Preached · September 26, 2021
Series · Mark A New Kind of Gospel
We're in a series talking about the gospel of Mark. So if you have your Bible, I'm going to encourage you to turn it on, flip it open. We're actually going to start in the very beginning, the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1. It's a story you may have heard before, about the creation of the entire universe. I'm going to give you some background about the passage in the gospel of Mark that we're going to talk about today, about Jesus's baptism and everything that's going on there. But in order to understand what's going on with Jesus, we need to start all the way back at Genesis chapter 1.
The Chaos Waters of Genesis
And it says this:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Now, the writer says the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the ruach, the spirit, the wind of God was hovering — some translations say brooding, like a bird over its nest — hovering over the waters. And then from there, the story goes on about what God does with this formless, empty, void world, and what God does with the waters.
Now, in the Jewish imagination, the waters were the source of evil and chaos. And so there is this kind of superstitious belief that the ocean, the sea, large bodies of water — that is where evil and chaos came from. And there's this scene in the other end of scripture, the book of Revelation, where John, the author, the revelator, says that he sees a new heaven and a new earth coming down, and a new Jerusalem. And then, to the great disappointment of beach lovers everywhere, John writes: and there was no sea. And the fishermen are like, well, that sucks for me. Anybody who likes the ocean is like, what's going on, John? Why is there no sea? Now, this is not an actual description of the geography of the new heavens and the new earth. What John is saying is that place where chaos is born, where God pushed it back into the waters — it doesn't even exist anymore. The sea is gone. Chaos, evil is gone.
So in Genesis chapter 1, you see that, verse 6:
Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And God called the vault sky.
And then God said, verse 9:
Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. So God called the dry ground land, and gathered the waters and called that the seas.
And so there's the separation of land from water and from the sky — the water above, in the Hebrew imagination, and the land, the world below.
Then Genesis chapter 2 — the story continues about God gathering the ground, the adamah in the Hebrew, the dust, the dirt of the ground, and forming it together and bending down and breathing his ruach, his spirit, his wind into that pile of dust. And then it becomes a living soul. And so the adamah, the ground, becomes Adam, the first human being. In verse 8:
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, and there he put the Adam, the first human that God had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow.
And then God realizes that it's not good for this person to be alone. And so God forms out of the ground all of the wild animals — keyword, wild animals; keep that word in mind — to see if this is going to be a suitable partner for the Adam. It's not, and so the first woman is created. That's Genesis chapter 2.
Genesis chapter 3: the humans let the chaos back in, because the serpent was more crafty than any other animal and deceives the woman and the man to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then they give birth to children, and Cain kills Abel. And that murderous cycle continues until we get to Genesis chapter 6, verse 5:
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted — was sorry — that he had made human beings on the earth. And so the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created — and with them the animals and the birds and the creatures — for I regret that I have made them.
And so we get introduced to Noah and the ark, and the story of Noah and his family building this ark and then gathering the animals together. Then, verse 7:
In the 600th year of Noah's life, on the 17th day of the second month — on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and, listen, the floodgates of the heavens were opened.
The skies, the heavens, were opened. And so Genesis 1 is undone. The chaos that God had put in its place, far above the ground — well, now the heavens are opened and allowed to pour their chaos back onto creation. And so creation is uncreated, made into the land of chaos once again — except for Noah and the animals and the ark. And it says, verse 13:
On that day Noah, his sons, and the wives of his three sons — they entered the ark, and they had with them (listen to this word again) every wild animal according to its kind.
And then Noah is looking for signs of new creation, because God had promised that the human race would continue through him. And so what does Noah do? He sends out a dove to go looking for signs of vegetation, that the floodwaters had receded. Noah had been waiting on the ark for 40 days and 40 nights as it rained, and then it stopped raining, and there was still water covering the ground. And so Noah sends out a dove to go search for new signs of life. Eventually the dove comes back, holding a little bit of an olive branch. And so the dove is bringing signs of new creation, and Noah sends it out again. And then the dove doesn't come back — presumably because it found somewhere to live.
Mark 1: The Baptism of Jesus
So this is all prelude to our passage for today. So if you would, go to Mark chapter 1. Now, this is where we've been so far. Verse 1 — we see the overtones from Genesis already:
The beginning of the good news — the euangelion, this proclamation about what the king was going to do — about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah, the prophets: I'm going to send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way — a voice of one calling in the wilderness: prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.
And so Mark is saying: I have a new euangelion. I'm taking this empire word about supposedly good news — about the emperor coming to take over your land — and I'm going to use it about a different kind of king, called Jesus. And the beginning of the good news is that a messenger is going to come — what Malachi thought was going to be Elijah, reincarnated, brought back from the dead, brought back to proclaim that God, God's self, was going to show up on the scene and set all things right.
The great hope and expectation of Israel is that they would experience a new exodus. Because if we had turned to the book of Exodus, we could also look at stories about a people who had been in slavery, and then they are brought to the chaos waters, the Red Sea, and God parts it and allows them to walk through those chaos waters. And then they wander around the wilderness for 40 years, and then they get to the Jordan River, and God parts it again, and they're allowed to enter into that promised land. And then they are exiled, and they are brought back, and they rebuild a temple — but the glory of the Lord does not fill the temple. They're waiting for the exodus to happen again. They're waiting for a new exodus and new creation. And so then John the Baptist shows up on the scene and says: repent, change direction, because God is about to arrive. And this is the story that Mark is telling.
Verse 9 — this is our passage for the day:
At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven saying: you are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. And at once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels attended him.
Now we've got three things we're going to need to talk about today.
God Is Relaunching Creation
Number one: in Jesus, God is relaunching creation, starting the new creation and the new exodus.
So Jesus goes to be baptized by John in the Jordan. And so Jesus is entering into the waters. Now, some of the other gospel writers — Matthew and Luke and John — they actually tell the story about John the Baptist stopping Jesus from entering the water, saying, I'm not even worthy to untie your sandals. You don't need me to baptize you, John says. And the ancient church fathers and mothers, they pondered this. Why would Jesus need to be baptized? Jesus is God in the flesh, the first Christians believed — God incarnate. Why would Jesus need to be baptized by John? And what they surmised was: it wasn't that Jesus needed to be washed in the waters, but rather that Jesus, by stepping foot into the waters, makes all water clean. And so when we are baptized, we are being baptized into that same fresh, new, clean water that Jesus's own baptism had made clean in his day.
And we see this launch of new creation and new exodus in the story of Jesus. Because just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open. And this is the same language used in Genesis chapter 7: when God was rendering his judgment on the earth, the heavens were torn open, and the chaos came down. Isaiah chapter 42 talks about this prayer of Isaiah, where Isaiah is beating his chest and asking God: God, do you not see the chaos happening on planet earth right now? Do you not see the horrible things that the leaders and the politicians and all the people who practice evil against me and against my friends and my family are doing? Oh, Isaiah writes, oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, and then render your judgment on earth.
And so Mark is telling a different kind of story. Jesus steps into the waters, and the heavens are rent open, torn asunder. But it's a different kind of judgment that happens. Rather, we see the Spirit — that ruach of God that in Genesis 1 hovers, broods over the surface of the waters — and here it descends on Jesus like a dove, that sign of new creation that Noah had seen.
Now, fun fact: in all three — Hebrew and Greek and in English — the word for dove can also be translated pigeon. In English, the pigeons and doves are actually the same species of birds; they just have different coloration. In Hebrew and Greek, you can use the same word. You can go to the temple and you can sacrifice two turtledoves or two pigeons. And translators just have to make a choice: do we think we're talking about a motley, city, ugly bird, or do we think we're talking about a dove? And so we tell this story about Jesus being baptized, and down comes this beautiful, pure, white dove — that's what all the paintings and pictures show. But, guys, it could have just been a normal-ass pigeon. Because why wouldn't it? We make God — Jesus, Holy Spirit — out to be this super holy, sanctified, better-than-thou kind of God. But I told some of the people after the service earlier this morning: one of the most theologically accurate statements that you can make is, Jesus pooped. That was a theologically accurate statement. Because Jesus is divine but fully human. And so if Jesus can poop, then why can't the Holy Spirit show up as a pigeon? That's all I'm asking.
So Jesus steps into the waters and, by his presence, makes all waters clean — doesn't just put the water somewhere else, but actually purifies them by his very presence in the waters. And then the heavens are rent open. Isaiah's prayer is coming true. Genesis 7 is happening all over again. And then the dove, the pigeon, the Spirit comes down and descends on Jesus — the sign of new creation. And so the story that Mark is telling, the story that we're going to be talking about for a long time now, is that Jesus is launching the new creation. That Jesus is launching the new exodus. That Jesus is taking all of the hopes and expectations of Israel and the world and making them come true in how he lives his life, dies his death, and comes back. That's thing number one.
God Is Revealing the Divine Character
Thing number two is that God in Jesus is revealing the divine character. There is this truth that Christians for generations and centuries have proclaimed: that when we look at Jesus, we are beholding God. This is what Jesus says over and over again in the book of John. He says, whatever you see me doing, I only do what I see the Father doing. Jesus says that whatever you hear me say, I only say what I hear the Father saying. And we're going to see these themes show up in the gospel of Mark as well — that Jesus is simply showing us what God has always been like.
And the kind of controversial part of this is that the Hebrew writers, the Hebrew prophets, the Hebrew scriptures — they got glimpses. They got looks. They got little pieces of what God's character is like. And they write this down in these beautiful scriptures about a God who is faithful and kind and forgives for a thousand generations, whose very name and essence is love and loving kindness and mercy and compassion. But they didn't have the full picture. Jesus is the revelation of who God is. And so when we look at Jesus, we don't have to look behind Jesus to get to God. When we look at Jesus, we are looking at God, God's self. And so everything that we're going to see Jesus do in this gospel, we're seeing God do.
And so the expectation Isaiah had, the expectation of Genesis 7 — that God would rend the heavens, come down, and render judgment — what John says just a couple of verses before, in Mark chapter 1, verse 7: I will baptize you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit; after me comes one more powerful than I. All the quotes that we've talked about so far from the prophets — of Isaiah and Malachi, about God bringing his wrath down on earth — yes, it's coming true. It's being fulfilled. But in ways that nobody expected, that Jesus is about to show us. God in Jesus is revealing the divine character.
Notice how you see the Trinity in this very first chapter of the very first gospel ever written. Jesus is coming up out of the water — the Son of God. He sees heaven being torn open, and the Spirit, the Spirit of God, descending on Jesus like a dove. And then a voice, God the Father, says: you are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.
And we see that Jesus is retelling the whole story of Israel, is retelling the entire story of humanity. In theological terms, this is the idea of recapitulation. Now, it's this fancy two-dollar term, but it's not that fancy. Tell me what the word decapitate means: to cut off someone's head. To de-capital them — to take the capital, the head, of them off. So for someone to recapitulate is to take all up within them — become the head of humanity or a nation or a people group — and to do it over again. To recapitulate. And so what Jesus is doing is that he is taking up the whole of Israel's story and the whole of humanity's story and living it out again in the way that only God can.
And so Jesus steps into the water; he purifies it. The heavens are torn open, like Genesis 7, like the prayer of Isaiah. He has God the Father say: you are my son, whom I love. And then the Spirit sends him out into the wilderness for 40 days — just like Noah was on an ark for 40 days, just like Israel wandered around the desert for 40 years. Jesus is out there doing the same thing: recapitulating, retelling, reliving the entire story of humanity and of Israel all over again. And God is showing us what God is like by doing this in Jesus — and showing us what humanity can be up to when we rely on the power of our creator.
So we see Jesus retelling the story of Israel, relaunching creation, starting a new exodus story. We see Jesus revealing what God's character is like.
God Is Revealing How They Feel About Us
And then our third point for tonight is that God is revealing how they feel about us.
Now, whenever you use pronouns to talk about God, it gets messy really fast. You can use he pronouns, but that overemphasizes that God is a single person. It also overemphasizes the patriarchal fatherhood views of God that we all grew up with and are used to, and that our Bibles use — and that some of us are triggered by, because we had bad male characters in our life, or bad father figures, or father figures who weren't there at all. So then you can go to the other side and you can use she language. And she language is the kind of thing that, as a preacher, I know that as soon as I say God is she, you all stop listening to me and wonder what he's talking about — and is it part of some radical feminist agenda, as if that were such a bad thing, to make God into a she. But it also, again, overemphasizes that God is a single person.
Christians throughout the centuries have believed that God is a trinity. And I know you all came at 5 o'clock on a Sunday evening to launch your week to talk about Trinitarian theology. But God is a trinity, which means that God is one God — a single essence in three persons. They are united in will and purpose, and yet God reveals God's self in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Sometimes I pray: creator, redeemer, and sustainer. So, God is revealing how they feel about us. Now, there's another problem with they, because it overemphasizes the threeness of God, and maybe we lose out on the oneness of God. But I think we've had, you know, 20 centuries of God is he. We can deal with the day of God is they.
So in this passage, we see God is launching new creation, launching new exodus, revealing God's character in the person of Jesus. And God is revealing how they feel about us. We read: a voice comes from the heavens, those broken-open heavens. And it's not chaos waters that come pouring out. It's not judgment and wrath that comes pouring out. But rather a voice that says: you are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.
And after the story of Jesus is told in the New Testament, there's this theme that comes up again and again and again in the letters of Paul and of Peter, in Revelation, about how what is true of Jesus is true — and is becoming true — of us. Ephesians chapter 1 talks about how, before the world was created, God predestined us to be adopted as God's children, to be seated in heavenly places with the Son. Ephesians chapter 2 talks about how we are all adopted and given the same divine name. Colossians chapter 3 talks about how our lives are hidden in Christ with God. The book of Revelation says that we are actually enthroned on the same throne that Jesus is — which sounds like heresy or some sort of happy-clappy crap, but it's in the Bible, I promise you. The story of Jesus tells us again and again that what is true of Jesus is true of us. That whatever is true of Jesus, God in the flesh, can be said of the people of God — you and me.
And so when we read in the story about the heavens being opened and a voice coming down saying, you are my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased — how many of us need a voice to tell us that tonight? Some of us, we wish it were our fathers who were the ones telling us that. Maybe they grew up in a generation where they don't say mushy, gushy things like that. Maybe they just said harmful and abusive things. Or maybe those fathers weren't around at all. Maybe it's somebody in our life that we admire and that we love, and we would just melt if they said: I'm pleased with you. You make me happy.
And here we see that God says this to Jesus — and Jesus, who is recapitulating all of humanity. We can trust and believe that that same voice from heaven is speaking to you and to me: you are my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. And it's that voice that we need to tune our attention to, to hone the antennas of our soul towards. Because there are a thousand million other voices who will tell us something very different: you are not my child; you are not loved; you make me sick, hardly pleased. And our attention spans gravitate towards those other voices. So what I want to invite you to is to tune your attention to this divine voice — a voice that says: I love you. You're my child. And with you, I am well pleased.
This is all a bunch of throat clearing these past three weeks — a bunch of laying the groundwork for the gospel of Mark. And if we get this right — that in Jesus, God is mashing together old and new things; that the story of Israel is coming to its climax, its conclusion, in the person of Jesus, who's going to live out Israel's story in the flesh; if we get it right that we understand that when we look at Jesus, we are beholding the very image of God; and if we get it right that the message that Jesus has come to proclaim is that you are loved, that you are my child, and with you I am well pleased — then that gospel, that euangelion, that good news, can actually be good news. And it can actually bring healing to a world that's broken and needs a little bit of healing. And that affects our mission and our purpose as Christians, as human beings: to become bearers of that kind of love, bearers of that kind of news. To become, with Christ, seated in heavenly places — ones who can make this proclamation to the world: you are loved. With you, I am well pleased.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
