Scripture lesson: Mark 1: 1-8
Without sounding as melodramatic as Daniel did about his inner life, I recently had a dream. It went like this: We came home, opened the front door of the house, and discovered to our surprise that it was as empty as a gourd.
I do not mean just somewhat empty. When you are preparing to move and you are packing everything up you can say that it is empty when it is still half full of stuff. But this time I mean spic and span–astonishingly clean. If Hemingway had been there he would have said that it was the original clean well lighted place. It was apocalyptically bare.
Dreams are big these days. There is open season on them by both novelists and psychotherapists. Nevertheless, I am not so sure that the experts would do much with this one. It could be beyond the grasp of even that newly evolved profession, life coach/mentor. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung could have met at Seattle’s Best over it, flipped for paying the bill, and left shaking their heads.
Even though there might not be much in a dream like this, a worrisome thought had begun to tug at the back of my mind. I had, as a result of this assignment, been reading over Mark 1:1-8. Could it be having an effect? Now, as we all know, reading the Bible can become a troublesome matter. It can come at you more in the attack mode than the domesticated antiphon, tossed to and fro like a sacral Frisbee. As the conclusion of the Scripture lessons implies, Mark 1:1-8 could have been the “dream” source. It is all about cleaning house. And I do not mean just vacuuming the floor or dusting.
When it comes to making selections for Advent and Christmas passages, Mark 1:1-8 usually comes in last. Who can resist Matthew and Luke? They tie for first. Then John, as difficult to figure out as it is, certainly comes in third. Mark, however, seems to have no interest in being considered. It brushes off the entire business. It has poor pickings for the preachers’ workshop. Or does it?
The speed with which Mark comes at you says something. It flicks aside its clue, “in the beginning” that could tell us that this is going to be about the real beginning of our lives, and plunges straight into the quotation from Isaiah. The whole heritage of biblical prophecy is completed here in this weird little setting. And the announcement is clear: Our lives have been a desert whether we have grasped it or not. We might have thought they were cluttered but the Lord had not found much to celebrate at all.
The message is as abrupt as one could make it. God’s preacher comes telling us about repentance and the forgiveness of sins. It is an advance warning. In an era of comfort food, God’s word does not bring much comfort. He has not come to coddle. It is, down by the riverside, death and resurrection time.
Our lives are not there just to receive a tune up. We are not there merely to be improved. And we are certainly not there to count the votes between the liberals and conservatives in the church. Mark sends John the Baptist wearing his archaic retro outfit into our lives as the clearest kind of warning. God has had enough with all of our playing church.
I take the point. A man who dresses the way John the Baptist does is a man with a mission, and judging from the nature of his choices, I am not going to like it. He will not be an easy cultural fit. In fact, he looks like a man who has come to clear the debris, the memorabilia, and the bragging items right out of my life. He does not look like one who is easily impressed.
And the oddest thing in the text is Mark’s way of saying that there is no escape. All Judea and Jerusalem, read upscale Presbyterians, come out confessing their sins. It takes your breath away. We have all been not only indicted but convicted. And the part about them coming to be baptized implies that repentance is no joking matter. It is not just a liturgical short cut, a brief period of confessional repose in lieu of the deep audit that is coming at the end of our lives. The Jesus movement is all about cleaning house. And we cannot go back into our own homes; we can never be at peace with ourselves, until we too become spiritually clean.
I believe that I have been misjudging what John means when he speaks of Jesus’ baptizing with the Holy Spirit. This is not about being served a spiritual smoothie. It is, as John the Baptist puts it, coming from one who is much stronger than an expert on liturgical cleansing. It is actually one of Mark’s many apocalyptic symbols pointing toward the end of the world. It says that God’s sovereignty is going to put an end to my personal world whether I am comfortable with it or not. The little idolatries that hide away inside our lives like decay in a shining tooth are going to be drilled out.
When Zechariah 13 says, on the day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from their sins and injustices, I know that Zachariah has also been recommissioned by the Almighty to address us. On that day I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more.
Christ’s own baptism prepared him for war. One day at the river and the next in the wilderness. Little did Satan know that he would be beaten in his own lair when the One who baptizes us with the Spirit came. Mark 1:1-8 contains the bone-rattling draft notice that we have been called into this battle too. Stripped down to run the race, redressed in the full armor of Christ, lifting high his cross, we are commissioned by Advent to join all the disciples with the sword of the Spirit at our side. Advent means we will be draft dodgers no more.
RICHARD A. RAY is a former pastor, professor, and managing director/editor of John Knox Press (retired). He currently resides in North Carolina, and is general editor of the Kerygma Bible Studies. He serves as president of the Board of Directors, The Presbyterian Outlook Foundation.
