Mark 1:1-8 : “ The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'"
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
On the surface of the Earth nothing is perfect. Not even the written form of the Gospels. The divine side of the story of Jesus is unspeakable and in the same time it is almost fully incomprehensible in its depth and in its complexity.
Jack London the world-renowned novelist wrote in his novel entitled Martin Eden regarding God, that "there is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet.”
Probably he meant that about God we can not know anything with scientific certainty, as we can not ever know him really from close enough. However Jack London was wrong, because there is God, and we have a certain knowledge of God, because God revealed himself in the Scriptures. Actually, Herbert Spencer was not a prophet but an excentric and very, very controversial philosopher from the XIXth century, a proponent of the infamous and so called social-darwinism, and he was the very person who coined the phrasal-slogan-term of the survival of the fittest.
Whatever and whenever they were wrong, Jack London and Herbert Spencer still had a valid though highly decimated tiny decimal point regarding God and his heavenly kingdom, namely that the scientific methods of experimental learning are not capable to discover something beyond nature which subject we call the supernatural reality or the spiritual realm.
There was thus a great ancient need to create not one but four gospels in order to attempt just to scratch the surface of the phenomenon we call salvation and redemption, which is a part of the spiritual reality, the supernatural realm. Actually, there were even more Gospels than four, though they had been left out of the official canon. One of the most famous among them is the Gospel of Thomas, and one of the newest discovery is the Gospel of Judas, which consists of conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot, and in a frame of a second century theological development the document tries to whitewash the role of Judas, depicted by the other Gospels, as a greedy traitor.
Also a couple of important books are, so to speak, missing from the canon of the Holy Scriptures, books which were part of the so called Qumran library, and some of them were found in a library storage of an ancient synagogue, called the Cairo Genizah, like the four books of Enokh, the Book of the Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Community Rule of the Qumran and other documents, widely known and broadly used by the Judean and Galilean Jewish and Nazarene communities in the contemporary centuries of Jesus and his disciples, ranging from the second century BCE to the second century CE.
It would be worth to read and know all the documents along the canonized ones, those, that can pour a little more light on the life and views of the early congregation in Jerusalem, because for the sake of the integrity of the good faith we should reconstruct the original message of John the Baptist and Jesus, as it was given and exactly presented at that time, because their original message is not really and completely clear in any of the Gospels.
The initial message of both, John and Jesus, were almost totally the same and simple. Prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of God by repentance and by turning to God. Actually, it is not an extraordinary message, it had been all the same with all the prophets before them.
In Judea, repentance meant a little bit more than just being sad about former wrong-doings. It meant the complete turning away from sins and turning to God by keeping all the commandments of the Bible and starting a fully renewed life, like a new birth, represented by ghe rite of the baptism.
However there were some aspects of the message or the Good News, proclaimed by John and Jesus, which were surprisingly new, even in Judea, though in the Gospels there is no real emphasis on them. The group around John and Jesus was called the Nazarenes, but their other name was the Poor. That is why Jesus said in the Sermon of the Mount that “Blessed are the Poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
The Nazarene Poor were an identifiable segment of the society. It was not that Jesus would have applauded poverty, quite the opposite. The members of this society renounced Mammon the pagan god of greed and they had all their possessions in common and there was not needy among them. Exactly as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles about the Jerusalem congregation.
That is why Jesus told the rich young men that "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
It is obvious that one major part of the original message of the Gospel of John and Jesus was toward men and women that they have to renounce greed and have to share their wealth with all in the community, otherwise it will be very difficult to enter Heaven.
An other part of the original message was to abandon all hypocrisy. John the Baptist told the respected Priestly clan and the respected Pharisees, when they came to him to be baptized that , “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. ”
Similarly Jesus went to the Temple “And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade". And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.”
The Nazarenes who were called the Poor, left the regular society, abandoning greed and hypocrisy, leading a community life of piety and prayer. They gained the respect of the general population too as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter two that “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.”
This type of Christianity has been almost forgotten for the last two thousands of years, but Jesus reminds us that our faith must not be and can not be fulfilled by external rituals, but we have to receive and accept the gift of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, as he said “But you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”
Let us too prepare the returning way of the Lord, Amen.
