Gospel of Mark: Prelude to the Messiah ...

To prove your own identity to others in our age requires a number of “facts” and in the end, a fair share of “faith”.  We rely on our history, a recounting of places we lived, places we worked, things we accomplished, and people who knew us.  We cite documents that ideally are only held in our possession.  Producing our birth certificate or passport may be our last line of defense in attempting to prove we are who we say we are.  But if someone is determined to challenge us at every point, our task of proving who we say we are becomes much more difficult.  For instance, our work histories are usually enumerated in our resumes which often are posted in publicly available forums.  Social media, for some, offers details of our day-to-day lives, and even when we are absent on it, our friends and associates often mention events where we too were participating.  Public property records and assessable financial records provide additional context to our identity and are not uniquely available only to us.  Copies of birth certificates and social security cards can be requested and obtained.  In short, nearly everything about a person can be counterfeited.  A determined identity thief can forge almost everything about us, except the people in our lives.

Today our ability to produce information about ourselves is enhanced by the internet.  And the internet can equally serve as a tool for the demise of our reputation, destroying publicly, “who” we are.  We use the same electronic medium to both substantiate and to counterfeit a person.  But the one objective standard remains the people in our lives, those who we grew up with, or those who we are related to, or those who spent years with us getting to know us personally.  To attempt to authenticate gospels and their authors that were written nearly 2,000 years ago relies on historical recounting, “facts” as best we know them, and quotes believed to be attributed to people who lived in those times.  As with today, a determined skeptic will always find room for “doubt” about the authorship, or authenticity of the published Word.  The Gospel of Mark is generally anonymous as Mark was never listed as a disciple of Christ.  Therefore anything recounted in this gospel would have to have been “sourced” from someone else.  It is impossible to prove if the author was “John Mark” a relative of Barnabas who was Paul’s companion.  Though John Mark is mentioned in Peter’s letters to the church as it appears Peter had taken him on as a Mentor, making John Mark his mentee. 

What Christian tradition holds (though debated) is that the Gospel of Mark was written first.  The other synoptic gospels of Matthew and Luke written later and only agreeing with each other when they also agree with Mark.  The Gospel of Mark also appears to have unique circumstances related to the disciple Peter.  There are both omissions and inclusions that would be uniquely related to the perspective of Peter.  Omissions tend to include incidents where Peter reacted brashly to a situation as if to protect the legacy and reputation of Peter in the early church.  Inclusions appear to include extraneous facts related only to Peter that do not significantly relate to the story at hand.  And finally the messages that Peter preached in the book of Acts appear to begin at the point of John the Baptist and end at the Ascension of Christ.  This is the time that Peter spent with Christ personally.  Though there may never be “concrete” proof that the Gospel of Mark may well be a memoir, or biography of Peter written by his mentee John Mark, there is enough circumstantial evidence to warrant its examination in the context of a knowledge of Christ by those who knew Him well.  Peter was perhaps second on that list outside of family, and so we begin a study of what is recorded in the Gospel of Mark.

Mark begins his recording of Peter’s recollection of Christ not at His birth but at perhaps the most culturally significant pre-amble of the days of Christ, at the prophecy announcing His first coming.  Mark writes in verse one … “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;”  We are not out of chapter one and verse one, before the ending has already been given away.  There was significant debate and opposition by the religious leadership of the day related to “who” Jesus Christ was.  Accepting “the man” as a Rabbi, or perhaps a Prophet, might have been tolerable to the Jewish religious leadership.  But as “the Christ”, “the Messiah” was just more than they could bear.  What was considered blasphemy and a stoning offense, was the concept that “this man” could literally be the “Son of God”.  But there is no doubt in the mind of Peter as to who Jesus was, and in Mark’s opening line of the “good news” of the gospel of Jesus Christ it is plainly stated that “this man” was also the literal Son of God.

Mark continues in verse 2 writing … “As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. [verse3] The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”  The basis for the identity of Jesus Christ begins in the foretelling of how he would come, and how he would be announced.  The ministry and proclamation of the Messiah was not be self-serving.  Jesus did not need to stand on a mount and scream at the top of His lungs that “He” had arrived and all should acknowledge that “He” was the long awaited Messiah.  Instead, another servant of the Most High, would have the honor to announce His coming.  A Nazarene, and a cousin of Jesus Christ, John was born into a religious family where his father served in the Temple, and his mother was a known prophetess.  This was not just some random mad-man in the desert preaching repentance and preparation for the Messiah.  John came from as Spiritual a family as one could come from. 

The message of John too is equally important.  It is the message of humility.  John the Baptist wears simple clothing made of desert construction.  He eats locusts and honey, bugs as it were, or a diet of simple desert abundance.  He does not cut his hair, or keep himself in the fashion of the day.  Instead he presents himself in as humble and simple appearance as is possible.  His life matches his message.  He preaches for the people to “prepare” for the Messiah.  What form is that preparation to take?  It is for us to humble ourselves, or to repent of what we have done, or more profoundly for “who” we have become.  It is not just our deeds that require our regret, it is our motives, and our desires.  Our addiction to pleasing self, underlies the core of what we do.  Our slavery to me pleasing me, is the underpinning of every sin.  It is this addiction, this slavery, and the deeds it inspires that warrant the need for repentance.  To “repent”, I must acknowledge there is something greater than myself.  To “repent”, I must acknowledge that my best efforts at saving myself, have simply not been good enough.  To “repent”, I must acknowledge that even today I continue to exist in a state of sin, and it is this current state I wish to see changed.  This is not just about my past, it is about my present, and to change my future.

We who face the second coming and return of Lord Jesus Christ, are also taught a similar theme of “preparation” and being “ready” for going to heaven.  But instead of the simple and elegant and humble theme of John the Baptist, we are taught completely different methods.  We are taught to keep our doctrines pure from the influence of the world, and the corruption of other Christian denominations that are not our own.  We are taught that our choice to sin is a choice, and that we “should” be making a different one, implying our perfection is something we can achieve based on the strength of will.  Our failures only indicate a lack of will.  Thus self lies at the center of our salvation.  But these teachings were never uttered from the lips of God’s messenger in making straight the way of the Lord.  His message was far more simple and profound.  It was only to “repent”.  If we are ever to be saved from ourselves, we too must begin with “repentance”.

Mark continues writing in verse 4 … “John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. [verse 5] And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.”  The symbolism John employs is no less relevant to his spoken words.  John baptizes those who “repent”.  He submerges them completely under the water, thus signifying the death of self, and then pulls them “up” out of the water representing a resurrection of new life founded in God.  It is God who pulls our existence OUT of the slavery of self, and addiction to self-pleasure.  Only God can raise us from this fate.  Only God can usher in a new life to us, and change the core of who we are.  The confessions of sin was not aimed at John the Baptist, but between each man, woman, and child, and their God.  The pain of the heart that accompanies each sin we commit was silently placed on the altar of God.  Those who heard, believed, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, they found the freedom of release that Baptism offered.

None of this was done in secret.  John had no need to travel around to become an evangelist.  He began by preaching at the Jordon river, those who came for water heard.  His words and message spread.  And as Mark recounts, people from all over the land of Judaea came to hear, repent, and be baptized.  This was a spiritual revival, not founded in a complex set of doctrinal interpretations, but in a simple message of humility.  John did not intend to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah.  But John yearned for a nation to rid itself of self, and in humility to begin searching for a source of salvation that could be found in the Messiah who was to come.  Without the core understanding of how salvation works, a debate about “how” to keep the law of God is meaningless.  Without a experiential knowledge of what it means to be made free from the sin we have so long been enslaved to, a debate over doctrinal differences is equally meaningless.  Only through the lens of Jesus Christ can scripture be properly understood.  Only those who have experienced what it means to be made free, can truly understand the promise of salvation.

Mark continues in verse 6 … “And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey; [verse 7] And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. [verse 8] I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.”  The humility of John the Baptist, the preacher who is calling others to repentance is once again on display.  It is not the reference to his appearance that is so striking, it is his self-acknowledgement that he is “unworthy” to assist Jesus Christ in taking off his shoes.  Later as his disciples will admit in their shame, while they debated who would be greatest among them, Jesus girded himself in the towel of servant and washed each of their feet.  Here is John proclaiming to all who would hear, that he himself is not worthy to touch the dirtiest part of the body of his Lord.  Culturally in the middle east, to expose your shoe to an enemy is considered a great insult.  As the feet are constantly exposed to dirt, animal waste, and other elements of equal disgust, centering attention on them to an enemy is to imply the enemy is equal in value to the waste found on the feet and shoes.  In John’s abject humility, he prizes the feet of the Messiah and the waste they may have on them as being of more value than himself.

But John does not leave his audience with only a profound level of self-humiliation.  He then preaches how the fulfillment of salvation will occur.  He transitions his listeners from the symbolism of baptism by water, to the literal experience of baptism by the Holy Ghost.  They function the same.  We must die to self.  Our old life, our old desires, our old choices, our old way of thinking must die (symbolically in the waters of Baptism) but then again in the reality of having the Holy Ghost enter our lives.  The symbolism of Baptism is merely a precursor to the reality of what it means to have the Holy Ghost enter our lives.  To experience the Holy Ghost, is not the random seemingly uncontrolled body movements, dancing, and gibberish no one can understand that mark His presence within us.  That serves nothing more than spectacle, and a feeling of emotional “high” that only “self” can experience.  The real evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives comes when our desires are changed beyond explanation.  When we no longer “want” to commit the same sins we were recently enslaved to.  When we “want” to love others more than even a consideration of our own needs, this indicates the presence of the Holy Ghost.  A tangible death to self, the death of me-pleasing-me; and in its place, me looking only to bring life and love to others.  This is the truth of our salvation, and the evidence that mechanism of the Holy Ghost in our lives is real.

The message of John the Baptist is no less relevant in our day than it ever was in his own.  Our preachers and teachers and evangelists would do well to examine the humility in which John taught.  Our believers who purport to carry the name of Christ would do well to examine the content of the message of John … to repent … to humble ourselves to something greater than ourselves.  It is in this way we become prepared to experience our own salvation.  Those Christians who hide their identities to those around them, “embarrassed” to be associated with an ideology based on “faith” instead of science; would do well to see the public embrace of baptism in a dirty river outside for all to see.  The symbolism of a public embrace of the death to self; is also paired with the symbolism of a public resurrection of a new life in Christ; that is a life that is made free from the former slavery to self, to the worry about reputation, and its replacement of care and concern for others.  Those who would proclaim “the Spirit” because they gyrate or speak a language of gibberish; would do well to see what loving others truly means.  The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is meant to reach out to meet the needs of others, not to internalize itself, bringing benefits only to the person who “has it”.  If there is no benefit to others, it is not the Spirit of God that is being entertained.  If a new life in Christ does not free us from sin, it is because our “self” is preventing it from occurring, and the Spirit mechanism we are relying on is not the Spirit of our God, but of His enemy.

To establish the identity of Christ, Peter witnesses, and Mark begins with a reliance on the people who knew Him in His day.  They begin this gospel with a recounting of a spiritual revival in Israel such as had never been seen.  It was a message of simple humility that is so needed in our own day.  But to establish the identity of Jesus Christ, witnesses would be cited first …