Among the Wild Beasts

Mark 1:4-13

Baptism of the Lord

January 7, 2018

William G. Carter

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

We baptized a little boy named Henry last Sunday. His family was here. His church family was here. And all the elements of a true Christian baptism were here.

·         There was water: nobody gets baptized in the church without getting wet, and the preacher made sure Henry was good and wet.

·         There was the Word of God: first read from the scripture, then preached from the pulpit, and then pronounced by Henry’s grandfather as he presented the charge: “You belong to God,” I heard him say.

·         The Holy Spirit was here. We trust that as truth; a baptism is more than a social occasion, it’s a holy event, holy because of the presence of God.

So I asked our church administrator to inscribe Henry’s name in our book of records. “Henry Allen Taylor was baptized on December 31.” And that was that.

Well, not so fast. The baptism was done, but it was only the starting place. Now the Christian life begins, and there are going to be some bumps along the way. That’s how it goes for any of us, because that is how it went for Jesus.

As we heard a minute ago, Jesus went to the Jordan River to be baptized. It is his first appearance in the Gospel of Mark. We don’t know anything else about Jesus before he shows up at the river. We won’t know for three more chapters that he had a family. We won’t know until chapter six that he was known to be a wood cutter. We don’t know that Jesus came from a small town in the hill country of Galilee, way up north, far from Jerusalem. His home town was Nazareth, where he was raised, where everybody knew him and he lived a normal life.

As far as the Gospel of Mark cares, the life of Jesus begins when his head is covered with water. That’s when there were signs that God was up to something. Maybe nobody else noticed, but Jesus had a powerful experience. As he came up out of the water, he saw the sky rip open, he saw the Spirit come down on him like a dove. He heard the Voice from heaven: “You belong to me. You are my beloved, and I am delighted in you.”

These were not new words. They are lifted from the treasury of Israel and inscribed in the psalms. If all we remembered from this morning worship service were these words, it would be sufficient. God says, “You belong to me. You are beloved. I am delighted in you.”

But as we heard, that affirmation from God is not the end of the story. Jesus has to make his way forward after that spiritually rich moment. He has to live after the water dries off. By the third chapter of Mark’s book, we know it is going to be a bumpy road.

Not everybody wants to believe that. They think if they belong to God, if they respond to God’s holy claim on their lives, that everything else will go well, that the road ahead is easy street.

After all, didn’t we hear the promise spoken during little Henry’s baptism last week? “God gives us new life and guards us from evil…” And what is the prayer that we say all the time? “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

And we know why we declare the promise and say the prayer: because evil is real and temptation is all around us.”  I don’t need to tell you that; you already know it. And I don’t need to offer any illustrations; they would only make the sermon longer.

So just as soon as Jesus is baptized, he is tempted. It goes on for “forty days.” That’s a biblical euphemism for “a good long time.” It happens in “the wilderness.” That’s not a specific area, so much as a “desolate place.” It’s the lonely spot, the isolated location, the abandoned land where you have to work out the struggle.

Satan is there, not with a pitchfork and red pajamas, but in a business suit and a power tie. He is looking respectable and sounding helpful, because that is how temptation always comes. As Fred Craddock once said, “No self-respecting Satan would approach a person with offers of personal, social, and professional ruin. That is in the small print at the bottom of the temptation.”[1] Jesus is going to have to see the small print and do the hard work of sorting out the right thing to do.

And if that weren’t trouble enough, the Gospel of Mark says, “Jesus was with the wild beasts.”

First time somebody heard this in a Bible study, they said, “Oh, it’s like the prophet Isaiah once declared, the wolf will lie down with the lamb, the lion and the fatling together.” No, not exactly. The Greek word for wild beast signifies an animal with teeth, a snarling, hungry animal that can do real harm. You know, lions and tigers and bears. We cannot minimize the danger, simply because Jesus is baptized and belongs to God.

But here’s the thing. While Mark doesn’t specify the GPS coordinates of the “wilderness,” most folks of that time would generally know where the barren landscapes were. The tour buses still point them out. And according to the wildlife biologists, there probably weren’t lions and tigers and bears nearby.

No, these were another kind of wild beasts. If not literal, they were certainly symbolic, and they were real. Mark may be suggesting the kinds of beasts that all of us have to contend with, even if we never go to wild frontier or the zoo.

A lot of us know the well-worn but still helpful tale of the Cherokee chief teaching his grandson about life. “There’s a fight going on inside me,” he said to the boy, “a fight between two hungry wolves.”

One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

That struggle of good versus evil is always with us. It is as old as the Garden of Eden, and as new as the latest Star Wars movie. We never outrun it.

But two things to learn from the Bible story we have heard today. First, Jesus goes into the wilderness because the Holy Spirit of God pushes him into the wilderness. Actually the verb is more forceful than that: the Spirit hurls him into the wilderness. He must go, and he must work through what it means to belong to God and not to belong to evil. It is the inevitable struggle, and if Jesus can’t face it, he will not be able to relate to us in our struggles, nor will he be qualified to save us in our weakness.

And the second thing to note is that, even though Satan is suggesting temptations, even though the wild beasts are lunging to claim his soul, Jesus is not alone. The Spirit of God that sends him to face temptation is also sending the angels to feed him, to sustain him, to provide him with daily bread, clarity of vision, and courage to do what’s right.

He is not alone, and neither are we. Even in those moments when God’s whisper of affirmation is a faint memory, even after the water of baptism has dried up, we can still ask for help. Whether the angels come in visible form or stay unseen, they are with us.

For God has already declared, “You belong to me. You are my beloved, and I am delighted with you.” As we come to the Lord’s Table again, we affirm that it’s all true. We can step out of our own struggles for the moment, take in the presence of Christ in bread and cup, and find the strength to keep going on the journey.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Fred B. Craddock, “Test Run,” in The Christian Century, 22 February 2003, p. 29. Retrieved from http://www.religion-online.org/blog/article/test-run-mark-19-15/