Jesus' Baptism and Patterns in Biblical Narrative

Youth Sunday School | At-home Resources
March 13| Jesus Baptism & Design Patterns by the Bible Project

Youth Sunday School meets the second and fourth Sunday of the month following the Sunday worship service, from around 11:10am to 12 noon.

During Lent we are spending time in the Gospel of Mark. After exploring who wrote the book of Mark last week, we turned our attention to the text, Mark 1:1-13. This includes Mark's incredible statement about who Jesus is (the only time Mark gives his own opinion; the rest of the book he tells stories and leave us to draw our own conclusions). Then he introduces Jesus into the story as Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan River.

We looked at two videos this week, to help us better understand what this meant for Jesus to be baptized.  The first one is an exploration of Luke's retelling of the baptism story.

The second video is about Design Patterns throughout scripture that draw the varied stories of the Bible into one great narrative. One of the examples they use in this video is the pattern of Baptism seen throughout the Bible. 

We looked more closely at the many examples in scripture of this baptism pattern through a handout. You can download this handout and explore scripture for yourself. If you have questions, please bring them up in class. We would love to spend more time talking about this topic.

We finished our time together around the baptismal font in the sanctuary, feeling the very ordinary element of water used in baptism. We talked about baptism in the Presbyterian context and what we believe as a church. We also shared some about our own stories and pondered the call on each of our lives to commit ourselves to be disciples of Jesus.

Our next meeting is on March 27. We will continue our discussion of Mark.