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December 29, 2007
Teaching on Mark 1:1-11
Our pastor, Rob Stiles, wants each of us to develop the gifts we have which can advance God's kingdom. This morning we'll find out if I have a gift of teaching. Teaching is different from preaching; preaching touches your heart as well as your mind, and has practical application in daily life. Teaching transmits information, hopefully information you're glad to have.
My goal this morning is to help you read the New Testament with greater insight and understanding. You need to decide, and give feedback, on whether the information is something you're glad to get, and whether this sort of teaching is something you want to hear on Sunday morning, once every three or four months.
My text is Mark 1:1-11 with a focus on the titles of Jesus. Quotations are from the RSV.
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
"Behold I send my messenger before thy face.
who shall prepare the way,
the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight"
John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and ate locusts and wild honey.
And he preached, saying, "After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.
I have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
And when he came out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending on him like a dove,
and a voice came from heaven, "This is my beloved son; with thee I am well pleased."
If you look at the first verse it appears utterly straightforward. I could introduce myself, "I am Rob Craig, son of John Craig." The verse introduces a book about Jesus Christ, son of God. But there is more going on. Consider that the name "Jesus" was chosen by God and communicated by an angel to the purported father, Joseph, in the gospel of Matthew, and to the mother, Mary, in Luke:
But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit;
and she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Matt 1:21-22
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus
Luke 1:31
Jesus is English for Yeshua, a Hebrew first name which means "savior". It was not unusual to have a boy with the name Yeshua because that was the name by which Jews in Jesus' day referred to Joshua, the successor to Moses who led the Israelites in their conquest of the promised land. The name Jesus was not an oddity but it did have a specific meaning.
Both Jesus and Joshua come from transliteration, a process where you try to preserve the sound of a word in one language when you take it to a second language. Joshua is a fairly obvious transliteration from Hebrew to English. It was more difficult to take Yeshua from Hebrew to Greek. Greek did not have the "ye" sound or the "sh" sound, and they would never have a man's name end in "a". So they came up with something like "hay-soos" (phonetic approximation). My apologies to Greek scholars.
The Joshua who led Israelites conquering the promised land is referred to twice in the New Testament, and both times the Greek name is the same as Jesus (of Nazareth). That was how Joshua was referred to at the time. But originally Joshua had a name meaning "Yahweh saves" with more letters. It was shortened to the Hebrew word meaning savior over the centuries.
Back to our introductory verse:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
Christ looks like a last name. But we have a clue something more is going on because in the New Testament we will find various references to "Jesus the Christ", "Christ Jesus", and "the Christ". Christ is English for christos (a transliteration) which is a Greek word for anointed one (a translation). The Hebrew for anointed one is something like messiach, from which we get the English word messiah.
In the Old Testament people were anointed for major life tasks in service to God. Anointing means pouring oil on the head. Synonyms for the significance of anointing someone, if not the physical act, are "consecrated" or "ordained". In Exodus 28:41 Moses anoints the priests. In 1 Samuel 10:1 Samuel the prophet anoints Saul as king of Israel, then in 16:10-13 he anoints David as king. In 1 Kings 19:16 Elijah anoints Elisha as his successor prophet. In Isaiah 45:1 Cyrus, the Persian emperor, is referred to as "his [God's] anointed" for the task of freeing the Jews from Babylonian captivity. The reference is figurative; Cyrus did not actually have a Hebrew priest or prophet pour oil on him, but he did accomplish a purpose God had for him.
In Jesus' time "anointed one" had more significance than merely indicating a priest had been ordained, or a king had been crowned. After the Old Testament canon was closed, and no more inspired scriptures were being written, Jewish theology continued to develop. Over the several centuries there were numerous books written. Some can be found today in a Catholic bible, in the section called Apocryphal / Deutercanonical Books, however that is a limited selection. These books are not scripture but they, along with numerous other books, give a lot of background on what religious Jews were thinking about in Jesus' day.
They were thinking about the problem of evil. You and I are troubled over bad things happening to good people. God is all powerful, all knowing, and God is love. How can He allow a child to die at birth, or a person to be cut down by cancer in the prime of life? How can he allow a good parent to be killed in an auto accident, when there are small children to raise?
The Jews were thinking about the problem of evil in a collective sense; why did God allow what had happened to Israel? They were the chosen people and they had received many great promises, yet they had been conquered and taken into exile by Babylon, then ruled over by a succession of foreign conquerors - Persian, Greek and now Roman. Why did God allow this?
The Jews' answer was to look at things from the perspective of history, over time. Yes, evil was dominant in today's world, and God even allowed it in order for evil to be fully exposed, but the day was coming when God would intervene in history with great power. There would be judgment and punishment for evil, and God's will and God's people would triumph. The exact manner and time of this event was debated, but all expected "the day of the Lord" to come.
Who was anointed for that task? Perhaps a descendant of King David would revive the monarchy and lead Israeli armies to victory. Perhaps a prophet like Moses would lead the people to victory. Perhaps God would send a powerful leader directly from heaven, or He would anoint someone unanticipated for the great task. However it was accomplished there would be - on this earth - great battles, military and political triumph for the people of God, judgment and destruction to their enemies.
The anointed one, the christ, the messiah, was the shorthand reference to this great leader who would be God's chosen agent to accomplish His great and terrible purposes.
For Mark, in his gospel, to describe Jesus as the anointed one, was a major theological assertion. You can imagine the incongruity between the image of a triumphant, victorious military and political leader of popular imagination and Jesus' actual ministry. Jesus did come to fight a great campaign, but it is primarily a spiritual battle, rather than military and political. Rather than a bloody landscape, the battleground is primarily in people's hearts and minds, and in their daily lives.
Because of the political overtones, "christ" or "messiah" was a dangerous term to use, a dangerous claim to make, and in fact highly prone to misinterpretation. Through most of his ministry Jesus is very reluctant to use the term Christ in reference to himself.
Let's look again at Mark 1:1 for our third title:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
God placed Israel geographically between the two great military and cultural powers of the ancient world, Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Egypt they revered the king (Pharaoh) as a god. In Mesopotamia they though of people as slaves of the gods, with the king being some sort of servant with supervisory powers. Israel was receptive to an intermediate concept of the king, as a son of God. Take a look at the prophet Nathan, pronouncing God's promises to David:
... Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom .... I will establish his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he shall be my son... your throne shall be established forever ... 2 Sam 7:11-14, 16
So the descendants of David who ascended to the throne could be referred to as sons of God, although no one considered them to be divine. They were still human. Consider Psalm 2 which scholars believe records part of the coronation ceremony for a new king. Both a narrator priest and the new king speak, and both in part of their speech quote God:
Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
"Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us."
He who sits in the heavens laughs, and the Lord has them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying,
"I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill."
I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, "You are my son, today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.
You will break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."
Now therefor, o kings, be wise; be warned o rulers of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear, with trembling, kiss his feet, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed be all who take refuge in him.
On the day of coronation a new Jewish king became a son of God. It was a title, not an assertion that the guy suddenly became very holy. In Matthew and Luke there are birth narratives making it clear that Jesus was the son of God; the Holy Spirit made Mary pregnant. We do not have that in Mark. Furthermore the gospel of Mark is about Jesus' authority. I submit that Mark intends for his readers to understand the title "son of God" as a reference first and foremost to Jesus' kingship.
The fourth title to discuss comes from John the Baptist's direct quote:
After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie,
I have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit
Mark 1:7-8
The Jewish expectation that God would intervene in history with great power had a number of phrases attached to it; "the day of the Lord", "the anointed one", "the coming one" or "he who comes" are a partial list. The latter phrase appears expressly in the gospel of John, quoting John the baptist:
I baptize with water, but among you stands one whom you do not know, even he who comes after me... John 1:26-27
The coming one / he who comes serves to reinforce the sense of expectation associated with the title "anointed one."
I need to step away from talking about titles for a moment to better understand John the Baptist's ministry. In Mark 1's opening quotation from the Old Testament, verse 3 is from Isaiah 40, but the quoted portion in verse 2 is from Malachi 3:1
Behold I send my messenger to prepare the way before me...
The continuation of this quotation tells us more.
and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple;
the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
But who can endure the day of his coming? and who can stand when he appears?
for he is like a refiner's fire and a fuller's soap...
Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. It is also worth noting the next to last verse in the book, Mal 4:5
Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes
So the messenger sent from God, John the Baptist, was to usher in a day few could endure, which would be like refiner's fire. Listen to John the Baptist quoted in Matthew 3:10-12
Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
John, the prophet of God, was preaching a message slightly different from the conventional wisdom. Like the majority, he expected God to intervene powerfully in history, but unlike most he saw an intervention that emphasized punishing the immoral and people who rejected God, whether Jew or gentile, and gathering the good to Himself.
The people coming to be baptized were scared. God's intervention in history was immanent, and it would be a terrible event for anyone not in God's good graces. People wanted to "get right with God." John was giving classic "fire and brimstone" sermons and the people felt fear and awe. They rushed to repent and be baptized, as an outward demonstration of inner cleansing - so that they would not be consumed when everyone was baptized "with the Holy Spirit and with fire."
The coming one was a title primarily used by John the Baptist. Evidently John avoided using "messiah" because he sensed that God's coming intervention in history would be more spiritual than political or military. He was allowed to see more into God's plan than most anyone else, but he still only got part of the picture.
Mark 1:9-11 immediately follows the description of John's ministry, making it clear that Jesus was the coming one.
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove,
and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved son, with thee I am well pleased."
What a contrast! The Holy Spirit comes, not with refiner's fire, but like a dove. This sets up a major theme or motif in the gospel of Mark; Jesus has great authority and he is God's agent intervening in history to establish the kingdom, but his kingdom and his authority are very different from what was expected, and he struggles throughout his ministry with his disciples' and the people's lack of understanding.
Note especially the similarity between the Spirit descending like a dove and the act of anointing, the pouring of oil on the head. Jesus is indeed the anointed one, the Christ, the messiah - anointed by God with the Spirit!
Posted by rob at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)