Standing Under the Scriptures
January 18, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

1 Samuel 3.1-18: The boy Samuel’s ears are opened to the Lord’s dire message for Eli, which Eli accepts.

John 1.43-51: Jesus calls Philip and Nathaniel to the realization of Israel’s tradition’s promise.

Last Sunday both our readings were about beginnings: the beginning of the world (Genesis 1.1-5) and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Mark 1.1-11). In both beginnings what was to come could be discerned as implicit, namely God’s covenant with humanity and its fulfilment in Jesus Christ.

Our Genesis passage might be described as dealing with the beginning of all beginnings, and so it does ontologically. Historically, though, the story’s point of departure is to be seen in the Hebrews’ deliverance from Pharaoh’s pursuing army at the Red Sea (Hebrew: Sea of Reeds) and their perception of this as by the hand of the Lord rather than by any human agency. The Song of Miriam (Exodus 15.21), which responds to it, is generally regarded as the oldest element of the Bible.

Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.
The horse and his rider he has cast into the sea.

As for Genesis, its composition is usually placed relatively late, as after the exile to Babylon. It arose out of a need to account for how the Israelites got to Egypt and, prior to that, how they and the world itself came into being in the first place. This is a mind-boggling assignment; how after all would one go about it? The approach the biblical writers were led to was to draw on creation myths of surrounding peoples, notably the Babylonians. But they did this with a decisive difference, not derived from elsewhere. This is that their account portrayed God as creating the world not out of some pre-existing material but instead ex nihilo, out of nothing. And the implications of creatio ex nihilo are profound. For it means that instead of being constrained in some fashion, God’s act of creation was out of his freedom and decision rather than any necessity, out of an overflowing of his being rather than any lack within himself. This means in turn that he was fully invested in his creation, that he was going to watch over it, maintain it, and redeem it. To these ends a covenant was the appropriate instrument. Thus it is legitimate to see, as Barth in his Church Dogmatics does, the covenant as already implicit in the act of creation.

To be sure, verse 2 speaks not only of a formless void but also of darkness and waters, likewise not parts of God’s creation. But these may be taken as forces of non-being, if such a concept can be spoken of, against which God’s creation stands. Consonant with this, God’s first command is, “Let there be light.” And then he separates the light from the darkness, calling the one day and the other night. Herein he institutes time. And by these acts he imposes order on existence, the bulwark against non-being and chaos. Later on (verse 9), in gathering the waters into one place so that the dry land can emerge, he does similarly. And already he has called the light good, thereby signaling the goodness of all creation. But the forces of non-being, with which evil as the absence of good may be equated, though restrained are not eliminated. Thus they remain finally to be dealt with.

This final dealing is the subject of Mark’s whole Gospel. As for our particular passage, it also is concerned with a fundamental beginning, namely that of Jesus’ ministry, as previously noted. At the same time it pioneers a unique literary genre: Gospel, the story of God’s taking human form and entering into human history. The consensus is that Mark’s was the first to be written down, that Matthew’s, Luke’s and especially John’s were later. As for what prompted the writing of Mark’s Gospel, I have a theory. It was the persecution of Christians in Rome, where Mark was probably written, by the Emperor Nero in 64. In that year much of Rome was destroyed by fire. And Nero, to divert blame from himself, rounded up a number of Christians and had them killed, several by public burning. St. Peter is said to have perished at that time. This dire event would have impressed the survivors with the need to record the traditions they had about Jesus’ ministry, instead of relying on their oral preservation as before.

And Mark, in undertaking the task, faced the question of how to begin: how after all does one convey the coming of God into the human condition? Matthew and Luke do this through their infancy narratives. Mark did it instead through showing Jesus to have been anticipated by John the Baptist, who himself was anticipated by Old Testament prophets, specifically Malachi and Isaiah.

“Behold, I send my messenger before thy face…. “ (Malachi 3.1)

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness… “ (Isaiah 40.3)

John in turn anticipates Jesus, “he who is mightier than I… he will baptize you with Holy Spirit..” John himself has been carrying on a ministry of water baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Then Jesus comes on the scene, without attribution other than “from Nazareth of Galilee,” and is baptized by John. Finally in our passage, as Jesus emerges from the water he sees the heavens torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. With this a voice from heaven declares, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

There are three elements in these last verses (9-11) to be remarked on. Firstly, there is the abruptness of Jesus’ appearance. The genre here is somewhat that of a play, in which characters come on stage without introduction. Only as the play proceeds are we able to determine who they are and what they are up to. Thus Mark’s Gospel has an especially dramatic quality. Secondly there is the baptism of Jesus by John. With regard to this, a question of some seriousness arises. Why should Jesus, in his sinlessness, undergo John’s baptism for the forgiveness of sins? The customary answer is that Jesus thereby established baptism as a sacrament, to be undergone by his followers. And, with the Eucharist, it is one of the two sacraments recognized in Anglicanism. But there is more to be said about it than this, I believe. Harking back to our Genesis passage, water can be not only to be the agent of cleansing. As well it can represent the forces of non-being with which we in our humanity must contend. And here Jesus, instead of standing aloof from them, enters into them, in total immersion. In Karl Barth’s recurring symbolism, he goes with the Prodigal all the way into the Far Country. The third element is the descent of the Spirit and the voice from heaven. This confirms that it is really God who is involved here, not just some human representative but God himself in the person of his Son.

So even in these few verses we have the germ of what is to come, in Mark’s and in the other Gospels.: Through what later became known as the hypostatic union, the union of the human and the divine in Christ, God enters into our condition and into the contest with the forces of evil by which we have been overcome. And he allows himself to be overcome by them, in his death on the cross. But in his rising from the dead he in fact overcomes them, thereby overcoming them for us. And our Genesis passage has already set the stage for this, in the separating of the forces of non-being from God’s creation but not their final overcoming. This final overcoming may be seen, however, as implicit in the covenant which creation itself implies. For all of this we may say, as did the early Christians even under persecution, Deo gratias, thanks be to God.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted