Mark 1.4-11
Je suis Charlie. I am Charlie. We
are Charlie. Following last week’s terrorist murders in Paris this slogan has
appeared in demonstrations and social media. The magazine Charlie Hebdo was the
target of the attack. But people want to say, not just them, us too. We are all
in this together. It is an expression of solidarity. People collectively
rejecting violence and seeking a better way. Solidarity is a powerful idea – it
was the name of the union movement in Poland that helped to bring down
communism. There is a sense in solidarity that humanity is more than the sum of
its parts, that together we can seek what we cannot achieve by ourselves.
That idea is not wrong, and it
is echoed in the scriptures. But the scriptures add the extra dimension that
solidarity needs: God, the creator and redeemer, in whom and by whom alone we
can achieve our created purpose. For instance, the idea of solidarity runs
through today’s gospel reading: John is baptising in the wilderness, and “people
from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out
to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins”.
The Greek does give the sense
of an enormous crowd: the whole population has come together for baptism,
confessing their sins. This is collective repentance, collective seeking after God.
Repentance means turning away from sin and towards the Lord. And all the people
do so in the expectation of grace, in the hope that God will raise them up and
give them new life.
John the Baptist tells them
that repentance by itself is but a beginning. Repentance prepares us to receive
the gift of new life, but it is God himself who must give it to us. So he says
of the Messiah who is to come: “I have baptized you with water; but he will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” He will pour out the gift of the God’s own
life upon those who repent.
But here there is something in
today’s reading that may seem a little strange. John has promised that the
Messiah will baptise believers with the Holy Spirit. But when Jesus comes to
the Jordan, it is he who gets baptised. He is baptised by John, with water, in
the river Jordan. And he is baptised with the Holy Spirit, as he sees the
heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.
So it is Jesus who receives the
baptism that John has said will be given to the people. Why is this? The answer
is in the idea of solidarity, of everyone being in this together. All the
people have come together seeking repentance and new life. But it is Jesus who
enters the water, Jesus who receives the promised Spirit. Jesus does so not as
an individual alone, but as the representative and head of all humanity. The
human race has a new beginning in Jesus. All who are baptised into Jesus are
made one with him in that new beginning. And all are made one with him in his
Divine life, for he is both God and man. Jesus is God’s solidarity with the
human race. So those who are baptised into Jesus, in him, have been baptised
with the promised Holy Spirit. The voice addressed to Jesus is now addressed to
the whole of humanity, as found in him: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you
I am well pleased”.
This voice from heaven speaks
to us not as separate individuals, but as part of a redeemed humanity made one
in Christ. This is why the alternative name for baptism is christening. The
Spirit says to all who are baptised, “You are Christ”. We are all made one in Christ
Jesus, one new humanity. Christ is the new Adam, but so, in him, are we.
The Creator Spirit is poured
out to save us from sin and death and to create us anew as beloved children of
God. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of this idea of human solidarity in
Christ:
Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood,
[Christ] himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he
might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free
those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death[1].
God’s solidarity with the human race, in Jesus, means
that he shares everything that it is to be human, including death, in order to
save us from death. And indeed the symbolism of baptism is that of death and
resurrection, as Jesus descends into the water to be raised up.
But that is not the only reference to the death of
Jesus in this passage. Heaven is “torn apart” as the spirit descends. Mark uses
the Greek word for “torn apart” only twice: here, and at the death of Jesus on
the cross, when he tells us that the “curtain of the temple was torn apart,
from top to bottom”[2].
The curtain in the temple hung in front of the holy of
holies, the empty space filled with the presence of God. In Hebrew this curtain
was called “the heaven”. It symbolized the cosmos, the visible creation
concealing the invisible presence of the Creator. So, in both places, at the
baptism of Jesus and at his death, the heaven is torn apart, the veil removed,
and the Creator Spirit is poured into the creation.
At his baptism Jesus commits himself to his calling as
Messiah, the new and representative human, God’s solidarity in person with the
whole human race. And on the cross, by his voluntary pouring out of himself
even to death, he fulfils that calling and his solidarity is complete.
The death of Jesus is a consequence of sin, and so it
unmasks the heart of our sin. It is an act of religious violence, murder
perpetrated by people who think that death is the ultimate reality, and who can
only conceive of God in those terms. This is the false imagination of God, the
fear of death, that has enslaved humanity from the beginning, as Hebrews says. But
by surrendering himself to death Jesus tears heaven apart and the Creator
Spirit is poured into creation to make all things new.
The Spirit is the true and living God in whom there is
no death, who does not deal in death, who does not want death. God is love and
light and life, and in him is no darkness at all. The first-fruits of that
outpouring of the Spirit is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, breaking
the power of sin. And, in him, all humanity now can be freed from sin and raised
to eternal life.
All this is both promised and already present when
Jesus comes to the Jordan and is baptized. In him, all humanity turns towards
the Lord in repentance. In him, all humanity is born again and receives the
Holy Spirit. And in him all humanity hears at last the true voice of our Father,
who loves us and wants us to live in him: “You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased”.
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