The following material was written by the Rev. John Shearman (jlss@sympatico.ca) of the United Church of Canada. John normally structures his offerings so that the first portion can be used as a bulletin insert, while the second portion provides a more in depth 'introduction to the scripture'.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE	
The First Sunday After Epiphany - The Baptism of The Lord - Year B


GENESIS 1:1-5                          The first words of the Bible define 
the true nature of creation as spiritual.  The Spirit of God breathes over 
the waters, shaping and moving them with creative energy.  This is a 
statement of religious faith, not a scientific hypothesis.  Written in the 
6th century BCE, this majestic hymn describes the divine victory over 
chaos, a basic element of myths of creation found in most Near Eastern 
cultures.


PSALM 29                               A hymn of praise celebrates God's 
powerful presence in all of nature.  Again victory over chaos begins the 
process of creation according to God's command.


ACTS 19:1-7                            The early church regarded baptism 
in the name of Jesus as a symbol of new creation.  The gift of the Spirit 
confirmed this spiritual experience.  In this passage Paul helped the 
disciples of Ephesus, baptized according to John the Baptist's practice, 
learn the full meaning of Christian baptism.  Most of the people who were 
baptized in the earliest days of the church were adult believers.  When 
whole families and households were baptized, children were included.  The 
practice of infant baptism did not become the norm until a few centuries 
later.  


MARK 1:4-11                            The early church believed that the 
teaching and the work John the Baptist fulfilled prophecies found in 
Exodus 23:20 and Isaiah 40:3.  A dramatic if controversial figure, John 
preached repentance and baptism in the Jordan River as the way for Jews of 
his time to prepare for the coming of the Messiah.  Then Jesus joined the 
crowds that thronged to hear John's message and experience.  The vision of 
the Spirit as a dove descending on Jesus after he had been baptized 
confirmed John's conviction that the Messiah would bring the gift of the 
Spirit to all believers.  


A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS

GENESIS 1:1-5   The first words of the Bible define the true nature of 
creation as spiritual.  The Spirit of God breathes over the waters, 
shaping and moving them with creative energy.  This is a statement of 
religious faith, not a scientific hypothesis.  
 
We now know that all cultures had their myths of creation.  A basic 
element of these myths found in most Near Eastern cultures consisted of 
the victory of the deity over chaos, often represented by another mythical 
deity.  The winner of this conflict then became the established monarch 
whom the human sovereign represented.  The Psalms in particular show that 
this concept was familiar in Israel also.  (Cf. Pss. 74:12-17; 89:9-13.) 
The immediate source of this myth in Israel was probably the Canaanites 
among whom the Israelites had settled in the 13th to 11th centuries BCE.

Written in the 6th century BCE, this majestic hymn also describes the 
divine victory over chaos, but with a significant difference.  Under the 
influence of its great prophets of the 8th to the 6th centuries, Israel had 
developed a transcendent and monotheistic concept of Yahweh.  Furthermore, 
with idolatry banished from their tradition, the Israelites developed a 
spiritual concept of the divine nature.  This creation hymn, while drawing 
on earlier mythology, presents a spiritual view of how the world came into 
being through the direct command and action of this spiritual being, 
Yahweh.

Note that the NSRV text does not use the specific phrase *Spirit of God* 
as does the KJV and the RSV.  Instead, it uses the metaphor *a wind from 
God*.  The Hebrew word for *wind* and *spirit* are the same - *ruach*.  
While this may be technically accurate, it appears to remove the action 
from God.  On the other hand, the divine command, "Let there be light" and 
the resultant creation of light, makes sure that direct action is 
intended.  Creation occurred, according to the Israelite theology, solely 
as the result of the will of Yahweh.

The separation of light and darkness has been a powerful metaphor in 
religious art and literature.  Behind this is the simple reality that all 
life is dependent on the light of the sun, a fact as well-known in ancient 
times as today.  Indian, Greek, Phoenician and Babylonian myths of 
creation also represented light as the first creation.  Nor can we neglect 
the fact that until the invention of electrical lighting, the dawning of 
each day brought a new separation of light from darkness and a new 
beginning for living in the world.

Repeated emphasis on divine approval of the first and all subsequent acts 
of creation also carries considerable significance.  The view of a brutal, 
savage and evil creation which must be subdued by human effort only 
developed in recent centuries, particularly on the frontiers of European 
exploration and economic exploitation.  The American legend of Moby Dick, 
popularized in 1851 in Herman Melville's novel about Captain Ahab's 
pursuit of a malevolent white whale, may well be the epitome of this view 
of a universe that is evil and must be overcome by human opposition.  Much 
technological development which has mesmerized so many of us in the past 
century and a half has been driven a similar motif.  The failure of Ahab, 
like the failure of so many human technological experiments, reminds us 
that from the religious point of view, the universe rests on spiritual 
foundations and must be so regarded as we strive
to make use of its gifts.


PSALM 29   Have you ever stood in a safe place to watch the beautiful 
violence of a thunderstorm?   An experience like that lay behind this 
early hymn of praise celebrating God's powerful presence in nature.  Many 
elements drawn from the common, primitive cosmology of the Near East have 
found their way into this song.  Divine victory over chaos determines the 
natural processes of creation according to Yahweh's command and provides 
for human security.  It is Yahweh's glory visible in the storm which forms 
the central theme of the psalm.  Some OT scholars have suggested that 
Yahweh was first known to the Israelites as a storm god.

The psalm opens with a summons to "heavenly beings" to offer their praise 
and worship to Yahweh.  The realm where Yahweh reigns was conceived as a 
temple with heavenly beings robed like ministering priests.  Later, they 
came under the general category of angels.

As the storm develops, the psalmist hears thunder rolling across the sky 
as the powerful yet majestic voice of Yahweh (vss.  3-4).  A violent wind 
sweeping down from the Lebanon mountains breaks great cedar trees as they 
roil and skip.  These too he sees as the direct action of Yahweh (vss.5-
6).  Lightning becomes another expression of Yahweh's voice (vs. 7) and 
the thunder which follows rolls across the whole length and breadth of the 
country as far as the wilderness of Kadesh in the Negeb desert (vs.8).  
All of these details form a vivid description of how Yahweh controlled the 
chaotic forces of nature.

As in the Genesis passage, primitive religious concepts cast the victor in 
this struggle over chaos as a reigning monarch.  So Yahweh "sits enthroned 
over the flood ... as a king forever" (vs. 10).  After a violent storm 
like this all the wadis gush with raging floods as the water is carried 
away for several more days.  Few as such violent storms may be in the 
relatively benign climate of Palestine, storms do occur in winter.  One 
such storm wrecked havoc in parts of Israel and Jordan in February 1998.  
Yet the rainfall from such storms is essential to the growth of crops, 
just as winter snow on the Canadian prairies is a godsend for next year's 
grain.  The psalmist saw this storm as a blessing which would yield 
welcome security for the people.  Nature had spoken of Yahweh's strength 
and greatness, the infinite source of spiritual blessings.


ACTS 19:1-7   The early church regarded baptism in the name of Jesus as a 
symbol of new creation.  The gift of the Spirit confirmed this spiritual 
experience and enabled the newly baptized to live the full implications of 
their life in Christ.  In this passage Paul helped the disciples of 
Ephesus, baptized by Apollos according to John the Baptist's practice, 
learn the full meaning of Christian baptism.  
  
Apollos may have been one of John's disciples.  An Alexandrian Jew of 
great eloquence (Acts 18:24), he is named half a dozen times in the NT, 
almost entirely in connection with the Corinthian church except for one 
reference in Titus 3:13 without geographic identification.  Knowledgeable 
in the Hebrew scriptures, especially with reference to the Messiah, he had 
been a catechumen and had become a teacher of "the Way of the Lord".  This 
infers that his instruction had been limited to a message of repentance 
similar to John's.  We might speak of this as an ability to raise his 
hearers' consciousness of sin without giving them the power to change 
their ways.  It was a message of moral improvement, not of salvation by 
faith through grace.

The church in Ephesus encouraged him to proceed to Corinth and there 
greatly helped those who through grace had become believers" (18:27).  
Just what the distinction between this teaching and that of Paul is not 
entirely clear.  It has been assumed that he knew the whole story about 
Jesus and some of Jesus' teaching, but had not fully accepted Jesus' 
soteriological function as the Messiah/Christ which was so important to 
Paul.  Martin Luther conjectured that Apollos had written the Letter to 
the Hebrews.  While unproven, the consistency of his teaching with that 
letter makes the suggestion attractive (18:28).  

It would appear that the purpose of the pericope was to clarify the 
difference between the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus in much the 
same way that Mark did in Mark 1:7-8.  The key was the presence and power 
of the Spirit.  It also appears that the apostles were the mediators of 
the Spirit, which Apollos had been unable to do, apparently because he had 
not himself received the gift of the Spirit.  


MARK 1:4-11   The early church believed that the teaching and work of John 
the Baptist fulfilled prophecies found in Exodus 23:20 and Isaiah 40:3.  
These had been given a messianic interpretation.  A dramatic if 
controversial figure, John preached repentance and baptism as the way for 
Jews of his time to prepare for the coming of the Messiah.  Then Jesus 
joined the crowds that thronged to hear John's message and accept baptism.  
The vision of the Spirit as a dove descending on Jesus after he had been 
baptized confirmed John's conviction that this was indeed the Messiah who 
would bring the gift of the Spirit to all believers.  

It is always important to remember that the gospels were written long 
after Pentecost when the Spirit had come upon the assembled apostles as 
they struggled to understand the true meaning of the life, death and 
resurrection of Jesus.  We are dealing here with how the early church 
perceived the distinction between the Jewish and the Christian traditions.  
As we also saw in the reading from Acts 19 above, the crucial aspect of 
the Christian tradition as presented here is the presence and power of the 
Spirit.  The saving work of God in Christ is effected by the Spirit.  That 
is the symbolic meaning of the Spirit descending as a dove (vs. 10) and 
the words of divine approval (vs. 11).  Mark intended us to believe that 
this saving work of God in Christ is continuing.  The mighty acts of 
Jesus, the Christ, which Mark describes in the rest of this gospel bear 
witness to the reader that Jesus himself is God's saving act for the 
redemption of humanity.
 
This introductory passage also points to the continuity of Jesus' ministry 
with his heritage as a Jew.  There appears to have been an extensive 
baptismal movement prior to the baptism of Jesus and the later, post-
Pentecost practice of the early church (Mark 11:32; Acts 10:37).  Jesus 
came to the Jordan where John was preaching and baptizing to identify 
himself with the people of God.  Like most prophetic voices before him, 
John sought to recall Israel to its historic covenant.  His baptism had 
some similarity with the purification rites required of all Jews under the 
law and also the baptism which proselytes were required to perform after 
circumcision as the sign of their inclusion in the covenant.  

There can be no question, however, that Mark also regarded Jesus as 
entirely unique.  This is the obvious meaning of the quotation from Psalm 
2:7, an ancient hymn usually sung at a royal accession or coronation.  
Here it is used with an obvious Christian messianic connotation and linked 
with another messianic interpretation of Isaiah 42:1.

We can never know what the experience of baptism meant to Jesus.  The 
Docetic heresy of the 2nd century CE misinterpreted it, as have some 
modern interpreters, as the dawning of his messianic consciousness.  That 
was not Mark's intention.  Indeed, by linking the psalm and the Isaiah 
passages, he was making a statement of faith as to who Jesus is.  In so 
doing, he was speaking for the apostolic church of his time, circa 65-70 
CE.  Like all other apostolic witnesses, he viewed the ministry of John 
and Jesus from the inside and cast both of them in the framework of Jewish 
eschatology then being realized in the early apostolic church.  The 
difference between them was not in the respective behavior of the two 
contemporaries and cousins, though that did receive considerable emphasis 
in the gospel record.  The chief distinction lay in the faith that what 
John had anticipated, Jesus was now equipped as "Beloved Son" to 
accomplish.  As Mark quotes him in vs. 15, "The time is fulfilled.  The 
kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news.""

                         
copyright  - Comments by Rev. John Shearman and page by Richard J. Fairchild, 2006
            please acknowledge the appropriate author if citing these resources.