Spikenard Sunday/Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut

01.   Mark1:1-20 (Part 1)

Mark 1:1: Title (1:1)

Israel in exile heard these words through the prophet Isaiah:

“How beautiful upon the mountains
    are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
    who announces salvation,
    who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

The “good news” Isaiah announced as promise Mark proclaims as fulfilled. Fulfilled in Jesus Messiah, Son of God. In fact, he apparently created the genre of “gospel” as an account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfilment of God’s story with Israel and the world.

The word “gospel” refers to an announcement of an event that changes things in the wider public world. That’s what it meant when the Romans used this word to announce a great military victory, the accession of a new emperor, or the birth of an heir to the sitting emperor. Mark believes that the world has been changed by who and what happened through this Jesus.

In this statement, the title to his gospel, Mark tells his readers the “time” they live in. Greek had two words for time. “Chronos” (chronology) was linear time, minute after minute, week after week, and so forth. History as chronicle. What Henry Ford famously described as “just one damn thing after another.” But there was also “Kairos” time. Filled time. Time pregnant with meaning. A day of reckoning of some kind. A time of waking, being “woke,” as we say these days.

“Beginning” and “Messiah” (“Christ” = Messiah) are the two clues Mark gives for us to tell time accurately. In the story he tells of an obscure Galilean peasant crucified as a traitor by the Romans he finds the high point and decisive display of God’s plan for the world. A plan Jesus has enacted bringing a new state of affairs in the world to be. Public change, political change, personal change. Regime change.

What has happened Mark alludes to with the word “beginning.” This good news has to do with a “beginning.” Again, we have an allusion to the Old Testament, perhaps to its most famous and first verse: “In the beginning God created . . .” Some deny this and claim the “beginning” means only the onset of the ministry of Jesus. Like the translation in the Good News Bible: “This is the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It began as the prophet Isaiah had written . . .” But might there not be more in “beginning” than a historical marker? Might it allude to “the” beginning as well, to Gen.1, and draw in the resonance that this “beginning” in Jesus grows out of and embodies God’s “big picture” plan for the word?

Calling Jesus “Messiah” points in this direction in my view. It ties Jesus to the whole history of God with Israel and with the world. Messiah in much of Jewish thought in Jesus’ time was the special agent God would send to rescue them from their oppressive overlords, drive them out of town, rebuild the temple, and restore Israel to its premier place among all nations. This Messiah would rule both Israel and the world. It’s this story from which he emerges and which he enacts.

Mark ends his title with “Son of God.” This term used in this context means more than its use to refer to Israel’s human kings and less than the Second Person of the Trinity of Christian theology, which idea had not yet been developed. Cranfield[1] is probably right to suggest this refers to Jesus’ special sense of relation to the Father, as we see later in this chapter at his baptism. “Son of God” will develop into more as the church reflects on it in the early centuries of its life but historically it means that Messiah, a human figure in Jewish thought, when applied to Jesus takes on more than human (but not less than human!) resonances. We will note these resonances as we meet them and that way see how Mark fills out this title.

In short, in Jesus a new day, new age, new creation has dawned! Because it is the new age of God’s fulfilling his gracious plans for all of us and everything, it is truly “good news.” And that’s what Jesus Christ means to Mark. The story about him and the good news he came to proclaim and live out converge in its retelling. It is both Mark’s words about Jesus and Jesus’ Word to us from God.

Jesus’ Context (1:2-3)

Whether or not Mark intends us to see his “beginning” in v.1 as an allusion to “the beginning” of Gen.1:1, he formally introduces Jesus Messiah by means of this prophecy from Isaiah which speaks of a “messenger” coming to herald the arrival of the “Lord” (v.3). Isa.40:3, which is the Isaiah passage Mark cites, is a call to New Exodus by the prophet. But this quotation is a composite of two texts, a not unusual practice among Jews of the time. Mal.3:1 is the other text melded with Isa 40. The former references an Elijah-like precursor who would come to prepare the way for the Messiah (“the Lord” in v.3). Watts notes, “Mark's introductory editorial citation of Isaiah 40 functions iconically, invoking the hermeneutical framework within which he wants his hearers/readers to understand his Gospel.”[2] That’s a fancy way of saying Mark interprets the Jesus story as God’s New Exodus.

The messenger of Mal.3:1 is the Elijah many Jews expected to come as herald of the Messiah (Mal.4:5). He is, of course, John the Baptist. His ministry and Jesus’ have sufficient similarities to suggest the influence of the former on the latter. Some even think Jesus was a disciple of John’s for a time. At any rate, Mark finds enough continuity between the two to see a connection between them in the unfolding of salvation history.

All this is to take place in the “wilderness” (v.3). Wilderness has a whole range of nuances in the Bible. It can be merely a geographic indicator but often has either positive or negative connotations depending on the context. Negative implications include “a site of danger and death, rebellion, punishment and temptation, and as the dwelling place of evil spirits.” Positive implications include “memories of God's guidance and help, his miracles and the revelation of his will and commandments.”[3] In Mark main nuances of wilderness include a place of God’s guidance, help, and renewal as well as a place of temptation.

Today we might call the wilderness a liminal place, somewhere in between what we were and what we shall be. Old identities and vocations are shed while we await a new identity and vocation. Community is forged by braving the dangers, insecurities, and ambiguities of this in-between time in preparation for the new that is to come. Liminal might be an apt way to describe the New Exodus experience of Jesus’ ministry we see in the gospels and particularly in Mark.

John the Baptist (1:4-8)

Forgiveness of sins features in the ministry of the voice announcing the New Exodus (Isa.40:2):

“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.”

John appears in the “wilderness” announcing his baptism is one of “repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Now, contrary to our usual explanations of this, John‘s baptism and offer of forgiveness is not for humanity in general but the people of Israel (who will for the nucleus of the New Exodus movement) not for individual sins but for the pervasive corporate idolatrous and rebellious behavior of Israel. This does not mean that individual forgiveness for every human being is not a biblical concern, it is. It is just not what is at issue here.

There at the Jordan River, outside the land, at the place Israel entered the land under Joshua, John calls his people to repent of their national default on their mandate to be the Abrahamic instrument of worldwide blessing and prepare to journey back into the land as a new, reconstituted, Abrahamic people.

And the people flocked to John (Mark uses “all” in v.5 hyperbolically to highlight the extent of John’s popularity). John did his best “Elijah redivivus” act donning his garb and eating his cuisine. No doubt that helped fan the people’s enthusiasm for him and his message. Plus most of them knew that the situation in the land after the return from Babylon were just not up to size of the divine promises given them. They longed to hear and see the true fulfillment of those promises in their time.

Even the rise and fall of messianic pretenders and revolutionaries had not dimmed their enthusiasm to give another one a chance to prove himself. So they came and went under the water confessing their sins to be cleansed and committed and ready to march when the “more powerful” one John spoke as  coming would arrive on the scene.

This one will baptize, not with water as John did[4], but with the “Holy Spirit” (v.8). It’s hard to know what precisely those first hearers understood by this reference to the Holy Spirit (certainly not what later-day Christians do) but hearing it doubtless heightened their wonder and anticipation. What’s whoever John’s talking about got to do with him and God’s New Exodus? The next several episodes will go some way to letting us know.

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[1] C. E. B. Cranfield, Mark, 55.

[2] Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus, 120.

[3] “Wilderness,” Dictionary of Biblical Imagery.

[4] Antecedents to John’s baptism are uncertain, if there were any at all. Hurtado summarizes the situation: “The ritual seems to have been a somewhat new practice in Jewish religion. It appears that the Jewish sect at Qumran (site of the Dead Sea Scrolls) may have practiced ritual immersions daily to symbolize (and effect?) daily cleansing from religious impurity. It may be that the Gentiles who became proselytes (converts to the Jewish religion) underwent a religious immersion (baptism) as a part of their conversion requirements (though various scholars disagree as to when the baptism of proselytes began). John’s baptism rite was different. For one thing, it appears that John administered baptism only once to each repentant sinner, which is unlike the daily immersion rite at Qumran but similar to the practice of proselyte baptism. For another, John wanted to bring Israel (Jews) to repentance and baptism, whereas proselyte baptism was only for the non-Jews who wished to take up Judaism. So, there is no clear analogy for John’s rite.” (37)