Scripture text: Mark 1:1-11
I do this mental exercise with some regularity, asking you to imagine for a moment what it would be like to go back to the times of the Bible, to the Old Testament and New. To use our minds to envision what things were like for Moses or Jesus or whoever. One of the reasons why I do this is to really drive home the fact that our Scriptures, as precious as they are, were not really written with us in mind. They were written instead for an audience now thousands of years dead. An audience with a different understanding of the world, a different experience, a different culture and language, and by playing this little mental game, I try to put us in their shoes. What was it like for them to experience these things and how was it different than how we experience it?
Time and again, we find that we do not know these people or that world nearly as well as we think we do. Even those of us who have studied it extensively, those of us with a passion for or interest in history, can be surprised by the ancient world and its people. For instance, if I told you this morning to imagine yourself in a Greek temple, like the Parthenon in Athens, what images would come to your mind? A beautiful tall building, wondrous statues dedicated to pagan gods, everything in white: the stone, the clothing, the walls, the pillars, everything that shining polished look of marble.
And what if I told you that’s absolutely wrong?
Turns out, historians and archaeologists have since discovered that the Greeks didn’t really go for that white marble look that we so often attribute to them. They would paint their statues in vivid color: reds, blues, yellows, flesh tones, and so forth. The Parthenon would look less like a shrine dedicated to the color white and far more like the Big Top of a circus.
So what does all this have to do with the baptism of Jesus?
The Gospels are, in a sense, their own form of art, more that of sound and the written word than that of the visual. Often times they rely on the experience of the hearer or the reader to fill in the blanks. And often times, those “blanks” are that vivid colorful world that we barely understand. Symbol is hugely important in the Gospels. These authors are trying to convince their readers of the importance of Jesus and his mission and they don’t just do that with the words. They don’t just do that with what they say. They also do it by what they don’t say, by what is implied, by what is in those blanks.
Mark, possibly of all the Gospel authors, is the true master of this. That may be why his Gospel text is the shortest of the four. He wants us to add in the pieces he leaves out. And that’s harder for us to do now in the 21st century than it was in the 1st when his text was first written, because we do not fully understand that world. We don’t even picture it right.
On Christmas Eve, I introduced the idea of the Gospels bookending themselves symbolically. Luke’s Gospel, for instance, does this with the manger. The rough misshapen wood of the feeding trough into which the infant Jesus is laid prefigures the rough misshapen wood upon which he will die at Golgotha. Mark does this too, but it’s not as easy to see.
Mark, for one thing, begins his narrative of Jesus’ life with the baptismal story, not Christmas. We have all the familiar elements: John the Baptist, the River Jordan, Jesus coming to John for baptism, the sky tears open, God speaking, all that. One of these pieces is a “book end.” One of these pieces symbolically prefigures where Jesus’ life will take him. One of these pieces points to the cross. But which one?
And here’s where that knowledge of what the ancient world was truly like comes in. Jerusalem, like Greece or China, was a colorful place. The great temple was a massive structure, and it was not a building of dull brown stone. It is said to have been gilded in gold and precious metal, that it shone out in the sun. And upon its entrance was a great tapestry, this gigantic piece of cloth upon which was woven a magnificent image of the night sky. Again, symbolism being important. Those entering the temple would pass through this tapestry to go inside, going from (in a sense) Earth to the heavens.
It was colorful. Vivid. Alive. And that would have been the picture of Jerusalem in the minds of everyone who first read Mark’s gospel. So when they hear the heavens tear open and God declare himself come to Earth in Jesus at his baptism, those readers would immediately think of another heaven, the one they would see at the entrance to the temple.
The same heaven that would tear asunder as Jesus breathed his last.
This is no coincidence. Mark is telling us through symbol and inference precisely what Jesus has come to do. To break down the barrier between us and God, to tear asunder the boundary that separates us from him. No longer would sin separate us from God. He would come to us. He would be with us. He would save us. He would give heaven to us. All this can be seen in the blanks of the Baptismal story. It’s all here.
Jesus has come to save us.
People often wonder why does Jesus come to be baptized. After all, John is preaching for repentance and Jesus has nothing to repent over. But baptism always serves a double purpose. Not merely the reversal or change of what has come before, but a dedication to what will come after. In the Jordan, Jesus dedicates himself to his mission. He has come to save the world. He has come to tear apart all that separates us from God. And we see that purpose play out, not merely in the work of his life, but even in this very moment, as God tears opens the heavens to declare Jesus his beloved son. The heavens are open, my friends. They are ours, because of Jesus. Amen.
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