Mark's Mashup.

Mark 1:1-8

December 10, 2017

I.

These days there are things called “mashups.”  A mashup is when someone — usually a musician or artist, or a web developer — takes material from at least two different sources, and blends them together to make a new thing.  The new product thus has continuity with the former contexts, but in combining them speaks to the present in a new way.  

Mark begins his gospel with a mashup.  He brings together material from two places.  Indeed, this is not a gentle blending so much as a smashing collision, especially since he is using one of the sources deeply ironically and critically.

We see it in the first line of the gospel.  What he is mashing up is on the one hand the biblical tradition of his people, and on the other hand the imperial terminology of the power that has conquered his people: Rome.  He starts out with “the beginning,” which reminds us of the creation story in Genesis.  We understand that this story will be about a new beginning that fulfills the promise in that first beginning.  Mark uses another word from Hebrew Scripture: “Messiah” or “Christ,” which means Anointed One.  This underscores this message of fulfillment.  

Then he uses a word taken directly from imperial propaganda: “gospel” or “good news.”  People were used to receiving “gospels” which were official communications from the government that Roman armies had won another stunning victory.  So originally a gospel had a vicious, cutting effect.  In proclaiming another military triumph, it also said to the people receiving it, “You lose.  Again.  Get used to it.”  The other Roman term that shows up here is “Son of God,” which was one of the self-serving titles the emperor gave to himself.

The Hebrew terms in this mashup are triumphantly fulfilled; Mark uses the Roman terms ironically to contradict their original function.  Indeed, he steals them and applies them to a figure and movement which is essentially and comprehensively the opposite of what Rome was about.  He is using Rome’s words against them.  

So in the first line of his book, Mark is asserting what Christianity is really about, which is the point of his story.  The message of the Hebrew Scriptures that begins with the creation of everything is about to be fulfilled by the coming of the promised Anointed One or Messiah.  His coming is real good news, not the fake, cynical, evil so-called “good news” issued by the Empire.   He is going to be the real Son of God, not so-called “Son of God” in Rome whose main business is murder, lies, theft, exploitation, terror, and conquest.  The real good news is that Rome is going down; and that everything the emperor tried to kill, the real Son of God will bring about: blessing, justice, equality, healing, and peace.

And his name is Jesus.  From the first line of the gospel we see that this is a story in which the losers win, and the winners lose.  That’s what Jesus will embody in the next 16 chapters.  In the power differentials that strangle our world: God is always with the powerless and always against the powerful.  

II.

The next few lines of the gospel build on this basic affirmation by reminding us of the Hebrew tradition, and the prophets who foretell the coming of this Messiah, this real Son of God.  The focus here is on two things: the wilderness and the way.

Wilderness is the opposite of the urban centers and the rural towns around them.  It is the opposite of civilization.  Wilderness is marginal, hard, wild, dry, difficult, unprofitable country.  Wilderness is also where we go to meet God.  When God liberates the people from slavery in Egypt, God leads them first into the wilderness, the desert of Sinai.  That is where the people meet God and receive God’s laws.  That is where God instructs them to build the tabernacle of God’s Presence.  The desert is God’s first temple.   

Elijah and other prophets work in the wilderness.  They lift up this experience of the people with God in the desert as the epitome of holiness and blessing.  Jesus himself will go into the wilderness right after his baptism and it is there that his calling in confirmed in his temptation by the devil.  In all Christian history monastics have mostly fled into the wilderness to face themselves and at the same time encounter God.

Wilderness or desert is a place of lack.  It is a place of hunger and thirst, of extremity.  It is a marginal and peripheral place, a place without apparent value to the establishment, it is undomesticated, out of control, a lawless, lonely wasteland.

That’s why it is God’s place.  Things like value, control, and law are determined and imposed by the ego-centric powers that run the world and civilization.  Just as we cannot see the stars when we are in places that are polluted with artificial lights, so we cannot see God until we get away from the places where the artificial and arbitrary culture of those who rule society prevail.         

The prophets show us the way to receive God.  The early church called itself “The Way.”  Discipleship is always an entire way of life.  We do not receive God by our own initiative, creativity, industriousness, or accomplishment.  We receive God by emptying ourselves of everything else.  The Way is not just to actually go out into the literal desert; it is to become the desert in the sense of embracing our own marginality and releasing ourselves of our own self-importance.  Discipleship is about letting go and letting God.

God is going to come into the places the have been cleared out, uncluttered, made straight, flattened out, emptied, and opened up.  Where distractions and blockages have been removed.  God comes into silence.

III.

Mark now introduces us to someone who embodies the preparation and the readiness for the Messiah, the Son of God.  His name is John, and he appears out in the desert.  He specifically reminds us of Elijah, the original subversive prophet of the Hebrew tradition.  

John is what we call an ascetic.  He lives a life of self-denial and simplicity in the wilderness.  He lives off the grid, separate from urban, civilized connections and conveniences.  He lives a deliberately marginalized, eccentric, vulnerable, insecure life, radically dependent on God.

We cannot receive Jesus without adequate preparation.  Later, in chapter 4, Jesus will talk about different kinds of soil and how they do or don’t nurture the planted seed.  By that he will mean that not every person can receive his message in such a way that they will be changed and saved by it.  John shows us the character of the good soil, the person prepared to receive and feed the seed of the Word, the good news.  And he shows us what we need to do to become that good soil ourselves.  

This is important because Christianity is full of people who nevertheless don’t really know or follow Jesus.  Part of the reason for this is that they never prepare themselves to receive him.  In the same way that we cannot learn a new language without drilling the grammar and vocabulary, or we cannot play a musical instrument without learning technique and scales, or we cannot play a sport without learning the rules and training, so we cannot receive Jesus without being prepared by the spiritual disciplines we learn from John.  Without preparation we remain in one of the categories of unproductive “soil” that Jesus will mention.

John’s spiritual practice is focused on a particular ritual.  In this ritual he immerses people in the Jordan River as a sign of their repentance.  Baptism is the recognition of a person’s changed heart and behavior, and an expression of their desire for God to save them from a disordered, destructive, doomed existence.  It is an expression of hope in the One John says is coming who is more powerful than he, who will immerse people in God’s Holy Spirit, thus giving them a new life reconciled to God.

  

In other words, John is saying that to be prepared to receive Jesus is a matter of realizing that your current existence is not working, and taking steps to change your way of thinking and acting away from selfishness and violence.  It means separating yourself from the conventional means of support, and living in constant expectation of God’s coming into your life in Jesus Christ.  It means turning away from our old habits, traditions, values, views, and loyalties, and turning to Jesus.  Unless we do this, we’re not going to recognize him.  Unless we do this, we cannot follow him.  

IV.  

Baptism only happens once to each of us, but this preparation process doesn’t end.  The church has adopted this annual four-week period we call Advent as a time to remember our need for preparation.  Usually we waste it in sentimentality and consumerism, because it happens to coincide with, and be thoroughly overwhelmed by, a huge secular commercial festival, which prepares us for something else.

But Advent is not about a particular time of year.  It is about being ready.  It is about being prepared for God to come into our lives.  Even those who are far along on the way of discipleship occasionally need a reminder.  We all need to stay good soil.  Jesus leaves his disciples with the admonition to keep awake!  Because he knows that the best of us can still slide back into unconsciousness, where our readiness atrophies, and our muscle-memory for discipleship falters.  Even Miles Davis still had to practice his scales.  

So we still need to remember John’s message and example.  We still need to engage in disciplines of repentance, removing the clutter and the obstructions, and turning again to the One Who Comes, Jesus the Messiah, the real Son of God.

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