Baptism is political and mystical
We celebrate the baptism of Jesus. I want to be clear that if this baptism is a spiritual act, then to be spiritual is decidedly political AND mystical and the two are connected. By “political” I do not mean party politics as in the Greens, Liberals or Labour. Political means a structural analysis of society and how it is constructed to favour the rich and institutionalise violence against First Nations and the poor. By mystical I mean the breakthrough in consciousness where people experiences God directly, knowing that God is everywhere and that they are in God.
Mark’s Gospel offers a fast-paced beginning: “The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” It races through a hasty beginning to John preaching in the wilderness and the baptism of Jesus. Like John’s Gospel, Mark’s Gospel evokes Genesis. Mark is offering a New Creation of a New Heaven a New earth and a New Way of being human.
These opening verses of Mark’s Gospel are a declaration of war on Roman culture: Jesus is the New Beginning, not Caesar. Jesus is The Good News, not Caesar. Jesus is the Son of God, not Caesar.
To make clear that the New Creation takes place on the periphery and not in institutions, wilderness space is evoked. Wilderness evokes many images, tastes, sights, emotions. You can hear and feel the wind stinging your eyes, you can taste the grit in your parched mouth and your stomach can twist at the loneliness and danger imposed by the emptiness of a wilderness. Usually a desolate space, wilderness is a place where you flee too, especially from political opponents. David fled into the wilderness from Saul when Saul was trying to kill him. The Israelites fled into the desert away from the tyranny of Egypt. Elijah fled into the desert where he was given food of angels. The New Creation of a New heaven and a New Earth happens at the margins.
If Mark’s Gospel is a declaration of war on Roman Culture and Roman nationalism, it is also a declaration of war on Jewish Nationalism. In the poetic imagination of the prophets, Jerusalem would be the place where are the nations would come to learn the way of peace. Isaiah 1.2:
Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.
Mark 1.4-11 challenges the idea that all nations come to Jerusalem. Instead, it is Jerusalem and all of Judea that are leaving Jerusalem and going out into the wilderness. The writers of Mark’s Gospel are subverting tradition, its like driving against the traffic on a highway.
John announces repentance for sin. Sin is not a popular word . In fact, even some of you here insist on its removal from our liturgies. If sin is defined as guilt and shame and feeling less than fully human, then yes, such “sin” has no place in our lexicon. Thomas Cranmer’s “we bewail our manifold sins and wickedness” is hyperbolic, overly pious, and perhaps not helpful, if sin is defined as crushing guilt and paralysing shame, which is self-centred, individualistic and a further demonstration of sin anyway. The repentance John calls for is an agreement to ere I think is and agreement to step out our solidarity with institutions of violence
For a Gospel of few words and quick fast paced sentences, it is surprising to be offered details about what John is wearing: a camel hair cloak and a leather belt. John’s attire is a direct reference to Elijah the prophet. This is important. The writing community of Mark’s Gospel are declaring that the moment of God’s judgment is upon us. Malachi 4.
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch… Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes…
John’s ministry in the wilderness represents Elijah being sent before the great and terrible day of the Lord. The day has come. Judgement is pronounced. Elijah had pronounced judgment on the Israel’s king Ahab and his son Azariah. Their house subsequently fell. John the Baptist, the new Elijah, pronounces judgment on Herod Agrippa. Then he tells us that one even stronger than he is coming.
Each of us today must hear in our hearts the word of the lord’s judgment. Are you ready to be judged? Here is your judgement. The heavens break open and God’s voice of judgement says….you are my beloved. That is the great and terrible day of the Lord. That is the burning judgement. God says, “You are my Beloved.” How great to be judged.
The mystical moment for Jesus is when the boundaries between heaven and earth dissolve; Jesus ascends from the waters of baptism at the moment the spirit descends from heaven and he becomes the place where heaven and earth meet, where grace and truth embrace and righteous justice and peace kiss (Psalm 85.10). Jesus experiences the universal and eternal truth that God is everywhere, that he is in God and that God is in him, , that we are already in God. This is a discovery of one’s true identity – God within. The same spirit that hovered over the chaos of creation in the beginning, in Genesis, now hovers over the New Creation of a New Heaven and a New Earth .
The Spirit is represented as a dove as a direct challenge to the Eagle that appeared on the Roman standards. In Ancient Rome, an aquila, an eagle was the important symbol that appeared on military banners or standards. Each legion had an aquila. To lose the military standard was serious. The Roman Military protected the aquila and sought to recover it if it was lost in battle. The Spirit represented as a dove is a direct challenge to Roman military insignia.
Here is the genius of the Gospel’s challenge to Roman and Jewish nationalism, we find our identity beyond any label that culture would bestow. Our identity is in God
Today the politics of identity cement our divisions and deepen our hatred. The politics of identity swell as the waters of democracy recede. Indian Hindu against Indian Muslim. Pro Trump vs Anti Trump. Greens vs Liberals. Regions vs cities.
The art of living spiritually that is both political and mystical heals these divisions by discovering a common union in the Divine: if God and I are one, you and I are one.
Ched Meyers in a 2015 blog challenges us to re-write Mark 1 within our own context (he used the word bio-region but I think it means context).
So the people gathered near the Uluru. They left the parliaments of Canberra and gathered near the way maker, Stanley Grant, who was there. People finally understood when he said that the colonisation of the First Peoples was a violent act of war, that the land they called terra nullis, was not a desolate wilderness, but alive with story and pulsating song and vibrating with wisdom.
All manner of Australians left the city and joined in the truth and reconciliation commission in the wilderness near Uluru. “The Great Australian Silence" and the “cult of forgetting on a national scale” came to and end. Truth was given space to be spoken and people really listened, and slowly the path of reconciliation began.
Notes:
Craig Evans, “Mark’s Incipit and the Priene Calendar Inscription: From Jewish Gospel to Greco-Roman Gospel,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, 1 (2000): 68–69, who footnotes his sources as: M. E. Boring, K. Berger, and C. Colpe, Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995).
Grant, Stanly. UNSW Wallace Wurth Lecture. Accessed from: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/unsw-wallace-wurth-lecture-%E2%80%93-excerpt-speech-stan-grant