NOTES for Mar 1:1-15

We are used to the idea of holiness. People are very fond of praying to saints, and then, when zeal becomes excessive, they turn into a kind of pantheon of lesser gods. But faith does not tolerate anything done out of habit. Such a crystallized image of holiness must be mercilessly broken apart. We can remember that we are all saints at the moment when we receive Communion, for it is said, "Holy things for the holy."

But we can also remember the image of John the Baptist. He is first among the saints, greater among those born of women (Matt. 11:11), the limit of human holiness; in him holiness abides in the fullest way. And yet "the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he" (Matt. 11:11). Why does the Lord say this? Precisely in order to warn us against creating pantheons. It is precisely for this reason that the image of John helps overcome the tendency described above toward deifying what is not divine, since prayers to him are not nearly as widespread as, say, Marian prayers.

And if we think about it, what two special human beings stand, as it were, above the human race? The Theotokos and John the Forerunner. The Deesis row of the iconostasis in any Orthodox church says the same thing. But we are not used to praying to the Baptist. Maybe it is worth beginning sometime, with God's help, and asking him to teach us not to make an idol for ourselves (Ex. 20:4)?

What can "baptism with the Holy Spirit" mean? We are so used to this expression today that we have, it seems, somewhat forgotten its original meaning. Perhaps the word "baptism" itself is to blame, filled as it is with its own, purely Christian meaning and somewhat obscuring the meaning of its Greek and Aramaic equivalent: a cleansing washing that accompanied the traditional Jewish ritual of purification, which consisted, properly speaking, of this washing and a special kind of cleansing sacrifice. During that sacrifice, as during the washing, the person being cleansed publicly confessed his sin aloud before everyone. Confession of sin and repentance alone were not enough. The washing, like the cleansing sacrifice, was meant to free the sinner from the consequences of the sin he had committed, consequences that were completely real and that, if no measures were taken, would hang over the sinner for the rest of his life as a heavy spiritual burden, interfering with his relationship with God and blocking his road into the Kingdom.

But water and sacrificial blood cleansed only from the consequences of a specific sin, and even then only if it had been committed involuntarily, through ignorance or weakness. To enter the Kingdom, however, one had to be freed from sin completely. And here only God Himself, by His breath, could cleanse a person. No human being has such power. Only the Messiah sent by God can open for those seeking the Kingdom the path to the goal they seek.

Speaking of the coming Messiah, Mark mentions washing "with the Holy Spirit." What does he mean? And why was such a washing impossible in pre-Christian times? Did God's breath not fill the world then just as it does now? Of course it did. All the prophets of Israel spoke of the breath of YHWH (of the Spirit of the Lord), and the movement of this breath was undoubtedly familiar to them. And yet there is something special in the washing with God's breath of which John speaks.

What were cleansing washings in pre-Christian times? They were part of a rite of purification, the part with which that rite began. It was thought that impurity stained a person both from the outside and from within, and that one had to be cleansed from it both outwardly and inwardly. Ritual washings were used for outward cleansing: water, people thought, carried away everything from which a person wanted to cleanse himself, his body, and his life. But this was not enough: the cleansing washing was always followed by a special purifying sacrifice, and here, through sprinkling with sacrificial blood consecrated by God, the person was cleansed already from within. God's presence, of course, also sanctified the body already washed with water, but most of all it sanctified the soul and heart, freeing them from the consequences of a committed sin or of contact with uncleanness. But such cleansing, alas, did not guarantee freedom from sin in the future.

Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of the Messiah there can be no place for sin. To become its inhabitant, one must be completely changed, become so alien to sin that it will never again enter the life of the one seeking the Kingdom.

This, of course, is beyond the strength of fallen humanity. But what is impossible for man is possible for God and for the Messiah sent by Him. He can wash a person not with water and not with sacrificial blood, but with that breath of God which can not only cleanse a person, but completely transform him. This transformation becomes, for the one seeking the Kingdom, the final cleansing washing and the final sanctification: a washing and sanctification after which there will no longer be room for sin in his life. At least to the extent that this life will belong to the Kingdom.

The Savior's earthly ministry begins with the descent of the Spirit of God, followed by the testing in the wilderness, described in more detail by other evangelists, and by the ministry itself, the testimony to the Kingdom. Mark describes all this briefly and concisely. What, then, is before us: a unique feature of Jesus' ministry as Messiah, or a universal spiritual algorithm of some kind, insofar as one can speak of algorithms at all when speaking about spiritual life? Or perhaps both? Of course, Christ's path is unique. But on the other hand, Jesus was not born a human being in order to have nothing in common with us, including in matters of spiritual life. We will not have the same tests that awaited Him in the wilderness, although something similar may certainly await us too: the devil is not as inventive as people sometimes think. But in any case we will have to testify to the Kingdom, provided we are Christians in more than name. And the descent of the Spirit of God will also certainly become part of our spiritual life, provided, of course, that we do not remain forever, spiritually speaking, children who have taken the first step toward the Kingdom and then stopped barely over the threshold. But how all this will happen remains an open question. Sometimes similar or identical spiritual processes take very different forms under different external conditions. Each person has his own, and there is no point in imitating someone else's spiritual life. In any case it is useless, and almost always it brings only harm. Not to mention that, in the case of the Messiah, such efforts look, among other things, simply ridiculous. Jesus did not come into our world so that we would imitate His life, nor did He come in order to force each of us to go through the same path He went through. After all, none of us is capable of that; one would have to be free from sin. Jesus came into the world in order to give us the Kingdom, to everyone who wants to enter it. And also in order to help us get there. Of course, the path into the Kingdom is no less difficult than the path of righteousness in pre-Christian times. It is just as impossible to walk it without God's help as it was impossible to walk the path of righteousness without His help. But on the path into the Kingdom there is an obstacle that is in principle insurmountable for the human person: the sinfulness of fallen human nature. And if along the path of righteousness a person is still able, with God's help, somehow to walk, then each of us can only be carried into the Kingdom in someone's arms. The whole earthly path of Jesus was needed precisely so that afterward He could carry each of us into the Kingdom in His arms. Of course, this by no means implies that there will be no tests in our life or that we will not need the help of the Spirit of God. After all, it will not work to travel the entire way in the Messiah's arms, and life in the Kingdom requires the ability to walk. But He will help us overcome what is insurmountable for us. Otherwise we would have to forget about the Kingdom. Forever.

The Savior's earthly ministry begins with His washing and with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him, followed by testing in the wilderness. At first glance this may look somewhat strange: Jesus was born into the world already bearing within Himself the whole fullness of God. What could He receive at the moment of the descent of God's breath upon Him? What did He lack? And what was the meaning of the test through which He then passed in the wilderness?

If He had only needed simply to walk on earth, even revealing to the world the whole divine and human fullness, and then leave this world as all who lived here before Him left it, nothing like this would have happened to Him. But He is the Messiah, and He had to reveal the Kingdom to the world in all its fullness.

It was not enough for Him simply to be born the God-Man. This was the necessary condition of the service entrusted to Him. But the service itself consisted in something else: it was necessary that His uniqueness cease to be something belonging to Him alone; it had to be opened to the world. He had not simply to reveal Himself as King; He had to open to everyone who seeks the path into His Kingdom. Together with Him something greater than He Himself had to enter the world - greater not in fullness, but in scope.

And this greater thing, His Kingdom, had to be opened to the world in His unity with the Father. The Holy Spirit, the fullness of the Father's breath, made this manifestation of the Kingdom to the world possible. And the tests in the wilderness through which He passed immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him were a testing of Him not simply as a human being or even as the God-Man, but as King of that Kingdom which He was to become.

It is no accident that all of them, one way or another, were connected with the single main question: what kind of King will You be? How will You rule: according to the laws of the fallen world, using human weaknesses and vices, or as King of God's Kingdom? The right choice meant the establishment of the Kingdom; the wrong one meant collapse at the very beginning of the ministry. And this was a completely free, humanly free choice of Jesus. The choice with which His ministry as Messiah began.

The Lord was tempted in the wilderness for forty days in order to be entirely like us. Thus, when we begin to complain that the Lord cannot understand this because He has never gone through it, He can answer us: “No, I am here now, with you, in the trial in which you now find yourself. If you are undergoing temptation, know that I went through it and overcame it; you were created in My image and likeness, I created you, I love you, I died for you on the Cross and rose again, and therefore you too can emerge victorious from temptation. I showed you an example; I overcame temptations, and I overcame death.” The Kingdom of God is very near; it is within us to the extent that we make room for it in our heart. Fasting is a time when we can clear space within ourselves, carry out a thorough cleaning, and take out the trash; then much more room will remain for God. Then God will come, proclaim the Good News of Salvation to us, and become King in our heart, for a kingdom is what belongs to the King, His own personal domain.

Mark describes the calling of the apostles sparingly, concisely, in a few words. He called - they went. Other evangelists mention certain details in some cases, give dialogues that unfolded between Jesus and His future disciples. Dialogues, of course, did take place, because to call means to make oneself heard and answered, and here dialogue is impossible to avoid; here words must certainly be spoken. For Mark, however, they are not important. He sees the main thing: that response to the Savior's call which in the end and in essence could be reduced to one thing alone, to the fact that the one called leaves everything and follows the One who called. This is the main thing, and everything else is only the embodiment, the expression of the main thing, an embodiment necessary insofar as we live not only in eternity, but also in time.

The main thing lies in the relationships that bind the disciples to Jesus, just as they bind us, if of course we are Christians not only in name. In essence, these relationships are completely impossible to express, just as it is impossible, for example, to express the experience of one's own existence, what is sometimes called pure self-consciousness. Just as pure self-consciousness can be experienced but is completely impossible to express in words, so it is impossible to express a true relationship in words; it is no accident that poets of all times and peoples have maintained that for true, deep love, for example, it is completely impossible to find adequate words that would express it.

This, however, does not mean that love or another deep and authentic experience is in principle inexpressible. They are expressed and embodied perfectly well, but not at the level of abstract description; rather, in the context of those same relationships, at the level of interaction between people who love one another. So too true relationships of disciple and teacher are indescribable, but fully expressible in the context of the interaction that becomes for them a kind of outer covering, just as shared life in marriage for spouses who love one another becomes the outer covering of their love.

In this case, however, the evangelist pays very little attention to the covering; he is interested in the essence of the matter. He called - they went. Nothing more can be told here; the rest is hidden inside this "went." The story becomes a hint, a hint at what cannot be expressed in words but what everyone can experience as the reality of his own life when a meeting with Christ takes place in it. The very meeting without which there is no Christianity.

One of the main themes we encounter in the Gospel of Mark is the theme of calling and our response to that calling. This is not a matter of spontaneity: these four men had apparently already met Jesus (this is one way to understand John 1:35-51). We ourselves are not reading these lines for the first time either. What is striking here is something else: how briefly the evangelist speaks of it. Calling and conversion are, after all, only the very beginning of the journey. The words and deeds of Jesus, the disciples' doubts and denial, and the joy of the Resurrection will be recounted in much greater detail. Yet, on the other hand, without this episode there would have been no Gospel at all. What would have happened if no one had followed Jesus? Christ's action in this world continues in our own time. And this time the disciples, without whom nothing would happen, are you and I. That is why it is so important for us today to realize once again that the Lord has called us to follow Him—and to find within ourselves the courage to climb out of the boat and go after Him.