{"id":344,"date":"2019-01-16T17:06:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T17:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realisticliving.org\/blog\/?p=344"},"modified":"2019-01-16T17:07:50","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T17:07:50","slug":"deep-river-washing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realisticliving.org\/blog\/deep-river-washing\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep River Washing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month\u2019s Realistic Living Pointers contains excerpts from my commentary on the Gospel of Mark. It is about my understanding of the meaning to Mark of John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus.<\/p>\n

In these verses of Mark\u2019s narrative about a Jewish peasant from Nazareth named \u201cJesus\u201d rising<\/em><\/strong> from John\u2019s washing from the corruptions of that era of history is prelude to the disciples of Jesus rising<\/em><\/strong> from their own deep-water dying experienced when their mentor was crucified. Mark is going lead us from this resurrection in the life of Jesus to the resurrection of Jesus\u2019 life in the lives of the disciples.<\/p>\n

If you want the read this whole commentary on the Gospel of Mark, it is published on the Realistic Living blog site for a mere $10 plus your name, your address, and your e-mail address. Just put those four things in the mail to Gene Marshall, 3578 N. State Highway 78, Bonham, TX 7418, and I will e-mail you the password that allows you to download as many copies of this commentary as you want to use for yourself or in your local ministries.<\/p>\n

To see more clearly what this commentary contains, you can go to:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/realisticliving.org\/blog\/mark-commentary\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Following is an early part of that commentary:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For John came and began to baptize men in the desert, proclaiming baptism as the mark of a complete change of heart and of the forgiveness of sins. All the people of the Judaea countryside and everyone in Jerusalem went out to him in the desert and received his baptism in the river Jordan, publicly confessing their sins.<\/em><\/p>\n

John himself was dressed in camel-hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and he lived on locusts and wild honey. The burden of his preaching was, \u201cThere is someone coming after me who is stronger than I\u2014indeed I am not good enough to kneel down and undo his shoes. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.\u201d Mark: 1: 4-8 J. B Phillips translation.<\/em><\/p>\n

In these verses, Mark is indicating that the religious movement initiated by John, the Baptist is an important precursor to the topic of Mark\u2019s good news. Mark implies that Jesus identified deeply with the movement initiated by John, the Baptist. Many New Testament scholars believe that this was true of the historical Jesus\u2014that the man Jesus was not a Zealot or a Sadducee or a Pharisee or an Essene\u2014that Jesus chose the radical movement of John, the Baptist instead of these other options for communal association. Decades later, Mark still felt that John\u2019s movement was an important movement, as well as an important part of the story of Jesus. Mark does not give us any details of that movement or of Jesus\u2019 biography in relation to it. But Mark did feel the need to clarify something about John\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n

Mark clearly felt that the movement Jesus initiated needed to be distinguished from John\u2019s movement\u2014that the addition that Jesus made to John\u2019s movement was huge. John was a wild-hermit, eating and dressing like the ascetic Elijah, and calling people out to the edge of society to be washed of the evil that inflicted that entire wicked era of history. Individual people were volunteering for that washing, and John\u2019s movement was also an address to the whole society\u2014a critique of that society\u2019s departure from the Mosaic norm, indeed a departure from the authenticity of being human. The historical Jesus likely concurred with that radical critique. According to Mark, Jesus accepted John\u2019s warning that a radical historical judgement from Eternity of the entire human world was on the way, and would arrive soon.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, we can also identify with John\u2019s message, as we look realistically at our 21st century world order\u2014refusing to deal fully with our ecological challenges, drifting backward toward authoritarian governments, racism, sexism, bigotries of every type. We too may be open to being \u201cwashed of our era\u201d\u2014joining a deep repentance, renouncing the estranged state of things, and rising up from such a washing into a new attitude toward the whole of human history. Jesus joined John at the river Jordan.<\/p>\n

When have you wished to be washed of your era?<\/em><\/p>\n

When have you felt that the world\u2019s estrangements from realism were so great that a general catastrophe was surely on the way, and soon?<\/em><\/p>\n

Mark goes on to proclaim that Jesus will make a huge addition to the revolution launched by the remarkable John, the Baptist. This addition was so significant that John himself, according to Mark, knew that he, John, was not worthy to kneel down and undo the shoes of Jesus. John, Mark indicates, washed us of our evil era, but Jesus will wash us further with the hot fire of God\u2019s own Spirit. What does all that mean? We will have to wait and see as Mark\u2019s story moves along, but at this point we have Mark\u2019s hint that the event of Jesus is a remarkable coming of a very radical revolution in human understanding of what it means to be a human being<\/p>\n

It was in those days that Jesus arrived from the Galilean village of Nazareth and was baptized by John in the Jordan. All at once, as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open, and the Spirit coming down upon him like a dove. A voice came out of Heaven, saying, \u201cYou are my dearly-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!\u201d Mark: 1: 9-11 J. B Phillips <\/em><\/p>\n

Almost every phrase that Mark includes in his story has some sort of secret meanings. \u201cUp out the water\u201d can pass unnoticed if we do not associate this immersion with dying to the evil era. If we do see the allusion to dying, then \u201cup out of the water\u201d is an allusion to resurrection. In this story Jesus is becoming the resurrected one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heavens split open\u201d is an even more cryptic piece of poetry to a modern person who does not know what to make of the word \u201cheaven\u201d and certainly finds it very odd to speak of seeing \u201cthe heavens split open.\u201d Translating that phrase from its transcendence metaphorical imagination to an existential transparency type of poetry takes a bit of thoughtfulness. \u201cHeaven\u201d means the realm of Absolute Mystery, and Mark is picturing that dynamic as right above our heads. There is a sort of big punch bowl with stars on it and if that bowl were to split open we would see right into the Eternal heaven. I believe that Mark is thinking more metaphorically and less literally than that picture may sound. Seeing into the Eternal is the heart meaning of the text. As Jesus comes up out of the watery tomb in which John has dunked him, the punch bowl of Awesome Absolute Mystery splits open. What a story!<\/p>\n

Next, this profound-eyed person Mark sees another signal of profoundness: \u201cthe Spirit coming down upon him like a dove.\u201d Spirit, for Mark, is the Absolute Mystery itself manifesting as a state of our whole life sometimes called \u201cWonder\u201d or \u201cAwe.\u201d But for someone who has the courage for such a dreadful, fascinating state of Awe, this happening is a gentle thing, like a dove settling on head and shoulder.<\/p>\n

Finally, Mark gives us one more symbol for how this baptism was an outstanding event: \u201cA voice came out of Heaven, saying, \u2018You are my dearly-beloved Son.\u2018 \u201c We need not believe that a tape recorder would have heard this voice. Mark included this bit of poetic flair to complete his view of the significance of this baptism for this simple roof-repair man\u2019s son from the nowhere of Nazareth. And what does \u201cSon\u201d mean here? It means that Jesus is having a new birth, not of a father from Nazareth, but of a Spirit from Eternity. This is Mark\u2019s \u201cvirgin birth\u201d narrative. Mark is implying a virgin birth for Jesus, a birth sired from heaven that was now taking over Jesus\u2019 whole life from his biological birth in Nazareth.<\/p>\n

The Awed One (Jesus) is filled with Awe (Spirit) sourced from the Awesome (Eternal Mystery.) This whole secret Trinity of Divinity (Awesome, Awed One, Awe) is happening among us, to us, to humanity in these opening pages of Mark\u2019s story. For the rest of Mark\u2019s strange narrative, Jesus is the washed one, the resurrected one, the beloved of Reality one. Jesus is virgin born among us to lead us into our own virgin birth of profound humanness. For the rest of Mark\u2019s gospel we see in Jesus what this exemplar of resurrected humanity looks like\u2014walking, talking, calling, teaching, healing, feeding, eating, celebrating, living, suffering, dying. Women coming to honor him in his tomb find nothing there, except their own resurrection into Jesus-hood profoundness.<\/p>\n

So, what might this passage be saying to us today about the living of our own authentic lives and about the power of these Christian symbols for our own depth living? Perhaps we might give Christian symbols a second look. Perhaps we might view these long-preserved stories as being clues to our own most profound matters of living. Perhaps we might ask of Mark and other resurrected witnesses, what must we do to inherit this life abundant. Perhaps we are drawn to read further in Mark\u2019s story to see where our own particular healing is required in order to be washed of our own grim era\u2014washed in order for us to enter here and now into this communion of the saints, this Kingdom of God, this Reign of Reality, this commonwealth of profound realism of which Jesus speaks. Perhaps such an enigmatic interior baptism is our first step, our next step toward beginning a fresh walk with Jesus for the rest of our own life story.<\/p>\n

Mark clearly sees Jesus\u2019 baptism by John as a new birth in the consciousness of Jesus. If we were using Eastern language we might call it \u201cenlightenment.\u201d Using the language that Mark develops toward the end of his story, Jesus was experiencing in John\u2019s baptism a death and a resurrection to profound humanness\u2014to his spirit depth, to his authenticity in this ordinary human body..<\/p>\n

The ordinary human ego of Jesus was not destroyed, but that ego ceased to be the identity of this person. Jesus was dead to the evils of his era to the extent that there was nothing left to his identity except his essential authenticity, his profound humanness that was created by Final Reality from the dawn of time. Jesus in this story is a symbol for that profound humanness that the Creator of everything gives to humans before their fall into their estrangements from Reality. Jesus is the \u201cOffspring of God,\u201d the new humanity\u2014a humanity that Jesus\u2019 healings are going to call forth in others. Perhaps in you. Perhaps in me.<\/p>\n

To say all these extreme things about Jesus, at the very beginning of his narrative, means that Mark views Jesus as a human being who has already died to estrangement and been raised up to authentic life. As we will see, Jesus is not intimidated by the entire Roman world or by Israel’s hypocritical religious establishments of compromise, flight, or furious hatred toward it all. Jesus is not intimidated by the prospect of living such a profound life or dying such a profound life at the hands of those he servers.<\/p>\n

Matthew and Luke expand on this topic of Jesus being an \u201cOffspring of Final Reality\u201d with stories about Jesus\u2019 virgin birth. John\u2019s gospel also talks about a second birth that is available to all of us who embrace Jesus\u2019s message. But at this point in Mark\u2019s gospel the meaning of this divine birthing is only hinted\u2014it is still a secret that something very special has appeared in Jesus. In coming chapters we are going to watch what happens as this person lives out such profound humanity in real-world social engagement. We are going to see someone who lives the authentic life unto death.<\/p>\n

According to the scholarship of Rudolf Bultmann, what baptism came to mean in the early church was threefold: (1) washed of the era of \u201csin,\u201d (2) sealed within the body of Christ, and (3) filled with the Holy Spirit. All three of these meanings are descriptions of an event of rebirth\u2014drowning our estrangements to death, opening us to our profound authenticity, and facing our future in this \u201cSpirit of Wholeness.\u201d<\/p>\n

What experiences in your life seem to correspond with such a profound rebirth?<\/em><\/p>\n