Baptism Of The Lord; Epiphany 1
Preaching
Preaching Mark's Gospel
A Narrative Approach
We will focus our attention here on verses 9-11. In his Mark and A Master of Surprise Donald Juel sees the tearing open of the heavens in v. 10 as one of the keys to the entire book of Mark. Before turning to his insights on v. 10 we'll look briefly at the other verses in this short segment in Mark's Gospel. Mark tells us that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee. We pointed out in chapter 1 that Galilee is a crucial geographical aspect of the structure of Mark. Chapters 1-10 of this Gospel take place in Galilee, chapters 11-16 in Jerusalem.
The voice from heaven is also an important key to Mark's narrative. We will hear this voice speaking forth the same words in the Transfiguration story in Mark 9:2-8. (See especially v. 7.) In each place Jesus is designated as the beloved son of God. These words are probably an allusion to Psalm 2:7 in the Hebrew Bible. This is a Royal Psalm in which God speaks to his "anointed" as a "son." The people of Israel in the first century probably regarded this Psalm as a kind of prophecy of David's son who would arise to save Israel. When a voice from heaven speaks to Jesus saying these words, the meaning for first century Jews was locked in to their understanding of this Psalm. Psalm 2 and Mark 1 are in conversation with each other.
The words "with you I am well pleased" seem to be an allusion to Isaiah 42:1: "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations." The narrative analogy here would lead us to believe that Jesus is to be seen, therefore, as the One who brings justice to the world.
Juel suggests that there might also be a reference in these verses to the "beloved son" whom Abraham was asked to sacrifice on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:1-18). This old story of Abraham and Isaac was central to Jewish identity. The original hearers of these words might have already begun to think that as "Beloved Son" this Jesus was also destined to be offered up1 (cf. Romans 8:32). Christian identity is to be bound up with a sacrifice that God, finally, could not ask Abraham to make but which God did make with God's own son!
It would not be difficult in a sermon, therefore, to tell one or more of the stories from the Hebrew Bible which are allusions to the words of the voice from heaven. Such a sermon could proceed to lay out the nature of Jesus' ministry in Mark's Gospel as the "beloved son" who is the Christ, who is the Son of God (see also Mark 1:1; 9:7; 15:39), who seeks to bring justice to the nations as he gives his life as a ransom for many (10:45).
What is ironic about the appearance of this beloved son is its setting. Jesus shows up to inaugurate his ministry in the wilderness among sinners who are being called to repent of their sins. Jesus seems to be in the wrong place with the wrong people. This is not the last time that Mark uses such irony to underscore an important reality concerning this Son of God.
And now to the rending of the heavens. Matthew and Luke use a Greek word for the rending of the heavens which means that the heavens were "opened." The Greek word that Mark uses, however, is more like a radical schism, a tearing open, a dynamic and final rending. This rending creates an interesting structure in Mark's Gospel. Here the heavens are opened and the spirit descends upon Jesus. At the end of the story Jesus breathes his last (that is, he gives up his spirit) and the curtain of the temple is schismed, ripped in two from the top to the bottom. In the very next verse the centurion makes his confession: "Truly this man was God's Son!" (Mark 15:37-39). (See also Hebrews 10:19-25.)
Juel gives his most expanded analysis of this "tearing open" in Chapter 3 of his A Master of Surprise. He maintains that these parallel passages in Mark 1:9-11 and 15:37-39 form an inclusion: a pattern that begins with Jesus' baptism and ends with his death. Juel interprets this tearing open as God breaking down the protective barriers between the divine and the human. God is no longer to be confined to some safe sacred space. God is now loose and at work in the world of common humanity.
Mark's narrative is about the intrusion of God into a world that has become alien territory „ an intrusion that means both death and life. That the author allows such associations suggests that something holds the story together, but that little explicit help will be given in making the connections. Reading will require imagination and involvement ƒ .2
There is, perhaps, a third story of schism and tearing open told in Mark 14:3-8. An unnamed woman breaks open an alabaster jar of ointment and pours it over Jesus' head. It may be true of this passage also that barriers between the divine and the human are broken down. The unnamed woman performs a prophetic action which anoints this human one, Jesus, as God's divinely sent Messiah. Truly God is no longer to be confined to some safe sacred place. The entire system of holy management of divine realties is being ripped apart. God is loose in this world, and this woman knows it! She even senses that Jesus' death, for which she anoints his body beforehand, is the fulfillment of his ministry. This is precisely the point that the disciples, in the story told by Mark, can never figure out.
The theme that Juel develops for understanding the rending of the
heavens and the temple curtain is that of transgressing boundaries. Mark's opening chapters are filled with ritual imagery that deals largely with matters of purity. In his first public act, Jesus is confronted by an unclean spirit in a holy place (1:21-28). Jesus drives the spirit out, yet in doing so he initiates a ministry in which he will himself violate ritual boundaries. He acts with unprecedented authority, not like the scribes (1:22, 27). In the scenes that follow Jesus touches a leper (1:40-45), eats with the unwashed (2:15-17), heals on the Sabbath (3:1-6), even justifies his disciples' plucking grain on the Sabbath (2:23-28). And in his declaration to the paralytic „ "Your sins are forgiven" (2:5) „ he violates perhaps the most important boundary of all, the one separating God from the created order.3
In his forgiving of sinners Jesus had transgressed the boundary between what God can do and what humans can do. For this he is charged with blasphemy by the bystanding scribes (2:7). That's how the story opens and that's how the story ends. Before the high priest and all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes, Jesus was charged with blasphemy (14:53-65, note v. 64). God was loose in the world. Religious boundaries were being shattered. Surely the One who does such things, the One accused of blasphemy, must die. And so he did. The story, however, does not end with his death. The story ends with the women at the tomb. And a young man said: "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here" (Mark 16:6). Risen indeed! The bands of death have been torn and Jesus is loose in the world once again!
Homiletical Directions
It has already been indicated above that biblical stories on the Son of God motif in Mark would be one way to move with this text. The living center could work at making the proclamation of God to Jesus become a proclamation of Jesus to us. Stories from the Hebrew Bible and from Mark can set up God's proclamatory word: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11). A transition needs to be made so that these words of God to Jesus can be heard as Jesus' word to us. It ought not be difficult, for example, to hear this word as a word addressed to all of us in our baptism! In and through the event of our baptism God has addressed us. "You are my children. I am pleased with you." God in Jesus Christ says this very same word to us today!
Let me sketch in a bit broader detail a possible way to treat the schism-in-the-heavens reality so important to Juel. Story One can be the story of the text, focusing attention on the tearing open of the heavens and establishing the reality that God is now loose in the world of common humanity. To show the importance of this story in Mark it would be well to tell the Mark 15:37-39 story here as well. You may wish to close this theme of God loose in the world with the story of the resurrection in Mark 16. At any rate, the thrust of this story or stories would be to catch the sense of God at work among us.
Story Two would deal with the reality that the God who is loose in Jesus is a God who breaks down barriers and transgresses boundaries. That is true already in v.10 as God shatters the boundary that separates the divine and the human. Several stories that follow in Mark can be used to develop this motif. In two stories (1:21-28 and 1:40-45) Jesus breaks down the barrier between the clean and the unclean. In 2:1-11 Jesus breaks down the barrier between sinners and God. Several other stories that fit this theme have been alluded to above. We should probably not omit from the breaking of barriers motif the reality that Jesus also breaks down the barrier between death and life.
Story Three might be the story of the unnamed woman. This, too, is a boundary-breaking story. Our focus might be on the death and life boundary. The woman anoints Jesus for death. Death will be the last step on Jesus' journey to resurrection and the giving of new life. God's Kingdom has come indeed!
The living center of proclamation in the telling of these stories would be a word from Jesus.
"I am God loose in the world. I have come to break down the barriers that separate you from God. I have come to break down the uncleanness that separates you from God. You are clean!" (Mark 1:21-28).
"I have come to break down the diseases which separate you from God. You are whole!" (Mark 1:32-34, 40-45).
"I have come to break down the power of the sins that cut you off from your Creator. Your sins are forgiven" (Mark 2:1-12).
"I have come to break down the power of death that has had the ultimate power to separate you from God. I give you life forever" (Mark 16:1-8).
These proclamatory words can be spoken one at a time as you tell the relevant stories. Or you can save them until the end. Or you can both say the single lines with the appropriate story and put them all together in a summarizing climax.
____________
1. Donald Juel, Mark (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990), pp. 35-36.
2. Donald Juel, A Master of Surprise (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 36.
3. Ibid., p. 40.
The voice from heaven is also an important key to Mark's narrative. We will hear this voice speaking forth the same words in the Transfiguration story in Mark 9:2-8. (See especially v. 7.) In each place Jesus is designated as the beloved son of God. These words are probably an allusion to Psalm 2:7 in the Hebrew Bible. This is a Royal Psalm in which God speaks to his "anointed" as a "son." The people of Israel in the first century probably regarded this Psalm as a kind of prophecy of David's son who would arise to save Israel. When a voice from heaven speaks to Jesus saying these words, the meaning for first century Jews was locked in to their understanding of this Psalm. Psalm 2 and Mark 1 are in conversation with each other.
The words "with you I am well pleased" seem to be an allusion to Isaiah 42:1: "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations." The narrative analogy here would lead us to believe that Jesus is to be seen, therefore, as the One who brings justice to the world.
Juel suggests that there might also be a reference in these verses to the "beloved son" whom Abraham was asked to sacrifice on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:1-18). This old story of Abraham and Isaac was central to Jewish identity. The original hearers of these words might have already begun to think that as "Beloved Son" this Jesus was also destined to be offered up1 (cf. Romans 8:32). Christian identity is to be bound up with a sacrifice that God, finally, could not ask Abraham to make but which God did make with God's own son!
It would not be difficult in a sermon, therefore, to tell one or more of the stories from the Hebrew Bible which are allusions to the words of the voice from heaven. Such a sermon could proceed to lay out the nature of Jesus' ministry in Mark's Gospel as the "beloved son" who is the Christ, who is the Son of God (see also Mark 1:1; 9:7; 15:39), who seeks to bring justice to the nations as he gives his life as a ransom for many (10:45).
What is ironic about the appearance of this beloved son is its setting. Jesus shows up to inaugurate his ministry in the wilderness among sinners who are being called to repent of their sins. Jesus seems to be in the wrong place with the wrong people. This is not the last time that Mark uses such irony to underscore an important reality concerning this Son of God.
And now to the rending of the heavens. Matthew and Luke use a Greek word for the rending of the heavens which means that the heavens were "opened." The Greek word that Mark uses, however, is more like a radical schism, a tearing open, a dynamic and final rending. This rending creates an interesting structure in Mark's Gospel. Here the heavens are opened and the spirit descends upon Jesus. At the end of the story Jesus breathes his last (that is, he gives up his spirit) and the curtain of the temple is schismed, ripped in two from the top to the bottom. In the very next verse the centurion makes his confession: "Truly this man was God's Son!" (Mark 15:37-39). (See also Hebrews 10:19-25.)
Juel gives his most expanded analysis of this "tearing open" in Chapter 3 of his A Master of Surprise. He maintains that these parallel passages in Mark 1:9-11 and 15:37-39 form an inclusion: a pattern that begins with Jesus' baptism and ends with his death. Juel interprets this tearing open as God breaking down the protective barriers between the divine and the human. God is no longer to be confined to some safe sacred space. God is now loose and at work in the world of common humanity.
Mark's narrative is about the intrusion of God into a world that has become alien territory „ an intrusion that means both death and life. That the author allows such associations suggests that something holds the story together, but that little explicit help will be given in making the connections. Reading will require imagination and involvement ƒ .2
There is, perhaps, a third story of schism and tearing open told in Mark 14:3-8. An unnamed woman breaks open an alabaster jar of ointment and pours it over Jesus' head. It may be true of this passage also that barriers between the divine and the human are broken down. The unnamed woman performs a prophetic action which anoints this human one, Jesus, as God's divinely sent Messiah. Truly God is no longer to be confined to some safe sacred place. The entire system of holy management of divine realties is being ripped apart. God is loose in this world, and this woman knows it! She even senses that Jesus' death, for which she anoints his body beforehand, is the fulfillment of his ministry. This is precisely the point that the disciples, in the story told by Mark, can never figure out.
The theme that Juel develops for understanding the rending of the
heavens and the temple curtain is that of transgressing boundaries. Mark's opening chapters are filled with ritual imagery that deals largely with matters of purity. In his first public act, Jesus is confronted by an unclean spirit in a holy place (1:21-28). Jesus drives the spirit out, yet in doing so he initiates a ministry in which he will himself violate ritual boundaries. He acts with unprecedented authority, not like the scribes (1:22, 27). In the scenes that follow Jesus touches a leper (1:40-45), eats with the unwashed (2:15-17), heals on the Sabbath (3:1-6), even justifies his disciples' plucking grain on the Sabbath (2:23-28). And in his declaration to the paralytic „ "Your sins are forgiven" (2:5) „ he violates perhaps the most important boundary of all, the one separating God from the created order.3
In his forgiving of sinners Jesus had transgressed the boundary between what God can do and what humans can do. For this he is charged with blasphemy by the bystanding scribes (2:7). That's how the story opens and that's how the story ends. Before the high priest and all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes, Jesus was charged with blasphemy (14:53-65, note v. 64). God was loose in the world. Religious boundaries were being shattered. Surely the One who does such things, the One accused of blasphemy, must die. And so he did. The story, however, does not end with his death. The story ends with the women at the tomb. And a young man said: "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here" (Mark 16:6). Risen indeed! The bands of death have been torn and Jesus is loose in the world once again!
Homiletical Directions
It has already been indicated above that biblical stories on the Son of God motif in Mark would be one way to move with this text. The living center could work at making the proclamation of God to Jesus become a proclamation of Jesus to us. Stories from the Hebrew Bible and from Mark can set up God's proclamatory word: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11). A transition needs to be made so that these words of God to Jesus can be heard as Jesus' word to us. It ought not be difficult, for example, to hear this word as a word addressed to all of us in our baptism! In and through the event of our baptism God has addressed us. "You are my children. I am pleased with you." God in Jesus Christ says this very same word to us today!
Let me sketch in a bit broader detail a possible way to treat the schism-in-the-heavens reality so important to Juel. Story One can be the story of the text, focusing attention on the tearing open of the heavens and establishing the reality that God is now loose in the world of common humanity. To show the importance of this story in Mark it would be well to tell the Mark 15:37-39 story here as well. You may wish to close this theme of God loose in the world with the story of the resurrection in Mark 16. At any rate, the thrust of this story or stories would be to catch the sense of God at work among us.
Story Two would deal with the reality that the God who is loose in Jesus is a God who breaks down barriers and transgresses boundaries. That is true already in v.10 as God shatters the boundary that separates the divine and the human. Several stories that follow in Mark can be used to develop this motif. In two stories (1:21-28 and 1:40-45) Jesus breaks down the barrier between the clean and the unclean. In 2:1-11 Jesus breaks down the barrier between sinners and God. Several other stories that fit this theme have been alluded to above. We should probably not omit from the breaking of barriers motif the reality that Jesus also breaks down the barrier between death and life.
Story Three might be the story of the unnamed woman. This, too, is a boundary-breaking story. Our focus might be on the death and life boundary. The woman anoints Jesus for death. Death will be the last step on Jesus' journey to resurrection and the giving of new life. God's Kingdom has come indeed!
The living center of proclamation in the telling of these stories would be a word from Jesus.
"I am God loose in the world. I have come to break down the barriers that separate you from God. I have come to break down the uncleanness that separates you from God. You are clean!" (Mark 1:21-28).
"I have come to break down the diseases which separate you from God. You are whole!" (Mark 1:32-34, 40-45).
"I have come to break down the power of the sins that cut you off from your Creator. Your sins are forgiven" (Mark 2:1-12).
"I have come to break down the power of death that has had the ultimate power to separate you from God. I give you life forever" (Mark 16:1-8).
These proclamatory words can be spoken one at a time as you tell the relevant stories. Or you can save them until the end. Or you can both say the single lines with the appropriate story and put them all together in a summarizing climax.
____________
1. Donald Juel, Mark (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990), pp. 35-36.
2. Donald Juel, A Master of Surprise (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 36.
3. Ibid., p. 40.
