Gospel According to Mark 1:1-8

December 10, 2023: Advent II

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”                              

If brevity is the soul of wit, this beginning of the Gospel According to Mark invites a whole new level of wit-ness. For today’s short reading tells us just about everything we are going to need to know about how God will work in our world from this point forward.  The beginning of the Good News…of Jesus Christ….the Son of God…..who will baptize YOU with the Holy Spirit. That’s it. All we need to know.

In this terse passage that kicks off the earliest and shortest of our four canonical Gospels, we know, right off the bat, about who God is and how God will interact with us, from now on. God is Jesus. Period.

Unlike Matthew and Luke who begin with lengthy genealogies of Jesus, linking his heritage back to Abraham and Adam, respectively, substantiating his birthright and ancestry, lining up his credentials before he even lifts one miracle-making finger, Mark has none of that.  Matthew and Luke try to define Jesus in terms of human generations. And then they give Jesus, God in the flesh, his start on earth in utterly chronological terms: they begin with the narrative of his birth.  They begin at the beginning. And while that genealogy and birth story make for very handy pageant material, they spend a lot of time setting the stage before getting to the meat of the mission.

But not so in Mark’s Gospel. The very first line of Mark offers us the one distinctive claim of our Christian faith tradition. The one thing that defines Christianity among all of the world’s mainline religions. And that is that our God has come to dwell among us. That’s it.

The incarnation is the defining characteristic of the Christian tradition. The one and only thing that sets Christianity totally apart from every other mainline religion is that God takes our flesh. Fully human & fully divine. That is all the Good News that’s fit to print. At least according to Mark.  

The resurrection does not make us distinctive. It is what makes Christianity a bonafide religion rather than just a genre, like utilitarianism or stoicism or jazz. The promise of brand new life is the religious component of Christianity. But almost every other religion promises brand new life in some form or fashion. New life is what makes an ideology a religion.So the resurrection is not what makes us distinct, it is what makes us religious.

The distinguishing feature of Christianity is that the God of our Creation and Redemption has come to walk in our own shoes. To experience time in our human context. To feel suffering and joy with our human heart. And to stand with us in our human condition. The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Full stop.

And where does the Good News begin in Mark’s Gospel? Not in a city like Jerusalem or even Galilee, not even in the shelter of a stable. In Mark’s Gospel the Good News is born in the wilderness. The Good News begins in the crowded muddy waters of the Jordan River where Jesus, already a grown man, stands with every manner of skank and scallywag to be baptized with God’s Holy, life-giving Spirit. That is the start of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus is the son of God. Jesus gets baptized. And then, he heads into the wilderness. And we’re off!

In Mark. We get no human genealogy. No birth story. No Mary. No Joseph. No immaculate conception. In Mark when we meet Jesus, he is fully grown. No relation to Adam or Abraham or King David. We have no idea from where or from whom he has come. We only know that from where ever it is, he brings with him the power of the Holy Spirit.

Because once he is baptized by the Holy Spirit, he is driven immediately into the wilderness by that same Holy Spirit – where he will come face to face with his newly-minted humanity. Where he will put his baptism to the test. The wilderness is where Jesus gets his street cred.

Not for nothing, but that rings a bell. Baptized with the Spirit and then flung out into the wilderness to put that baptism to work. That sounds exactly like our story too.

And all of this happens, in Jesus’ story, in the first 13 verses of Mark’s Gospel. We are only one third of the way through the very first chapter of Mark.  And we already know who Jesus is, and what we can expect of him. Mark is a very good expectations manager.

And so in this earliest of our four Gospel’s (and hands down my favorite), the Good News begins in the wilderness….without fanfare….but with the sure and certain escort of the Holy Spirit.

This is the only time in our three-year lectionary cycle when we hear the all important first line in Mark’s Gospel. The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

We will hear the part about Jesus’ baptism again in a few weeks. And we will hear the part about being driven into the wilderness, in the first Sunday in Lent.  But this beginning of the Good News comes only here. In Advent of year B. A time in our liturgical calendar when Jesus is, technically speaking, not yet with us. And so this reading here and now, at this particular theological time, has always seemed to me to be slightly out of joint, as Hamlet might have said.

How can this be the beginning of the Good News? Shouldn’t we wait until Jesus is born, liturgically speaking. Mary has not even heard from the angel…albeit in Luke. And so if Mark’s Gospel lacks a birth narrative, shouldn’t we just hold off before jumping into Mark’s Gospel until we get to Jesus’ baptism? That’s where Mark actually begins.

I used to think that would be a much better fit. Why muck up the message of Advent by jumping straightaway to Jesus’ baptism before we even get to the manger or the star. It’s just too confusing to begin….not at the beginning. But in Mark’s Advent, the world turns on its head before we even get to Christmas.

And, when we think about it, this tension between our linear chronological time and God’s not-at-all linear theological time is at the heart of our Christian challenge. This fundamental tension is at the heart of our Christian faith. A faith that asks us to act now as thought the Kindom has already come. Every Sunday morning when we receive communion, we get a foretaste of the banquet still yet to come. And as Christians, we “believe” that Jesus is the first fruit of the life that awaits us in the Kindom of God. It offers us a teste of that Kindom before it has come. Just like reading Mark in this year B of Advent, introducing us to Jesus before he is born. And it is just the sort of time-twisting theology for which Advent is ideally suited.

But Advent is not the only season we celebrate this week. We are smack dab in the middle of Hannukah which began on Wednesday and lasts for eight days. Hannukah is often called the Jewish festival of Lights. And this year, in the wake of the October 7^th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, it has a poignant power and relevance. The history of this holiday is grounded in the evil of antisemitism  as the Syrian King and his army attempted to wipe out the Jewish population in their midst.

In Hebrew, the root of the word Hannukah points to a “dedication.” And historically on this occasion it refers to the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. The heart of Jewish life and worship which had been desecrated by the Syrian armies led by King Antiochus IV in the second century before the common era, or before the birth of Christ as we know it. Around 175 bce.

In broad strokes, Syrian King Antiochus ruled over Judea, and made it illegal for Jews to practice Judaism. He wanted them to worship Greek Gods. He wanted them to be….not Jewish. And when the Jewish community summarily refused to abandon their religion, the king had his forces all but destroy the Jewish Temple.  You know, the one originally built by Solomon. And King Antiochus replaced the altar to God with an altar to Zeus. It was the consummate act of antisemitism. And not much different than the intense antisemitism that we are wrestling with to this very day.

Likewise, the Jewish population (two thousand years ago) rebelled against the Syrians, and fought to regain control of their Temple. The Jewish contingent was led by Judah of Maccabee. And after a decade or more of violent conflict, the Jewish Maccabees prevailed. Judah was liberated, returned to the Jewish people.

And the first order of business was to restore and rededicate the Temple. But there was a snag, as there usually is in our best laid liturgical plans. Although there were plenty of lamps to light in the Temple, there was only one jar of candle oil left.  Only enough oil to light the candles in the ransacked Temple for one day.

Hmmm. A liturgical and theological dilemma. After years of fighting and scrounging for their very existence in the darkest period of their lives, what sort of message would it send to rededicate the Temple only to have the light go out again after just one day? Not a good message.

And it would take a week to prepare and consecrate enough oil to light all of the candles, and to keep them burning with God’s light into the future.  So why not just wait a week for the dedication? Why not wait for more oil?

Why not? Because the Temple belonged to God’s. And God would decide and provide. Our job as God’s children is not to orchestrate the future. It is to walk forward in faith with whatever resources we have here and now. Sometimes, even when our logic might tell us to do otherwise.

And so these faithful, God-fearing souls thanked God for their survival and lit the candles with their one-day supply of oil…..A one day supply that lasted for eight days. Somehow. But we know how.

The same way God can keep all things going even when there seems to be no earthly explanation for their endurance. The way Jesus survived in the wilderness with only the Holy Spirit to his name. The way we sometimes experience God’s awesome power in our own lives, when God keeps our own lights lit even when we are fully out of oil.

The story of Hannukah is the story of steadfast faith and unwavering hope….mixed with a decent dose of courage. It is the anti-anti-antisemitic antidote. The menorah is the symbol of God’s enduring light in the darkness. Eight days of light running on one splash of oil. Yeah. God can do that! As long as we light the lamps.

This second week of Advent week is just overflowing with Good News. Jesus Christ the Son of God is here.  And, God, against all odds, has left the lights on for us.

I’d like to leave you this morning with one of my favorite snippets from Austrian poet, Ranier Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours (I 59) It is the way I imagine God might instruct us to walk through this season of Advent.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,


then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,


go to the limits of your longing.


Embody me.

Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going.

No feeling is final.


Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.


You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

And so onward, deeper and deeper into Advent we go!

O Come, O Come Emmanuel!  

Amen.

© December, 2023 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw