Year B Epiphany I Mark 1:4-11

This Sunday is the first Sunday after the Epiphany, which occurs on January 6th every year and is celebrated as the day the Wise Men arrived at the manger. Then, on this first Sunday after the Epiphany, we always celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. This Epiphany, i.e. this past Wednesday, saw unprecedented violence in our country in our nation’s capital. Hopefully, the Epiphany experience, the awakening for us that day, was the reinforcement of how very important is our Savior’s message of peace and love. We have all been baptized – we are the ones called to spread His peace and love in this world.

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”

We know what baptism is – and most of us experienced it when we were babies, too young to recall the event. But we’ve seen others baptized, for some of us that means our own children and grandchildren, but whatever baptism we’ve attended when we hear the word “baptized” we think of babies in white gowns, of the church font, the water, and the clergy blessing. In our fond memories there may even be some kicking and screaming on the part of the new member of the Church. Perhaps the little one knows something we sometimes forget, the he or she, like generations before them, has now become part of a mystery.

Today we hear Mark’s telling of the way it was for Jesus when He was baptized. Mark’s Gospel is the simplest and, as it happens, the earliest of the four Gospels. Some scholars attribute the simplicity of the writing to the fact that the author was not a Greek speaker. Since that is the language in which our New Testament was originally written, and the writer of Mark’s Gospel was struggling with the language, that may be why descriptions are kept to a minimum. Mark’s description of Jesus’ baptism is a good example of a narrative simplicity that, accustomed as we are to Matthew’s and Luke’s writing, may stun us. Let’s take a closer look.

John the Baptizer had been working hard on the banks of the river, calling people to repentance and proclaiming that Someone else was coming to complete his own ministry. According to Mark, John had made it clear that The One who was coming after him was more powerful that he; John had shown his own humility by using an example of a servant’s act: bending down and untying an honored person’s sandals. “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandal,” he said of the One who was to come.

It’s important keep in mind that John was a famous man at this time; he was a celebrity as a fiery preacher of repentance. Had he lived today in our own idolatrous age, he would have been given his own television show. All evidence points to the fact that John was powerful and had a huge following in the “whole Judean countryside,” and in Jerusalem. His call to repentance, though harsh, had attracted crowds of people who recognized their sins and, by submitting to John’s baptism, asked for both God’s judgment and God’s forgiveness. Imagine the temptation for such a man as John – power and fame were his for the taking. He could have built upon his movement for his own personal gain. We know how power tempts, and we’ve seen how it corrupts, how it can be abused. John rejected it all.

There is no hint that any of his power and fame ever tempted him. One wonders how much his parents had told him of the wondrous lead-up to his birth, of God’s promise to his father Zachariah, and all that followed. Most certainly they must have told him stories as he grew up. This is what people did at that time when there were no books to read to their children, no television and computer games with which to entertain them. They told stories. John knew from early on that he was closely connected to One who would surpass him in serving God. And all evidence also points us to the startling conclusion that this powerful man, in his own right, humbly accepted this as fact and as God’s will and plan.

So he prepares his followers for the one who is to come. Why? What else will the Coming One have to offer that John was not offering? John says clearly, “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” What exactly this must have meant to his followers we can only guess. If they had read, or heard the prophets read to them, they would remember the marvelous words of Joel:

I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions.

They were probably people who longed to feel God’s Breath upon them, but it was John they had come to see, and John who was baptizing them, lifting from them the burden of their sins. The rest was in the future; it was not of the moment.

It is at this point that Mark announces, once again in his utter simplicity, that Jesus traveled from Nazareth to be baptized by John. No trumpets are blowing, no portents have appeared, no procession arrives at the river’s bank, and Mark relates no discussion between the two cousins before the baptism. Jesus comes like all the other people who come to John, and is baptized.

God arrives to us without fanfare, in the ordinariness of our lives, and we don’t recognize him. He comes in the flesh, from distant, unimportant Nazareth – not from the significant city of Jerusalem, but from Nazareth! Jesus enters the waters as a human being and emerges from the waters with the unshakable assurance that He is God’s Son, the Beloved.

Now the attention shifts from John to Jesus. In Mark’s short telling of this story, it is only Jesus who sees the Spirit in physical form – that of a dove – and it is Jesus alone who hears the words, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And this is when everything changes. The Spirit of God is no longer a future promise, a prophetic dream of what is to come, but a present, living reality. A man from Nazareth is filled with the Holy Spirit and is here in order to baptize all who come to Him with God’s Spirit. As John baptized with water, so Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is baptized by John, and thus forever the great gift of God – God’s Spirit upon us – becomes ours for the asking.

Both John and Jesus have very short ministries in terms of human time. John prepares the people for God’s coming among them, and Jesus strides out of the waters of the Jordan ready to do God’s will and to reveal it to the rest of us in a few short years. Jesus knows the mind of God and acts upon this knowledge with a boldness that attracts some people and makes others so frightened that they put him to death.

The Christ of God comes to us now through the power of the Holy Spirit. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” becomes now the gift that Christ’s disciples offer to those who confess the name of Jesus. And - the world is transformed.

Power! We have seen this past week what the desire for worldly power can do to a person, to a mob. We, the baptized also have power, great power, but it is not of this world and it gives us, not the power to become rich and famous, but the power to hope, to trust, to love. The Holy Spirit dwells with us and amongst us. We are the baptized and in the Spirit we live and move and have our being. We walk in the realm of mystery.

Mark tells us Jesus saw the Spirit of God in the form of a visible dove. His followers have testified to the gift of the Spirit in multiple ways: they have prophesied, they have spoken in tongues, they have praised God, they have performed miracles; they have become missionaries under horrendously difficult conditions and have opened hospitals where none existed; and in the process they have given the great gift of education to those who had none.

However, the way the Spirit manifests itself differs in each one of us. For some of us the Spirit shows, not in great actions, but in small deeds, deeds of concern, caring, generousity, humility and love. The Spirit does not call all of us to deeds the world can see, but God can see our small acts done with love in Jesus’ Name through the great power of the Spirit.

On this day when we commemorate the baptism of our Lord, we bow our heads and pray that we too may use the power bestowed upon us, the power that flows through us, to do God’s work in this world, that we may be called children of God, God’s beloved.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, we are glad that You asked Your friends to help You in Your work. We too wish to be counted among Your friends. Show us how to help You, how through the great power of Your Holy Spirit to humbly do Your work in this world. We ask for Your love and mercy’s sake. Amen.