A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
11.00am, 31st December 2023
Mark
1.1-8
A Labour Party spin doctor infamously remarked,
on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001,
that that day was a ‘very good day’ to bury ‘bad news’.[1]
on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001,
that that day was a ‘very good day’ to bury ‘bad news’.[1]
Whilst she was, with some justification,
vilified
by the press at the time,
I think that in many ways her reaction to news
management in the wake of tragedy
was
the product of a far wider and longstanding culture of cynicism and opportunism
in
the world of news, media, spin, and propaganda.
The
question of ‘good news days’, and ‘bad news days’,
and indeed of ‘good news’ and ‘bad
news’
is
not a straightforward question
of the moral difference between
‘good’ and ‘bad’.
The
thing is, a ‘good-news’ story, is rarely a good ‘news-story’.
Stories of ‘good news’ are often
confined to the final item on the local news,
and typically take the
‘lost puppy found’ style.
It
is very rare for the headline news, to be ‘good news’,
rather, the stories we want to hear
are stories of tragedy and trauma,
of wars and rumours of
wars,
stories of money, power,
and politics.
These
are the good ‘news-stories’,
and they are rarely ‘good news’.
On
the rare occasion that a headlining story is
presented as ‘good news’,
the cynic in me is always looking beneath
the surface of the story
for the spin, the propaganda, the
vested interest.
So
what is going on here at the beginning of Mark’s gospel
where the coming of Jesus is
descried as ‘good news’?
We’ve
just had Christmas, where the birth of Jesus
as described in Matthew and Luke’s
gospels
is presented as ‘glad tidings’ for
the world,
and
now Mark is calling his advent ‘Good news’ for the world?
Human
births don’t often get this kind of publicity…
with the occasional notable
exception,
such as the announcement of yet another
royal baby.
Whilst
the news of human baby is always good
news in and of itself,
a royal baby is only headline good news
because of the power, wealth, and
privilege of the family
that the child will be born into.
And
it was ever thus.
In
the Roman world, the official announcement of the birth of a royal child
was trumpeted throughout the empire
as, you guessed it, ‘good news!!’
The
Roman propaganda machine would go into overdrive,
to eulogise the emperor as the
‘divine man’
and the birth of their child as the
birth of a god.
There
is an ancient inscription, which reads,
‘The birthday of the god was, for
the world,
the beginning of the joyful messages
which have gone forth
because of him.’
‘Glad
tidings of comfort and joy’, indeed.
The
birth of an emperor’s god-child was ‘good news’ for the empire,
because it ensured the perpetuation
of the royal dynasty.
And
so we come to the first verse of Mark’s gospel,
written to a culture familiar with
the carefully managed ‘good news’
of the emperor cult:
‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’[2]
Here,
right at the beginning of the gospel, in the very first line of text,
we find Mark setting up a conflict
that will dominate everything that follows.
He
serves notice to his readers, from the offset,
that this story of Jesus will be one
which challenges
all the apparatus of imperial
propagation.
Like
John’s gospel, Mark doesn’t offer us a ‘birth narrative’;
we have to turn to Matthew and Luke
for our singing shepherds, angelic
choirs, and visiting magi.
Rather,
he gives us a dramatic introduction
to the arrival of the son of God in
the course of human history.
Mark
presents the coming of Jesus as the advent of the ‘anointed’ leader,
who is confirmed by God himself,
and
who bursts onto the scene of history
proclaiming a ‘kingdom’ to challenge
the might
of the Roman Kingdom.
In
other words, Mark’s version of the advent of Jesus
is cast in such a way as to take
dead aim at Caesar, the Roman emperor,
and at the legitimating myths that
supported his power.
From
its very first line, Mark’s gospel is subversive.
‘Good
news’ in Roman times, as in our own time,
was usually news of victory on the
battlefield
as the imperial armies marched their
way across the known world,
giving
the gift of Roman Peace, the pax Romana,
to a world that had no choice but to
accept the gift,
or to pay the price for refusing to
comply.
In
direct contrast to this, the ‘good news’ with which Mark’s Gospel begins,
is a declaration of war upon the
very heart of the violent empire,
as Jesus does battle
with the political culture
of imperial domination.
We
live in a world that is addicted to news,
but as we have seen, ‘good news’
does not usually make good news.
A
good, or effective, news story,
is one that hooks the viewer or the reader
into wanting to know more.
News
of battles won, terror threats foiled,
economic victories, and political
standoffs,
are
the staple diet of our news media.
And
they do for us what the Roman propaganda machine
did for the Roman plebeians:
They
sell us the narratives by which we then frame our lives,
and they invite us to rejoice in the
‘good news’ of their protectionism,
as it comes to us
through the secular deities of militarism and monarchy,
and the miracle of free
market economics.
And
it is to us, as it was to the world of the Romans,
that the Christ-child comes.
And
Mark would have us believe that he comes
in a way that subverts the parochial
good news stories of our time
with a transcendent message of ‘good
news’ for all time, and all people.
And
so Mark takes us on a journey from the world of global domination,
to the world of those who see
history from the other side.
He
invites us to step with him into the world of the under-dog,
the world of the dominated,
the world of the
refugee, the alienated, and the exiled.
And
so he invokes the prophet Isaiah,
and we hear a voice reading quotes
from the prophet of the Jewish exile.
Interestingly,
if you actually turn to Isaiah in the Old Testament, to find this quote,
it’s not there quite as Mark has it,
not
only because he was quoting from a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures,
(whereas our modern Old Testament is
a translation of a tenth century Hebrew text);
but
also because the first half of the quote isn’t from Isaiah at all,
it’s a mish-mash of quotes from
Exodus and Malachi (Exod. 23.20; Mal. 3.1).
But
the second part of Mark’s quote is, however, from Isaiah, chapter 40v3.
As
an aside here, for a moment,
the fact that Mark can take three
quotes, from three different places,
and edit them together to form what
he presents
as a unified quotation
from Isaiah,
tells us a lot about the way in
which the early followers of Jesus
thought about their
scriptures.
Not
for them some restrictive doctrine of scriptural inerrancy,
or any idea that the text is
immutable
and universally applicable in all
times and all places.
Not
for them a statement of faith
that regards scripture as the sole
and absolute authority
in all matters of faith and
practice.
Rather,
Mark, in common with the other Gospel writers,
regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as
holy stories,
that explored how and why God was at
work in the world,
drawing
people to the divine
and reshaping human history
away from oppression and towards
liberation.
For
them, scripture was more of an inspiration,
than it was itself inspired.
It
was there to engage with, to hear from, and to argue with,
not to settle arguments and close
down conversation!
Anyway,
the way in which Mark edits these three quotes together is significant,
because it tells us a lot about his
subversive intent.
I
don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but the word ‘redaction’
has come back into fashion over
recent years,
with
government reports often published
with key passages ‘redacted’ in the
interest of national security.
But
just in case you’ve missed this word, it means, ‘to edit for publication’,
and it’s a word that Biblical
Scholars are very familiar with
as we look at the ways
the gospel writers
edited their source
material together,
in order to bring their different
versions of the Jesus story into being.
So
the scholarly discipline of ‘redaction criticism’, as it is known,
looks at the motives for why
things have been edited together in
certain ways.
However,
the word ‘redaction’ arrived into more popular use
through the way in which government
departments respond
to
requests made under the Freedom of Information Act,
where documents are released, but in
so-called ‘redacted’ form,
with section obliterated
where that particular content
is deemed unsuitable for
public consumption.
The
association with concealed statistics and government cover up
has lent the word an air of mystery
and intrigue;
it speaks of the
mystique of subversion.
Which
is exactly where Mark is taking us
in his redaction of Exodus, Malachi,
and Isaiah.
The
Exodus reference, and its equivalent passage in Malachi,
are combined and translated by Mark
to read:
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who
will prepare your way.’
And here, Mark takes us into the world of the
Jewish slaves in Egypt,
making
their journey through the wilderness of Sinai
on
their way to the promised land.
The messenger who goes ahead through the
wilderness
is
heralding the way for the people of God
to
make their own journey of liberation;
the Lord himself blazes the trail.
This is a story of emancipation, of freedom
from slavery.
And
as such it is an inherently revolutionary story.
For any empire dependent on the enslavement of
humans,
the
release of those slaves from bondage
is
an act of treason against the system that requires their servitude.
Whether it’s the Egyptians of the time of the
exodus,
or
the Romans of the time of Mark’s gospel,
or the American plantation owners of a bygone
century,
or
those who currently serve in the sweatshops and brothels of our own time,
held
in economic slavery to the empire of global capital
that
dominates our own world:
the release of slaves is an act of subversion.
What
Mark leaves open for interpretation, though,
is who the messenger of freedom is
in the context of his gospel.
Is
it John the Baptist, heralding the arrival of Jesus?
Or is the messenger Jesus himself,
preparing the way for
those who will follow him?
Or is the messenger none other than
God,
sending the gospel
writer to proclaim to readers down the centuries
the good news of the
advent of Jesus.
The
answer to this conundrum may well be that all three are intended,
because the advent of God is not a
once-for-all event,
fixed in time and space.
The God who comes to us in the
infant Jesus,
a sign of hope in a
world of oppression and darkness,
is the same God who comes to us in
the adult Jesus,
opening before all of humanity
a way of being,
that is not dominated by
death and enthralled by empire.
And this is yet again the same God
who comes to us by the
Spirit of Christ,
as the
stories of Good News that we encounter
through the
pages of the gospel
inspire new ways of
engaging our humanity before God.
Sometimes,
the coming of God into the world
is full of ambiguity and
uncertainty,
because
this is the God who comes in the wilderness,
to those who are lost,
offering
a way through the desert to the new world of love and acceptance
that he is bringing into being.
And
so Mark introduces us to John the Baptist,
the herald in the wilderness,
living a marginal existence,
surviving on locusts and honey.
John
is found in the place where the exodus people fled
as they left their slavery in Egypt.
He
is found in the place where Jesus faces his own temptations,
the place where Elijah sought
sanctuary
when hunted by the
political authorities,
the place of solitude, loneliness,
and liminality.
And
it is from this peripheral place
that the challenge to the centre
emerges.
The
voice of the one proclaiming the advent of the good news of the coming of Jesus
is heard echoing from the hills.
If
earthly power takes the centre ground,
whether that be Rome, Jerusalem, or
Westminster;
the
prophetic voice of challenge comes from the margins.
Mark’s
gospel deliberately sets up a spatial tension
between two places that are
symbolically opposites.
The
disparity between the margin and the centre,
between the wilderness and the
temple,
is
something that Mark’s gospel returns to time and again.
According
to the dominant Jewish nationalistic ideology of salvation history,
Jerusalem was considered the hub
to which all nations would one day
come.
Mark
turns this on its head;
and far from beginning his story of
good news
with a triumphal march on Zion,
rather,
he tells of crowds fleeing to the margins,
to be baptised with the baptism of
repentance.
Mark
is setting the scene for a conflict
that will only resolve itself at the
crucifixion,
as
the new kingdom of Jesus comes from the margins,
to challenge the powers that
dominate the centre.
The
priestly and scribal establishment of the temple,
whose social power was derived
from systems of religiously
legitimates social control,
finds itself in the same category as
the emperor of Rome:
and
such power is deemed illegitimate by the coming Christ.
The
good news of the coming of Jesus
is that all expressions of
illegitimate power,
whether secular, sacred,
or some fusion of the two,
are called to account by the voice
of repentance from the wilderness.
And
so John the Baptist calls people to repentance,
he invites them to confess the sin
of their complicity
in the idolatrous powers
of Rome and Jerusalem,
and he baptises them in the Jordan
as they, like the exodus people of old,
pass through the waters
of the river
as they make their journey from the
old world to the new,
as they complete their
pilgrimage
from
enslavement to the powers that be
to freedom
in the new kingdom
that
they are being called to bring into being.
The
water-baptism of John, the baptism of repentance,
heralds the baptism offered by
Jesus,
who
will, says John, baptise with the Holy Spirit.
If John’s
baptism of water in the wilderness sets up a challenge
to the dominant powers in the world,
the
baptism of the Holy Spirit proclaimed by Jesus
inaugurates a confrontation on a
spiritual level
with
the underlying forces of idolatry
that give rise to earthly
expressions of centralised authority.
There
is no darkness so dark
as that which lurks in the human
soul,
and
we have such endless capacity to wreak havoc in creation.
The
baptism of the Holy Spirit
shines the light of the Spirit of
Christ
into the darkest places
of our souls and imaginings,
bringing to the light all that would
otherwise eat away at our humanity,
destroying us one day at
a time until all that is left
are the false gods of
our own devising.
Baptism
is not simply about being sorry to God
for the wrong things we have done.
It
is about opening ourselves to the transformative power of the Spirit of Christ
that takes us away from the centre,
away from our dreams of
power and our fantasies of success,
into the wilderness where dreams are
transformed
and fantasies redeemed.
It
is only as we are baptised to be a marginal people
that we find we can effect true
change in the world.
The
challenge here, at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, is clear:
It asks us to consider in what way
we will regard
the coming of Jesus to
the world as good news?
If
we see the coming of Jesus as the advent of power,
to transform society from the centre
by forceful application
of Christian values,
then we side with Rome and
Jerusalem,
not with John the
Baptist.
If,
however, we hear the one who comes to us,
calling us to the wilderness to
repent of our sins,
calling us to baptism of water and
the Holy Spirit,
then
we hear the voice of the one crying in the desert.
The
waters of Baptism speak to all of us,
maybe reminding us of the promises
we ourselves have made
in years long past,
maybe challenging us to consider
baptism for ourselves,
but
above all, calling us to the margins:
calling us to the wilderness, to the
land beyond the Jordan,
calling us to repentance of our
worshipping of other gods,
and calling us to receive afresh the
baptism of the Holy Spirit,
who opens within us the
stream of living water
which leads to eternal
life.
[1]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1385043/A-good-day-for-No10-to-bury-Jo-Moores-career.html
[2]
The following sermon draws on Ched Myers, Binding
the Strong Man.
