• Genesis 1: 1-5

Unabashedly using a Babylonian creation myth for his own purpose, the author of this account emphasizes God’s initiative and beneficence.  The Hebrew “bara” (“create”) is used exclusively as an act of which only God is capable.  Creation is carried out by “the wind of God” sweeping over the primeval scene.  Robert Alter writes that God’s “breath” that “hovers” over the waters is the same verb used to describe “an eagle fluttering over its young… with a connotation of nurture.” (The Five Books of Moses, p. 7)  The first gift from God is light, which is declared “good.”  (Five more times God will declare the splendor, diversity and fecundity of creation “good,” and finally when it is complete,  “very good.”)

• Psalm 29

The use of Canaanite poetry is more obvious in this psalm than in others.  The wonders of nature inspire awe in us– thunder, the legendary cedars of Lebanon, the alien wilderness, the miracle of birth, floods– can be perceived as the Lord’s “voice,” glory and majesty.

• Acts of the Apostles 19: 1-7

Given the prominence of John the Baptizer and the many followers he attracted, it should not be surprising that Luke in his Acts of the Apostles would asses his role and significance.  He compares and contrasts.  John the Baptizer called for repentance as preparation for the One who was to follow him.  That One, Luke writes, is Jesus, who brought another type of baptism, of the Holy Spirit, which is distinct from the baptism offered by John.

• Mark 1: 4-11

Mark depicts John the Baptizer as a direct link to the messianic prophets of the past.  But this narrative contains the same distinction made in other synoptics and John, specifically a distinction between the baptism with “water” offered by John for “repentance” compared to the baptism offered by Jesus of the “Holy Spirit.”  The works, words and message of Jesus are to be understood as something new, to which those who came before him could point.  The sign of this something new from God is the Holy Spirit, which descends on Jesus just as he emerges from the water of the Baptizer’s conventional baptism.  And as significantly the text emphasizes that “he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  To finish fittingly this dramatic scene, “A voice came from heaven, ‘You are my son, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased’.”

What are we to make of this Biblical jumble– four gospel accounts plus Paul’s gloss; two creation stories, including today’s boldly taken from another religion and re-purposed; multiple iterations of the same major narratives throughout the Hebrew Scriptures; the authorized liturgical hymnal (the psalms) happily and heavily borrowing from earlier texts and other religions?  Ludwig Wittgenstein thought about this question and answered in Culture and Value:

“God has four people recount the life of His incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies– but might we say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite the average historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing?  So that letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due…” (p. 31e)

“Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe!  But not believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin, which you can only as a result of [your] specific life.” (p. 32e)

“But if I am REALLY saved– what I need is certainty– not wisdom, dreams or speculation– and this certainty is faith.  And faith is faith in what is needed in my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence.  For it is my soul with its passions, as it were its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind.” (p. 33e)

Today’s readings and gospel beg, borrow and steal from all kinds of texts to induce a belief, a very specific belief:  God’s Spirit nurtured all that exists into being; that same Spirit, which was  present at creation and appeared at the baptism of Jesus  designating him “Beloved,” is ready to “baptize” you if you will step forward and accept the gift.  You are offered not some conventional ritual of repentance; you are offered a “baptism” by the same Spirit present at creation and at the inaugural of a new kind of creation– all that God did for us in and through Jesus!

Today’s readings and gospel make a startling claim that is as powerful today as when it was first thought: God is not finished, the narrative does not end in the biblical text, it continues in those who come to accept themselves as baptized by that very same “holy Spirit” as Jesus himself!   Specific “lives,” as Wittgenstein insisted, come to see themselves as on the same continuum of God’s initial and continuing work in the world! The constant that runs from creation though each individual is atttested to by the same “spirit,” which also authenticated Jesus as God’s “beloved.”