Sermon: Mark 1:4-11 Mark’s Birth Story
I know I’ve probably said it before, but it’s worth repeating, I love the Gospel of Mark. It’s probably my favorite, with John coming in close second. I know, Mark has a reputation for being difficult to understand, hard to preach on, and sparse on details, and his ending was considered so unacceptable even in the century it was composed, that at least one scribe tagged on a second, longer ending that he felt was more appropriate, more believable, and more similar to the other three gospels. But to be honest, I even love Mark’s abrupt and seemingly impossible ending. I loved Mark even before I took the class from Dr. Fredrickson. And I love it even more, after taking that class.
You see, I knew Mark’s Gospel was the first written—the first attempt at telling the Jesus story. So, I guess, in a way, I always trusted it more than the more elaborate gospels composed later. Furthermore, Mark was a pioneer. He took a literary form (the evangelion or gospel) normally used exclusively as a sort of heroic biography of Kings and Emperors, and adapted it to tell the story of Jesus, a nobody from Nazareth that is secretly the Son of God, Emperor of the Universe, and Savior of the Cosmos. So, despite its brevity and all its purported shortcomings (pun intended), Matthew and Luke each used it as their main source material, and incorporated almost all of it into their longer, more detailed gospels. And since a biographical account, as anybody knows, logically starts with, or at least includes, a birth narrative, some might even question whether Marks gospel qualifies as a gospel, since Mark doesn’t tell us where or who Jesus comes from, nor does Mark record a single detail about Jesus’ miraculous birth.
Or so it would seem. But today I want to challenge that idea. Oh, sure, its true that Mark does not tell us about Mary and Joseph, nor about the multiple appearances of angels announcing the Messianic birth, nor about the shepherds and wise men that searched and found baby Jesus lying in a cattle trough in a barn. Instead, Mark has Jesus show up on the scene as an ordinary Jewish guy at about the age of 30. He’s just one of droves of adult Jews who go out to repent and be baptized by John, the Baptist, in the Jordan River. John doesn’t recognize him and doesn’t argue about baptizing him. He’s just like everybody else, so far as John knows—just another guy in a long line of guys to dunk in the river.
What? You don’t hear a birth story in that description? Huh! I admit, there’s no hint of the Christmas story we all know and love and just finished celebrating. Maybe Mark didn’t know that story. After all, when Jesus started his ministry, he was already an adult of about 30-ish. He had disciples that, by all accounts, were essentially strangers to him when he invited them to follow him around. When people heard about his miraculous healings, he began to draw crowds. But I don’t think people were super interested in where he came from and who his parents were… They were preoccupied with what he could do, what diseases and malformations he could cure, how he could supply bread and fish to feed thousands…and then how he died. There were no scribes or reporters following him around, asking for private interviews and exclusive stories. There were not daily or weekly newspapers to read. Nobody realized how important he was, until he rose from the grave. That’s what scholars might say. Biblical scholars like to say that the Gospels were written in reverse, starting with the resurrection and working backward, scouring the Jewish scriptures for clues to his origin, his identity—clues to solve the mystery of the Crucified Messiah.
Maybe. Maybe Mark didn’t know the birth stories that Matthew and Luke recorded. Maybe he wrote his gospel before that information came to light, before that part of Jesus’s life was discovered. Or maybe he did know them, but chose not to use them. We can’t know the answer for sure. We only know that the birth material that Luke and Matthew had access to didn’t make it into Mark’s Gospel.
So, because I like Mark and think he is undervalued, I’m going to give Mark the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to propose that Mark chose not to use that birth narrative we so love, for good literary reasons. He didn’t need them. He had something better. That’s right—he had a better birth story to tell. It’s right here in black and white, right under our noses, and sadly, all those critical scholars totally overlook it, fail to recognize it, along with the reasons Mark used this narrative instead. The reason is that Mark wants us all to bond with Jesus, to identify with him, because all Christians share the same birth narrative.
Do you recognize it, yet? If not, that’s okay. You’re in great company. I don’t know of a single scholar, no matter how brilliant or celebrated, who has ever pointed it out. To be honest, I didn’t see it either, until about a week ago. It’s the one thing that every Christian experiences. It’s that thing the risen Jesus tells us to go out and do all over the world. Of course, I’m talking about Jesus’ baptism.
For Mark, Jesus is born, and anointed at his baptism. Jesus is born of water and the Spirit. Jesus becomes the Messiah when the Spirit descends into him as he comes out of the waters of baptism. Yes, I said into him. I know the English text says the Spirit descended on him like a dove, but that little Greek preposition translated as on, can also be translated as into, and into is a better translation, not just for grammatical reasons, but because that’s how the Apostle Paul understood it. The only sources, aside from the Hebrew Bible, that we can say with some certainty that Mark knew of and probably had access to, were the letters of Paul. Paul wrote frequently in his letters about baptism, insisting that the Spirit enters us in baptism and remains, dwells within us, thereafter, giving us spiritual gifts and equipping us for Discipleship and the Priesthood of All Believers. After reading and studying the Pauline epistles, Martin Luther came to the same conclusion—the same understanding. Baptism is the entry of the Holy Spirit into our personhood.
But there’s more. There’s that voice from Heaven that only Jesus hears. (Some epiphany, right? How is it an epiphany if only Jesus hears it?) It’s an epiphany for us because Mark, who knows that secret, shares it with us, his readers. We know something no one else in the story knows. We know God claims Jesus as God’s Son. We also know, if we remember our catechism, that thing we studied as adolescents to be confirmed, that in baptism, God adopts us, too. Through baptism, we are all adopted into the family of God. We all become children of God in the waters of baptism.
But for Mark, baptism is also the moment when Jesus becomes the Messiah, the anointed King. These are words of adoption, used for Davidic Kings. If you look back at the Psalm for today, Psalm 2, you will see similar words. “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” It is believed that this Psalm was used as part of the liturgy in coronation ceremonies for Israel’s Davidic Kings. Psalm 2 is not a Psalm by David, but for David and his descendants. God is announcing Jesus as the newly anointed Messiah, the new and forever King of God’s people—the King of Kings who will rule heaven and earth for eternity. In his baptism, Jesus’ true identity is disclosed, and Jesus is given the throne and the scepter of the power of the Holy Spirit. But this is a secret Jesus must keep until the appropriate time. After all, if Herod would kill all male toddlers in Bethlehem to remove Jesus as a threat, then Herod and Caesar would certainly move swiftly to remove the threat of an adult Messiah of Israel.
But I’m getting off track. The point is, in the gospel of Mark, Jesus, the Messiah, is born of water and the Holy Spirit, just like you and me. Jesus is equipped for ministry by the power of the Holy Spirit that dwells within him. And the Holy Spirit does the same for us. We all have access to that same Holy Spirit, because it lives within us, transforming us day by day into better disciples, into the likeness of Christ, into the image of God that we were intended to be in this world, but which has been damaged and tarnished by sin. We are all God’s children, adopted in baptism, chosen, and called to transform the world, or at least, the neighborhoods in which we live and work and minister.
Okay, I admit, none of us probably saw the heavens open, or the Spirit descending into us. But how could we, when we were probably all baptized indoors, and we probably weren’t looking up. And maybe we didn’t hear God’s voice calling out to us that we are God’s beloved children, after all, some of us were probably busy exercising our lungs, crying about being rudely and repeatedly splashed with water. But that doesn’t mean those things didn’t happen. I believe God calls to each and every one of us, all the time, telling us that we are loved, that we are God’s, that we belong—and reminding us that we matter, that we have work to do, and that we have been given talents appropriate for the tasks we’ve been assigned. Maybe, if we are quiet enough, and listen for that still, small, loving voice long enough, often enough, close enough…maybe, just maybe, we will here God whispering to us, telling us the truths we need to embrace in order to live into our baptismal identities as God’s beloved children, in whom God takes great pleasure. And if we, like Jesus, accept the ministry tasks set before us, trusting the Holy Spirit to empower and sustain us, maybe we can make a difference in this world…one life at a time.