Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11;2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
What is gospel? What is the good news? What is ministry? On the occasion of the commissioning of Karen Sloan as Pastor I invite you to reflect with me on the way Mark begins to address these issues.

The first surprise is that we find John the Baptist here stripped of his statements about fiery judgement. Instead he simply prepares the way for Jesus. Mark might have left him out, but the memory was too strong that Jesus and John were closely connected. John belonged to movements of his time crying out for major change and calling people to prepare for God’s intervention with fire and judgement to remove evil and make society right. It was crying out from poverty. It was crying out for justice. It was crying out in hope. It was crying out for God to rule, instead of the corrupt rulers of the day. It echoed the crying out of the prophet with news that Israel in exile would be restored and come home. While Mark knows it didn’t happen as John predicted, he also knows that Jesus’ message of good news belonged to that expectation and responded to that crying. The good news is about embracing a vision for major change that will address poverty and oppression and bring justice and peace. While most of us have only second hand experience of such crying, it continues to raise its voice today, and good news and ministry, if it is retain any continuity with Jesus, needs to understand itself within that framework, and as serving that vision.

The second surprise is that John calls all individuals to change and through his immersing them in the Jordan river offers forgiveness of sins to all. This is surprising because we often hear that the good news is that Jesus came in order to make himself a sacrifice for sins to make forgiveness of sins possible. In fact for some people the gospel is primarily about forgiveness of sins which then qualifies people not to be sent to hell when they die. This is not Mark’s view. According to Mark already John offered God’s forgiveness of sins to all without discrimination. While Jesus’ good news included that, it was primarily about something else. To truncate the gospel to forgiveness of sins is to sell it short. The gospel is about much more than that.

The third surprise is Mark’s reworking of one of John’s predictions. He spoke of someone coming who would baptise with fire, perhaps Spirit and fire, a prediction of impending judgement. Mark trims it to: he shall baptise you with the Holy Spirit. Almost autimatically we think of the Day of Pentecost, the giving of the Spirit, effectively making John’s prediction refer to something after Jesus’ death. The surprise is that this is almost certainly not how Mark intended it. Rather Jesus was about to receive the Spirit in order to go out and flood his world with it. John was talking about Jesus’ ministry. Mark saw it as engaging in battle with evil spirits which held people captive. By the Spirit set them free, healed them, restored people to community, brought about change. The good news was that this was happening now and would ultimately bring liberation to all. So the future hope remains, most often depicted as resulting in a great universal feast bringing people together in peace, but that vision set an agenda and the Spirit empowered its realisation already in the present.

As Mark moved on from John the Baptist’s world, we have moved on from Mark’s world. We don’t attribute oppression or illness or alienation to demons. We don’t expect an impending major divine intervention to fix things. Our world is not flat. We speak a different language. But we stand in continuity with John and Jesus and Mark. Our agenda is still set by the crying in our world, in need and in hope. Our empowerment is still through openness to God’s Spirit. Our ministry is still about liberation, setting people free, restoring people to community and God, declaring God’s love and forgiveness, calling people to a vision of a world of justice and peace, symbolised in our eucharistic celebration. That is the vision to nourish us for ministry, represented in the self-giving of Jesus, the broken bread and poured out life. That is the vision to embrace. Then the mountains shall be moved, the valleys raised, the desert blossom like a rose, the fragrance of love fill the air, and creation rejoice. Then we shall be good news for the poor. Then shall the kingdom of God’s love reign.