The Second Sunday in Advent, December 6, 2020

Mark 1:1–8

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way. A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”  John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins. John was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He fed on locusts and wild honey. And this is what he proclaimed: “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The amount of space the Evangelists give to St. John the Baptist indicates his importance and lingering influence for the people to whom they were writing.  St. John the Apostle, evidently writing for Judean Christians, spends more time than the others describing John’s ministry, his followers, and his words: John the Baptist was himself a Judean, scion of a priestly family.  St. Luke, who will later write of believers in Jesus at Ephesus who know only of the baptism of John (cf. Acts 19, 1-3), knows well how John the Baptist’s teachings have spread, and presents an entire narrative describing his origin, with emphasis on God’s intervention.  On the other hand, St. Matthew and St. Peter (whose preaching was the source for St. Mark’s Gospel) saw John the Baptist primarily as the one whose action occasioned the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus and the audible words of the Father announcing his pleasure in his Son.  This seems to indicate that John held less interest for the Galileans for whom Matthew was writing, and less still for the Christians for whom Mark was writing his Gospel in Rome, whether they were of Jewish or Gentile origin.  All the same, neither can dispense with him altogether.  His connection to the beginning of the Lord’s public life forbids this.

“As it is written in Isaiah the prophet.”  St. Mark, writing primarily for Gentile Christians, does not quote the prophets very often.  He does so here because he is aware of the importance of auspices for the Gentiles, particularly Roman Gentiles.  He introduces Isaiah as a Jewish counterpart to the Sybil of Cumae, whose prophesies were kept at Rome in the Temple of Apollo.  

“Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way.”  Mark quotes Malachi 3, 1, and then he quotes Isaiah 40: “The voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’ ”  Mark writes the quotes together in such a way that they appear to be a single verse from Isaiah.  In this case, Mark is employing the ancient Jewish practice of using Scripture to comment on, and even to reveal the meaning of, other Scriptures.  Later, the Fathers and medieval writers took up this practice, often pairing Old and New Testament verses.  

“John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  St. Peter has clearly mentioned John in his preaching and so Mark feels he needs no fuller introduction than this: he does not speak of his origins or lineage.  “People of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”  Mark is eager to point out in his Gospel that Jesus was widely acknowledged as the Savior by the people and only opposed by their leaders.  Here, Mark shows John as a figure for Jesus in his popularity and opposition (the latter in verses 7-12).  He also presages Jesus in his preaching of repentance.  

“John was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He fed on locusts and wild honey.”  While historically true, we might wonder why Mark thought these details were important for his Gentile Christian audience to know.  Perhaps he used John’s rugged and rural appearance to remind them of their own Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, who grew up among shepherds and farmers, or of Hercules, the demigod who lived outside of civilization and who performed heroic works.  In this way Mark could have made this very Jewish man, John, more familiar and relatable to them.

“One mightier than I is coming after me.”  Mark does not portray John as particularly “mighty”, and so perhaps he does rely on his readers recognizing him as in the same class as Hercules.  His main point in quoting John is to show him pointing to Christ, who comes after him, as very mighty indeed.  “I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.”  This phrase would have had much the same meaning for the Gentiles as for the Jews.  If John, who is “mighty” is not worthy to perform this lowly service for the one who comes after him, then this one is unimaginably mighty.  “I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  And so the one who comes after’s baptism “with the Holy Spirit” will be unimaginably more mighty than John’s baptism, which is only a sign of it.  The Gentile Christians had already learned of and experienced Christian baptism and the Holy Spirit, and so Mark does not need to explain them.

Just as John compares himself and his baptism with that of the Lord and his baptism, so we ought to recall the words of the Lord, that “There has not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11, 11).  More than we realize, John prepared humanity for the coming of Jesus and his power.  Let us be “mighty” as he is was in preparing the people around us for the Lord’s second coming.