to us as believers and as a church - and solely focus on Mark to try to understand what baptism is, what would I come away with here?  Well, I would see that it has something to do with Spirit - that somehow the Holy Spirit descends on us.  I would see that it somehow has to do with God’s calling.  But maybe even more importantly, I would see how it’s the beginning of starting along the way of urgently following Jesus on the way. And this way, this way of Jesus, is a way of restoration. But it isn’t necessarily about personal restoration, it’s about the restoration of God’s kingdom.  It’s about taking a crooked, meandering way and straightening it.  It’s about restoring the pathway to God and God’s kingdom here on earth.  Baptism, if we look at what Mark seems to be saying here, is the beginning and a vital step toward restoring the way to God’s reign and God’s kingdom here on earth.  And what does that look like?  Tune in next week as we begin to find out.