The Beginning of the Good News

Delivered at Agnus Dei Lutheran Church. Baptism of our Lord, Year B.
Text: Gen 1.1-5; Ps 29; Acts 19.1-7; Mk 1.4-13

Right from the outset, Mark’s gospel is setting us up to be surprised. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” it announces. Whether we are 1^st century Palestinians or 21^st century Washingtonians, these words conjure up for us certain expectations, all of which are tipped on their heads when we meet Jesus.

As people flock from all over Judea and Jerusalem to see John the Baptizer, he tells them of one more powerful than he who is coming. This one, he says, will be so far beyond him that he would not even make a worthy slave for the one who will come—unworthy even to untie his shoes. While John baptizes with plain, old water, this one will baptize with the Holy Spirit. And that’s when we meet Jesus.

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee. Nazareth is so small and obscure that nobody from Judea would have known it existed, and even Galileans who had heard of the place could hardly believe that “anything good could come out of Nazareth.” (Jn 1.46) Yet, this is from where the Christ, the Son of God, comes. The one who baptizes with the Spirit comes down to the Jordan, and what happens? He is baptized with plain, old water by plain, old John—John who is unworthy even to untie his shoes.

Why? If Jesus is God’s Son, if Jesus has no need for repentance or forgiveness of sins, if Jesus is so much greater than John, why does he come down to the Jordan and allow himself to be washed by John? The author of Matthew’s gospel struggled with this: he includes the story that when Jesus arrives, John refuses to baptize him at first. “No, this is all backwards,” he says, “You should be baptizing me!”

The author of Mark’s gospel has no such story, no such justification for this strange scene. He simply lets us dwell in the irony of the long awaited Messiah, the Son of God himself, coming from Nazareth and receiving the baptism of repentance and the forgiveness of sins by John in the Jordan. The gospel writer knows this will make our ears tingle, and he wants us to pay attention. This event at the river isn’t just something that happened to Jesus along the way, this is the “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”