The Baptism

Perhaps one of the most unique individuals in the Bible, John the Baptist was most certainly a bridge, a link between the old and the new.  The Old Testament and the New Testament. The Hebrew Prophets and Jesus Christ the Messiah. John was an Old Testament prophet who lived on the pages of the New Testament. John a cousin of Jesus had one purpose, one reason for being. In Isaiah we read, “A voice of one calling: In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord”. John’s first contact with Jesus was a womb to womb one. Mary pregnant with Jesus visited her cousin Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with her first child. As the cousins greeted each other, Elizabeth’s baby (John) leapt for joy.  Thirty odd years later, John would in fact mark the beginning of the ministry of God’s Son, Jesus.

Some people believe John was a Nazarite because he was a lonely hermit who dressed strange, never cut his hair and ate a pretty strange diet of locusts and honey. But he wasn’t. John was born of a priestly line, the Levites. John’s father Zechariah was a priest and his father was a priest, this continued back through the generations. According to the Torah though, a Levite could not become a Nazarite. John was continuing the family business living his life as a priest. Being born a Levite meant you were born into an office that set you apart for lifelong service to God.

This service to God, meant that John spent years as a recluse. Praying and meditating. It also meant calling out the religious establishment, (You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?), and last but not least proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And yet he was about to baptize the Son of God. How was this possible or necessary? Jesus was without sin. Obviously this wasn’t a baptism in the normal sense. It was in fact a marker, a beginning of the ministry of Jesus.

Mark’s Gospel begins with the baptism of Jesus Christ.  Matthew and Luke both begin with Jesus’s birth or even before Jesus’s birth with a list of Jesus’s genealogy. John begins with creation itself; “In the beginning was the word”. Mark though gets right to the point. The baptism of Jesus, the beginning of his ministry. The very first verse of Mark; “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God”. 

To get a complete understanding of God’s Son, we must realize that Jesus doesn’t just inhabit the pages of the New Testament.  There is a path from Genesis to Revelation. The first verse of Mark is mirrored in the first verse of Genesis; “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Both passages are about beginnings. And not just simple ones, they are spectacular.  In Mark, when Jesus is baptized, the heavens are ripped apart. In Genesis, God takes a formless void covered with darkness and creates a world covered with light. In both Genesis and Mark something new happens. In both books there is a beginning. With the baptism in Mark, Jesus stands at the beginning of a new era but he is also the result of an ongoing history.

In our own baptisms we are a new creation, it is a new day.  Baptisms and creation are God’s gift to us. Absolutely everything God does is for us. All of us. The waters of the Jordan River did not sanctify Jesus. Jesus sanctified the waters so that we could fully participate in God’s creation. When those waters sanctify us we are covered with God’s light. We are fully his children, in absolutely every sense. We harken back to Psalm 2 verse 7; “Today I have become your father”.

Thinking back to my own baptism, I realize I was far too young to remember any of it, but I am pretty sure that the heavens weren’t torn apart, there was no doves and I didn’t hear a voice from above say; “With you I am well pleased”. What my baptism was though was a beginning. The beginning of my life as a Christian. As a Christian I am involved and participate in a new creation. God’s creation.