Today, with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the final feast of the Christmas season, we transition from our celebration of Christmas and our focus on the childhood of Jesus to his adult life. Appropriately our gospel reading is from the start of Mark’s Gospel. Mark doesn’t include anything before this time – he just jumps straight in at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.
But that’s not to say he skips over the message that other evangelists give in their nativity stories.
Matthew and Luke use angels, and shepherds, and kings, and wise people in the Temple to tell us about the significance of Jesus. Mark doesn’t bother with any of that. He goes straight to the point. He has God himself tell us who this is: “You are my beloved Son”. You couldn’t be any more direct than that.
But directness can still leave questions open. OK, Jesus is the Son of God – but beyond being shocked and amazed, what do we make of that fact? Mark spells out his understanding of what this means in the rest of his Gospel. But in today’s readings we also see how other parts of scripture help fill in the picture. Once again Isaiah has something to offer us.
Isaiah looks forward to a “servant” of the Lord: “my chosen one with whom I am pleased”. The parallel with God saying in Mark’s words : “my Son, with you I am well pleased” is hardly a coincidence. Isaiah goes on to tell us what God is pleased about: “he shall bring forth justice to the nations”.
Isaiah is big on the message of God going out to “all nations”. We also hear in our second reading how Peter has to counter the tendency in his time to an exclusive vision of God’s relation with humanity. He explains how he came to the realization that “in every nation whoever fears (God) and acts uprightly is acceptable to him”. Just as the Jews of Peter’s time had forgotten the message of Isaiah, so Christians have also often forgotten the message of Peter.
But what of the “justice” that Isaiah speaks of?
Now we are big on justice. We hear frequent calls for “justice”. I want justice for my sister, my brother, my country, my people… Isaiah prophesies of the role of the servant: “I, the Lord, have called you for the victory of justice”. Bring it on we say…
When we cry out for justice, what are we expecting? Isaiah tells us the people of the covenant are called “to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” Peter tells us Jesus “went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil”.
Is that how we understand justice? Are we looking to heal those oppressed by evil? Not killing them, or imprisoning them – but healing them…