Ministry Prep --Lectionary Reflection for Lent 1B
9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;repent, and believe in the good news.”
The
season of Lent begins in the very same place as did the season of Epiphany –
with the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. The gospel
readings for the first Sunday after Epiphany celebrates Jesus’ baptism, and we
repeat that story again here. But we don’t
stay at the Jordan. Mark moves us quickly from the river to the wilderness, and
after a sojourn in the wilderness, we find ourselves in Galilee, where Jesus
takes up his new ministry of preaching the good news that the realm of God is
knocking at the door. All of this occurs in a matter of seven verses. Another
way of putting it would be to lay out a nice three-point Lenten sermon outline:
Baptized, Tested, Begin Preaching. All we need is a poem and we have a sermon.
While
it is customary to begin the church’s Lenten season with a focus on Jesus’
forty-day sojourn in the desert, at which time he fasted and was tempted, Mark
really doesn’t give us much material to work with. We’re not told how Satan
tempted Jesus or what it meant for him to live among the wild beasts. The note
that the angels waited on him is intriguing because Mark doesn’t give us a
time frame. Was it just at the end, as
the fuller renditions suggest, or were they with him throughout the time of
testing? So, maybe we will find our conversation to be more fruitful if we see
the three episodes in terms of a process of call, testing, and sending into
ministry.
Jesus’
baptism has always raised questions for Christian theologians. Was he a sinner in need of cleansing in the waters
of baptism? Was this an adoption scene (Mark can give one the sense that this
is the moment that Jesus became the son of God)? Or, is this an ordination? If
the first two suggestions raise theological questions best dealt with
elsewhere, perhaps we would be best served at this point to consider the last
option – ordination.
In my
tradition one is baptized upon profession of faith (and by immersion), with
baptism serving to usher one into the Christian faith and into membership in
the local congregation. Baptism has been seen in this tradition as expressing
the pattern of salvation delineated in Acts 2:38 – repentance, baptism, the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Since Jesus is usually
understood to not need forgiveness of sins, we might be well served by focusing
on the gift of the Holy Spirit. More specifically, we can focus on the idea
that it is the Spirit who empowers and ordains to ministry. If this holds true
here, then baptism serves as the point at which Jesus’ call to ministry is
confirmed by God’s naming him as Son, and sealed by the anointing of the
Spirit. From there he takes time to
reflect and experience a certain buffeting, before taking on his calling as a preacher of the realm of God. Could it be that the middle section of this
reading is something of an orientation to ministry in the realm of God? While
most denominations require exams before ordination, could this be the first
century equivalent of an ordination exam?
The story begins with baptism and then moves
to the wilderness sojourn, all of which culminates in Jesus preaching the good
news that the realm of God has come near. He takes up this ministry right after
John the Baptist is arrested. While Jesus preaches in Galilee, it seems as if
Jesus is picking up where John left off (though Mark doesn’t suggest that Jesus
did any baptizing with water). What Jesus does offer to his audience is the message
of the divine realm that is near at hand and which they can apparently partake
in if they repent. It seems clear that Jesus has an eschatological vision. He
is not merely a teacher of wisdom – a sage offering proverbs that will help you
live a better life. While there are clearly political implications to Jesus’
message, he is not merely a political provocateur (even if his opponents were
able to portray him as one). He was preaching a message that focused on the in-breaking of divine rule in the world. The time is now. The time is short. The
world is ripe for something big to happen. It’s not that the signs of the time
require it, but rather that God has determined that this is the right
time.
Whatever
happens in baptism and in the wilderness sojourn is designed to prepare Jesus
for this ministry of proclamation that God’s realm is near at hand. It is a
ministry that combines proclamation with a bit of mystery. One of the themes
that keeps popping up in the Gospel of Mark is that news of the kingdom needs
to be kept quiet. Think of the Transfiguration story that was heard just a week
back. Jesus tells Peter, James, and John
not to say anything about what they saw until after the resurrection (Mark 9:9).
But here in Mark 1, Jesus is getting the word out – perhaps so that when people
start seeing stuff happen whenever Jesus is around they’ll begin to put things
together. Jesus has been talking about God’s realm, he’s doing interesting
things, including healings and exorcisms, so maybe that hoped for time of
deliverance is at hand. Not only that, but he starts his ministry in Galilee –
a place far from the center of power, reminding us that God often works first
and foremost among those living on the margins. This message will be good news
to those who hear and sign on.
So how
did we get to Galilee? I want to reflect
on this question by moving backward from Galilee to the Wilderness and then
finally to the scene of Jesus’ baptism before returning again to Galilee. The Wilderness experience begins immediately
after the baptism when the Spirit “drove him out into the wilderness.” I find
that choice of words intriguing. It
would seem that the sojourn in the wilderness wasn’t Jesus’ idea and it wasn’t
something he welcomed. The Greek word translated “drove” here is even more
intriguing – ekballo. That word can
be translated as “cast out” and it is used in reference to Jesus’ exorcisms. There
is a certain amount of spiritual force in play here. Therefore, driven by the
Spirit into the wilderness, Jesus is both tested by Satan and sustained by the
Spirit.
The time in the wilderness serves
to prepare Jesus for what will come. Jesus will often be tempted to give up (I
read somewhere that around 80% of clergy will leave the ministry within five years
of ordination). Jesus will be tempted to use shortcuts (we are always being
bombarded by slick religious salespeople offering us surefire ways of turning
our declining congregations around so that we can become successful in the
religious game). Jesus wrestled with these “demons” before he entered the ring.
The word about the wild beasts and the angels, reminds us, however, that he was
not alone in this sojourn. The same would be true for us.
This
takes us back to the top – to the story of Jesus’ baptism. If we see this
baptism as the moment of his ordination to his ministry of proclaiming the
realm of God, a moment at which he received divine confirmation and anointing,
could we not look to our own baptisms in the same way? If you practice infant
baptism, then can you envision confirmation as the point at which this happens?
If baptism serves as a point of
ordination and endowment to ministry, a ministry that we all share as children
of God, then, as Keith Watkins suggests” “Any other ordination to Christian
ministry is secondary to Christian baptism” [Baptism and Belonging, Chalice Press, 1991, p. 20]. Baptism can
usher us into new life in Christ – being born again as John puts it – but it
also serves as that point of empowerment for ministry.
Ordained
and oriented, we take up our calling. There is an urgency to this ministry. Even
if it’s been two millennia since the events described here took place, the
realm of God has been revealed in the ministry of Jesus and in the ongoing
ministry of the Spirit. The work that Jesus took up in Galilee he has passed on
to us. Like him we have been baptized, and
therefore ordained (whether we’ve been subsequently ordained to vocational
ministry), and we have been tested. Indeed, we are continually tested (and
redeemed), so that little by little evidence of God’s realm leaks out into the
world around us.
Note on picture: Bazile, Castera. Baptism of Jesus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54305 [retrieved February 16, 2015]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PortAuPrinceMural.jpg.
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