The God Who Goes All the Way Down
From Nazareth to the wilderness, Jesus dives headfirst into our mess.
1:9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
And so Jesus shows up, and Mark slips in two little Easter eggs that tell us right away: this Messiah is not going to play by the rules. First, he’s from Nazareth—a town so insignificant that Nathanael in John’s Gospel famously sneers, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Apparently, yes. The Savior of the world, in fact. God’s big plan for redemption kicks off not in Jerusalem’s polished temple or Rome’s gleaming palaces, but from a nowhere town on the wrong side of the tracks.
If that weren’t enough, Jesus then wades into the Jordan to be baptized—a river so unimpressive that Naaman the leper once complained it wasn’t even worth dipping into (2 Kings 5). Yet here comes the pure and holy Messiah, willingly plunging into the same muddy waters sinners were using to wash up. It’s an outrageous start. From his very first step onto the stage, Jesus is showing us that his kingdom isn’t for the shiny and respectable but for the ordinary, the overlooked, and the stained.
10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
And then the heavens tear open, and suddenly we’re given a glimpse behind the veil. The Spirit descends like a dove, echoing perhaps the dove from Noah’s story—a symbol of God’s promise in the wilderness. And the Father’s voice booms, splitting the heavens wide, sounding not unlike Isaiah’s cry: “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” (Isaiah 64). Well, here he is.
For a brief moment, we see Father, Son, and Spirit in one frame. Should we break out a whiteboard and try to diagram the Trinity? Three persons, one essence, eternal perichoresis? Not a chance. This isn’t the moment for formulas. What matters here is something simple enough to tell a room full of students: God is relational. Before the world was made, the Father, Son, and Spirit lived in eternal, joyful communion. And now, in Mark’s Gospel, that relationship is cracking open to make room for us. The good news is not just that God exists, but that God invites.
12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
But the celebration doesn’t last long. Immediately, the Spirit hurls Jesus deeper into the wilderness. There’s that word again—wilderness. It’s where Israel failed, where humanity collapses, where resources run dry. Before Jesus begins his ministry proper, he must go further into the desolation, into the depths of our condition.
Mark doesn’t give us the long temptation stories that Matthew and Luke offer. He keeps it spare—wild animals, Satan, angels. But that brevity might be the point. For Mark, the real “temptation narrative” comes later, in chapter 8, when Peter rebukes Jesus for talking about a cross. That’s where the true struggle surfaces: not a passing test in the desert, but the ongoing choice to go all the way down into our darkness and not turn back.
So here’s the picture: Jesus doesn’t just dip his toes into humanity’s brokenness. He plunges headfirst, from Nazareth’s obscurity to Jordan’s muddy waters to the desolation of the wilderness. And all of it foreshadows the final plunge—the descent into death itself—so that we, too, might be pulled up into life.
From the very start, Mark wants us to know: this Messiah is upside-down, this God is relational, and this salvation is found not in escaping the wilderness but in the One who enters it more deeply than we ever could.
Reflection Question
What might it look like for you to receive faith not as something you achieve, but as an invitation to share in the love already flowing between the Father, Son, and Spirit?
