The Sky Breaking Open

Jesus walks down from Nazareth, gets in the line at the river, and goes into the water like everyone else standing in it. John's baptism was for people admitting they had gone wrong and wanting to turn around, so every person in that river was there because of something he needed to leave behind. Jesus joins them. Mark gives no explanation for why, and he does not appear to think one is owed.

As Jesus comes up out of the water, the sky breaks open. Centuries earlier Isaiah had prayed one desperate sentence, asking God to rend the heavens and come down, and behind that prayer sat the ache of a whole nation: God up there, us down here, and no way across the gap. Mark puts the answer in half a verse and keeps going.

You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.

Two older sentences meet inside that one. In a psalm, God says to a king, you are my Son. In Isaiah, God points out his chosen servant and says his soul delights in him. Son and Servant, spoken over the same man in the same breath. And none of it has been earned yet. Jesus has not preached, healed, called anybody or died for anyone, and the approval comes anyway.

Then the same Spirit that had settled on him like a dove drives him out into the desert. The verb is rough. He is not led there and he is not invited; he is pushed, by the Spirit, out of the river and into empty country.

Forty days, and the number carries its own history. Israel spent forty years in a wilderness being tested so that God could see what was in their hearts. Moses spent forty days on the mountain. Elijah walked forty days to reach that same mountain. Now one man goes out for that same stretch of time, and where the nation failed its test, he does not fail his.

Mark gives the whole ordeal two sentences. No conversation, no three temptations, nothing quoted. He was tested by Satan, he was out there among the wild animals, and angels looked after him.

One more thing to carry out of these five verses. The book opens with the sky breaking open. Near the end, at the moment Jesus dies, the curtain in the temple that kept people out of the holiest place is torn in two. A barrier comes apart at each end, and nobody standing on the ground opens either one.