Daily Devotional for Tuesday 16th April
The baptism and testing of Jesus
This is a good example of Mark just giving us the basics – see Matthew 3 for more detail! And Luke gives us the whole ‘back-story’ on John’s origins (Luke 1 and 3).
But what matters is that John points us to Jesus – Mark isn’t interested in diverting us from the main story: this is God’s Son we are talking about. And what else matters after that? As the disciples talked about it, many years later, to Mark, as he wrote it down for them, they must have said things like “How come we didn’t realise sooner?” or “Why were we so blind?” Probably they did know about John and Jesus’ baptism – maybe that’s why they were ready to follow him – but the truth was too big, too unique to fully register in their minds. But who can blame them – would we have been any different? Maybe they, as tough, no-nonsense working men, had laughed at John, the ‘’holy fool”, who lived in the desert and ate locusts. But, as we shall see, once they met Jesus, John’s message started to make sense.
Time to reflect…
I think it is when we meet Jesus that the Christian story starts to make sense – not a dusty set of rules and prohibitions, but a dynamic relationship with the living God:
When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
We know what Peter, John, James etc... didn’t when they first met him – that this Jesus was prepared to go all the way for us. Our response? I can’t better the last verse of this wonderful old hymn:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
