Prophets and Preachers

“Prophets and Preachers”

(Mark 1:1-15 & Selected Scriptures)

The Greenhouse ~ 3rd Sunday after Trinity

As we have been preparing for our more official launch of The Greenhouse, yet continuing with weekly worship gatherings in the interim, it has been a little difficult to know what to do. Trinity Sunday made for an easy topic to preach (ok, easy to decide on; I don’t know that anyone thinks preaching the Trinity is “easy”). The first “normal” Sunday of ordinary time also lent the opportunity to explore how God calls us to live in our present times and places. Then last week I decided to tackle the important but difficult topic of God as Father on Father’s Day, partly because of how monumentally important such a topic is, but also because we want to commit from the beginning that we will not ignore hard topics. But that left us with today before we launch on July 1 and have our first post-launch Gather on July 9, when we will start a series on Jesus’ parables and prayers that will take us up to Christ the King Sunday in November.

I spent much of the week uncertain, but as I scanned the church calendar in the latter half of the week, I discovered that Saturday, June 24, is the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptizer. I immediately focused in on what is so often overlooked—the role of John the Baptizer in preparing the way for Jesus. And so, I’ve chosen today to take on Mark 1:1-15 and some related passages that proclaim the importance of John’s prophetic work in the context of the Scriptures and human history.

We begin in Mark 1, who begins with the words: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In Mark’s gospel, the beginning of this good news of Jesus the Messiah is the work of John the Baptizer coming as a messenger to prepare the way for the Lord. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark does not have a birth narrative. Unlike John, Mark does not connect the incarnate Word, Jesus, with the eternal Word, the Son of God. Of course, Mark is not denying either of these truths, nor shunning their significance in the gospel narrative. Rather, Mark, we find, is in a hurry. In fact, he repeatedly uses the word immediately to move the story along. Mark intends to get us the story of Jesus’ ministry through His death and resurrection as quickly as possible. But if this is his aim, why slow down for even a moment to speak of John the Baptizer at all? Why not skip him entirely? I’ll answer this in a moment, but let’s get a little context first.

The sending of the Messiah is not some unforeseen event in Israel’s story. They have been waiting for God to fulfill His promises to David that one on his throne would establish an everlasting kingdom. Not only has God, through His prophets, promised the coming Messiah, but He has also promised this forerunner, the one who will announce the arrival of this Messiah and prepare the people for God’s new work in the world. The passage we read in Isaiah 40, and that Mark quotes here in chapter 1, is one such passage. So is Malachi 3:1, where God announces through Malachi how he will send a messenger to prepare the way, and Malachi 4:5, which names Elijah as the one who will come before that day. Matthew’s gospel identifies John the Baptizer as this prophesied Elijah (Matt 11:14; 17:10-13). The significance of including John the Baptizer, then, is to tell the discerning reader definitively, from the very beginning, that Jesus of Nazareth is the One for whom they have been waiting. Moreover, the link between John the Baptizer and the messenger of Malachi 3:1a, which discerning readers of the gospel in the 1st century would recognize, would alert them to an important aspect of Jesus’ ministry, for the messenger of the Messiah in Malachi 3 is as the forerunner to the messenger of the covenant (Mal 3:1b). Already we should be aware that the prophetic announcement by John that the Messiah is coming and will be greater than John himself (Mark 1:7) is also an announcement not only of a Messiah, but of the Messiah as another—and the greatest of—the prophets.

One of the key passages that links John the Baptizer with Elijah is the transfiguration account in Matthew 17. In this passage, Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus on the mountain and the disciples hear the voice of God declaring, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased: listen to him.” In Deuteronomy 18, Moses relays a prophecy that God will raise up a prophet like Moses from among the people, and the proper response of the people to this prophet is: “Listen to him” (Deut 18:15). Throughout the Old Testament, then, we look for this promised prophet that is like Moses. Of all the prophets, the one most like Moses is Elijah. Both proclaim judgment on the kings in power (Pharaoh and Ahab), both experience the fire of the Lord (Exod 3 & 1 Kings 18), both go up on Mount Sinai and experience the Lord’s presence in the cleft of the rock (Exod 34 & 1 Kings 19), both split the waters (Exod 14 and 2 Kings 2), and more similarities could be noted also. But the author of Kings does something interesting. Elisha, Elijah’s successor, asks for a double portion of his spirit. Elijah says that if Elisha sees Elijah taken up into heaven then he will receive it. That the LORD blesses Elisha in this way is made clear by the author who recounts exactly twice as many miracles by Elisha as Elijah. So although Elijah is a great prophet and is like Moses, the fact that Elisha exceeds Elijah suggests we are still waiting on this prophet like Moses. In steps John the Baptizer into the role of Elijah, leaving our other messenger, Jesus, to be the prophet like Moses.

Hebrews 3:1-6 makes this connection explicit. Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, a prophet who did the work of the LORD. But Jesus is faithful over all God’s house as a Son. He is greater than Moses in the same manner that John the Baptizer says Jesus will be greater than he. But notice the manner of Moses and Jesus’ shared, though unequal, service in Hebrews 3: “to testify to the things that were to be spoken later.” Indeed, Jesus’ testimony is greater not only because He is Son, not servant, but because He testifies about Himself, not another. Lest we move too quickly from this point, Matthew also picks up on Jesus as the prophet like Moses in drawing close parallels between the two: 40 days and 40 nights (Moses on the mountain vs. Jesus in the desert), crossing through the waters (Moses and the Red Sea vs. Jesus in baptism), their wandering in the wilderness, proclaiming God’s law from the mountain (Exod 19 vs. Matt 5-7, Jesus’ sermon on the mount), and again, many more parallels can be highlighted.

So these passages leave us with a profound truth: John the Baptizer, the metaphorical Elijah, is sent like Moses and Elijah to testify to the One who is to come, One greater than himself or any other prophet that has come before. Jesus, the prophet like Moses, is nevertheless greater than Moses, not only because He is the Son, but also because He testifies about Himself. And so, finally, we come back to Mark 1, and we can see the great, unrivaled prophet Jesus proclaiming the message that Israel has been awaiting for hundreds of years. What does He say? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Two truth claims. Two responses. First, the time is fulfilled. God’s promises to Israel to bless all the nations in Abraham’s offspring (Gen 12), to send a King from the line of David to establish an everlasting kingdom (2 Sam 7), to send a prophet like Moses to whom all should listen (Deut 18), these and hundreds of other promises find their yes and amen and fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth. The long-awaited King is here! Second, the kingdom of God has come near. The arrival of the King announces the nearness of the Kingdom. It has not arrived in its fulness, but Jesus has inaugurated a new age in which this Kingdom will inevitably come. The King has started His reign in this already, not yet Kingdom.

Two responses. First, repent. Turn from your failures. Turn from your self-love. Turn from your idolatry. And turn towards Jesus. To repent is not simply to turn away from one thing; if one is going east and wishes to go north, turning south, though a turn, is not a move in the right direction. Rather, to repent is to reorient toward True North, to redirect our lives to the Son, to fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:1). Second, believe the good news. That a world broken and in disrepair has been sent the One who created it and will redeem it is immensely good news. But one can receive good news and ignore it. In C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, the dwarves become hardened by the deceitfulness that hoodwinks them earlier in the novel. In response, once they receive good news about Aslan’s Country, they cannot see it for what it is. They are “so afraid of being taken in that they can’t be taken out,” and they reject the good news out of self-preservation. Others may reject the good news for even more nefarious reasons, such as a desire to rule oneself and reject the rule of God. Whatever the reason, good news must be received with joy. Jesus calls the 1st century Galileans of this passage—and every human being henceforward—to embrace the good news that He has come, to repent and turn to Him, and to believe the testimony of the greatest prophet and preacher who ever lived.