I’m done being witty.
Mark 1:4-11; Acts 19:1-7; Psalm 29; Genesis 1:1-5
I really enjoy Mark’s gospel. If I had to pick a favorite gospel, I think it would be Mark. There’s a sense of purpose and action that Mark’s gospel has that the others seem to lack a little bit. Jesus is always moving and doing things without the long blocks of teaching found in Matthew, Luke, or John’s accounts of His life. Being one that tends towards the concise, I really appreciate that Mark’s account is so straightforward and to the point.
Take, for example, the beginning of Mark’s gospel. Instead of starting with a genealogy showing Jesus as a descendant of Abraham and David, as in Matthew; showing the events leading up to Jesus’ birth, as in Luke; or with a prologue showing Jesus as the Eternal Word of God, as in John; Mark simply says, “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way’ — ‘a voice of one calling in the desert, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” ‘ And so John came…”
The way he phrases his introduction is almost abrupt. It’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; a guy named John showed up baptizing people for repentance, preaching forgiveness and talking about a fellow who will come later and baptize with the Holy Spirit; Jesus showed up where John was baptizing one day and was baptized himself, some crazy things happened, and then he went to the desert to be tempted, only to return and start preaching a message that was not dissimilar to John’s.
Even though these messages were similar, there is still something different about Jesus’ and John’s messages, and curiously enough it’s John who points out the difference. John spends his time preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In essence, for John baptism is little more than an outward expression of a commitment to turn back to God. Jesus, on the hand, will bring something more significant: baptism with the Holy Spirit. It’s a rather curious difference, because in some ways Jesus’ baptism is also an outward sign of a commitment to turn to God, but there’s something else involved there as well. In a way John’s baptism is just a hint of the baptism that Jesus will bring about later.
Even though Jesus’ and John’s baptisms are similar, in the book of Acts the two are considered different enough that 12 men who were baptized by John were re-baptized by Paul in the name of Jesus, as they had never heard of the Holy Spirit. After they were baptized in Jesus’ name, something different happened to these 12 men, and they acted in the same way just about everyone else who was baptized by the Holy Spirit acted.
While some churches treat baptism in water and baptism by the Holy Spirit as two separate events, in the Lutheran church we use one action for both. As we say in the baptismal liturgy, “In Holy Baptism our gracious heavenly Father liberates us from sin and death by joining us to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are born children of a fallen humanity; in the waters of Baptism we are reborn children of God and inheritors of eternal life. By water and the Holy Spirit we are made members of the church which is the body of Christ. As we live with him and with his people, we grow in faith, love, and obedience to the will of God.”
As Lutherans most of us were baptized quite young, and confirmed when we were not much older, so because today we celebrate Jesus’ baptism, instead of preaching about the importance of remembering our own baptism, I’d like to invite you to join me in actually doing it. In our hymnal we have a great rite called the “Affirmation of Baptism”, so I’d like to invite you, after we sing our hymn of the day, to join me as we reaffirm our baptism in the Lord together, and recommit ourselves to His service.