Mark 1

¹ The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. ² As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, ³ the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” ⁴ John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵ And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶ Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷ And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. ⁸ I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In his biographical introduction to St. Patrick of Ireland, the late Patrick Francis Cardinal Moran writes of how Patrick, having returned as a missionary to Ireland after escaping slavery and making his way back to his family in England, was locked in spiritual combat with the forces of paganism there as he sought to evangelize the Celtic people. Moran writes that Patrick “learned from Dichu that the chieftains of Erin had been summoned to celebrate a special feast at Tara by Leoghaire, who was the Ard-Righ, that is, the Supreme Monarch of Ireland.” What is more, Leoghaire had decreed that all the fires of Ireland should be extinguished until “the signal blaze was kindled at the royal mansion.” So Patrick determined to go to Tara and confront from the pagan assembly with the gospel of Christ. Moran informs us that the event happened on Easter Sunday, March 26, 433.

…the chiefs and Brehons came in full numbers and the druids too would muster all their strength to bid defiance to the herald of good tidings and to secure the hold of their superstition on the Celtic race, for their demoniac oracles had announced that the messenger of Christ had come to Erin. St. Patrick arrived at the hill of Slane, at the opposite extremity of the valley from Tara, on Easter Eve, in that year of the feast of the Annunciation, and on the summit of the hill kindled the Paschal fire. The druids at once raised their voice. “O King,” (they said) “live forever; this fire, which has been lighted in defiance of the royal edict, will blaze for ever in this land unless it be this very night extinguished.” By order of the king and the agency of the druids, repeated attempts were made to extinguish the blessed fire and to punish with death the intruder who had disobeyed the royal command. But the fire was not extinguished and Patrick shielded by the Divine power came unscathed from their snares and assaults.

            On Easter Day the missionary band having at their head the youth Benignus bearing aloft a copy of the Gospels, and followed by St. Patrick who with miter and crosier was arrayed in full episcopal attire, proceeded in processional order to Tara. The druids and magicians put forth all their strength and employed all their incantations to maintain their sway over the Irish race, but the prayer and faith of Patrick achieved a glorious Triumph.[1]

What a gloriously dramatic and fascinating scene, Patrick walking into the valley of Tara in defiance of the Druids and magicians and their pagan monarch. You have got to get the scene right in your mind: the pagan horde and their dark king gathered in the valley in darkness. All the fires of the land had been extinguished. All the eyes of the Celts were looking toward the great royal mansion awaiting the lighting of the fire that would signal the beginning of their defiant feast. Suddenly, on the hill of Slane on the far end of the valley of Tara a fire leaps into the air, but it is not the fire of Leoghaire, the fire of pagan revelry. Instead, there on the hill, the druids and magicians and the Celts look up to see Patrick, missionary to Ireland, standing on Easter Eve shrouded in the orange glow of the Paschal flame!

What an amazing sight that must have been! It sounds like those scenes in the movies when the hero walks cooly toward the camera as a massive explosion goes off behind him. And so Patrick, fire behind him and darkness ahead of him, walked into the valley to proclaim the gospel to the pagan Celts!

Amazing!

But there is one other detail we need to put into this scene to get the full effect. One of the most moving aspects of this image can be found in this little line from the description: “On Easter Day the missionary band having at their head the youth Benignus bearing aloft a copy of the Gospels…”

Ah! At the head of this brave little band of missionaries walked a young man holding high above his head a copy of the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now that is a wondrous thing indeed!

As we approach the gospel of Mark, let us have this scene in our minds: the gospels, the stories of Jesus, held aloft like light in the darkness. The Church must once again learn the power of the gospels. They tell us the story of Jesus, the story of salvation. They should indeed be held aloft against the encroaching darkness, for they tell us of the light. The gospels are beautiful witnesses to Jesus, and Mark, it is widely agreed today, is the earliest one.

John prepared the way for Jesus by powerfully reminding the Jews of their (and our) need for exodus liberation, wilderness repentance, and promised land deliverance.

Mark does not begin with the birth of Jesus. Rather, Mark begins with the preaching of John the Baptist.

¹ The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Here is a most beautiful and powerful sentence. Mark tells us that this marks the beginning of the gospel, the evangel, the good news of Jesus Christ. “Gospel,” here, is not referring to the book of Mark but rather to the beautiful proclamation that Christ has come. The first four books of the New Testament will not be referred to as “gospels” until some years later. It refers here to the proclamation about which Mark is writing, the proclamation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It does so by proclaiming first the one who proclaimed Christ, John the Baptist.

² As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, ³ the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” ⁴ John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵ And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶ Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.

John the Baptist begins his introduction of Jesus with a quotation from scripture. The quotation itself appears to be a kind of amalgamation of three verses.

Exodus 23:20 – Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.

Malachi 3:1 – Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.

Isaiah 40:3 – A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

John used these as prophetic verses, pointing to the coming Messiah. They are also wilderness texts that speak of Israel’s exodus journey through the wilderness. It is at this point that we need to appreciate that something is happening here that would have been apparent to first century Jews but is not as readily apparent to us. Namely, Mark’s usage of wilderness texts and wilderness imagery and even his own wilderness appearance was evoking the idea of Israel’s exodus from Egypt and their wilderness wanderings. And this is significant because in Israel’s psyche the wilderness was the place of repentance and and the place of true sonship. William Lane explains.

The biblical concept of repentance…is deeply rooted in the wilderness tradition. In the earliest stratum of OT prophecy, the summons to “turn” basically connotes a return to the original relationship with the Lord. This means a return to the beginning of God’s history with his people, a return to the wilderness. Essential to the prophetic concern with repentance in Hosea, Amos and Isaiah is the concept of Israel’s time in the wilderness as the period of true sonship to God…Although there is no trace of this understanding in orthodox Jewish circles in the first century, the theology of the Qumran Community indicates that this strand of the prophetic tradition was kept alive in sectarian Judaism.[2]

This is profoundly provocative and profoundly significant. At one level, John’s words are simply preparatory. I do not use “simply” to mean “unimportantly.” On the contrary, John’s preparation for Christ and his call for the people to repent and prepare for the coming Messiah was precisely why John had come. But on another level, the fact that John called the people to (a) leave Jerusalem and (b) come to the wilderness means that this preparatory call was pregnant with meaning and imagery that itself made this a strategically nuanced and prophetic call to remember and then to prepare. In other words, the fact that John the Baptist called the Jews out of Jerusalem and into the wilderness meant that, in a certain sense, Jerusalem had become a kind of Egypt, the Jordan had become a kind of Red Sea, the coming Messiah was a greater and superior kind of Moses, and the wilderness remained the place where God disciplines and loves and leads His people.

That great ancient scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam made the same point. He wrote in his 1523 Paraphrase of Mark that the Jews going out from Jerusalem to the wilderness to see and hear John can be likened to a sinner who leaves the comforts of his past life to come to Christ.

He must leave behind everything who wishes to be worthy of the evangelical grace that lavishly gives everything. In the cities there are riches, pleasures, delights, ambition, and pride, but Jerusalem surpassed the rest: it had a temple which was its pride, it had carnal victims in which it trusted, it had feast days, sabbaths, choice of foods, and other ceremonies in which it vested righteousness; it had the arrogance of the priests, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But he who desires evangelical baptism must cut himself loose from trusting in any of these things. Judaea must be abandoned altogether with its Jerusalem, with its temple, its victims, its priesthood, its Pharisaism. You must migrate into the wilderness to receive there the very glad tidings of the imminent coming of the Saviour.[3]

This raises, of course, a very intriguing comment: what is your Jerusalem? What is mine? What is that place of bondage we need to leave? God is ever and again calling his wayward children to the wilderness of discipline, of repentance, and of restoration, but from where is He calling you?

And are we willing to go? Are we willing to leave our Jerusalem and go into the wilderness? Are we willing to go to the river of repentance, the river of rebirth, the river of relationship restoration?

And are our hearts open to the Savior who comes to save? Are we willing to meet Him there, in the wilderness so that He might change us?

Michael Card captured the essence of this idea so beautifully in his song, “The Wilderness.”

In the wilderness

In the wilderness

He calls His sons and daughters

To the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient

To survive any test

And that’s the painful purpose

Of the wilderness

In the wilderness we wander

In the wilderness we weep

In the wasteland of our wanting

Where the darkness seems so deep

We search for the beginning

For an exodus to hold

We find that those who follow Him

Must often walk alone

In the wilderness

In the wilderness

He calls His sons and daughters

To the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient

To survive any test

And that’s the painful purpose

Of the wilderness

In the wilderness we’re wondering

For a way to understand

In the wilderness there’s not a way

For the ways become a man

And the man’s become the exodus

The way to holy ground

Wandering in the wilderness

Is the best way to be found

In the wilderness

In the wilderness

He calls His sons and daughters

In the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient

To survive any test

And that’s the painful purpose

Of the wilderness

Groaning and growing

Amidst the desert days

The windy winter wilderness

Can blow the self away

In the wilderness

In the wilderness

He calls His sons and daughters

To the wilderness

But He gives grace sufficient

To survive any test

And that’s the painful purpose

Of the wilderness

And that’s the painful promise

Of the wilderness

John prepared the way for Jesus by presenting his watery baptism as a symbol that was lesser and weaker than the greater and stronger spiritual baptism that only Christ could offer.

The people came to the wilderness to see John the Baptist. Mark told us in verse 5 that “all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him.” I recall in college having a liberal New Testament professor who pointed to this verse as probably an error in the biblical text. “You do not really think that all the country was going out to John, do you?” His point was that if literally all did not go out to John then here we have an error in the text. But of course Mark did not mean this literally any more than you or I do if we say, “It was a great party. Everybody was there!” This is called a synecdoche, a figure of speech in which the whole is referred to in order to communicate a large part. We use this kind of figure of speech all the time. So did the ancient writers. This is no error.

Regardless, such squabbles miss the point. The point is that something controversial and intriguing was happening in the wilderness. No doubt the crowd that went out to the wilderness was a mixed crowd, as Matthew reveals in his account in Matthew 3.

⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? ⁸ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

So there were hypocrites there, the oppressors of the Jewish people, their new Pharaoh’s. And there were undoubtedly also onlookers, the kind of folk who like to follow the religious circus. Then as now, these people are the people who are always looking for the next hot thing on the religious scene, the religious consumers.

The expectations of the crowd were no doubt varied and ran the gamut from the self-serving to the sincere. Regardless, John the Baptist resisted his own temptation in the wilderness by saying that he and his ministry were both inferior to the One who was coming. He did this by speaking of how his baptism, while important, could not accomplish what Jesus’ baptism would accomplish.

⁷ And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. ⁸ I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John shows true humility. He does not buy into his own press. He is there not for himself but rather for Christ, and his mission is to prepare the people for the mission of Christ. Specifically, John says that the coming Christ is “mightier” than him. Put another way, John was weaker and lesser than Christ. So it is with us all! We bow before Christ Jesus as Lord and King! We are certainly not His superior. We are clearly not His equal. He is above us and beyond us. Like John, we are not worthy to untie the strap of His sandals. We are only worthy to kiss the feet of the Lamb, and doing this is a great honor indeed!

Furthermore, John’s ministry was not as powerful as Jesus’. John’s ministry was a ministry of preparation. Jesus’ was a ministry of fulfillment. Jesus would do something that John could not do. Jesus is able to baptize our very hearts with the Holy Spirit! The medium with which He works is not mere water but rather the Holy Spirit. Christ baptizes all who will come to Him with the Spirit of the living God.

John the Baptist was the forerunner, the crazily dressed calm before the storm of amazing grace. He called the people to the wilderness to meet their new Moses, a superior Moses, a Moses who will lead all who come to Him out of the Egypt of our sin, through the wilderness of sonship and daughtership, and into the Promised Land of eternal life.

Come to the wilderness! It is there that we meet the Savior and King! Leave the comforts of your Jerusalem and come to the Christ who changes everything!

 

[1] Fr. Neil Xavier O’Donoghue, trans. and ed., St. Patrick: His Confessions and Other Works. (New Jersey: Catholic Book Publishing Corp., 2009), p.49-50.

[2] William Lane, The Gospel According to Mark. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed., Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974), p.50-51.

[3] Desiderius Erasmus, Paraphrase on Mark. Collected Works of Erasmus. Gen. Ed., Robert D. Sider. Vol. 49 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), p.15-16.