The Bible is full of details that don’t necessarily seem out of place, but that leave one wondering why they were included in the texts. Since I believe that the Word is plenary-inspired, it forces me to assume that every syllable included in either testament carries some sort of weight and is worth my consideration. God’s Word is the only book I approach this way. I took a class from a professor who lived and breathed Herman Melville and treated his writings with the same pedantic reverence, which left me gagging and reeling from exhaustion. Moby Dick tried to kill me and I’m still bitter about it.
On the night of Christ’s arrest and before his farce of a trial, the story was temporarily hijacked by a strange person. Mark 14:51-52 says, “A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.” (NIV)
That’s all we get about this person. He showed up in a sheet and ran away without it. That’s embarrassing. And it makes little sense in this context, at least from my twenty-first century perspective. Naked is funny and everything about that evening was not.
Did the author of this Gospel try to lighten the mood with this little background detail? That’s hardly appropriate and I could be wrong, but I think that westerners are the only humans on the planet who ever want to joke around in a situation like this.
I could think of several reasons for including these lines in the story, but could hardly justify any of them on my own. So I went to the commentaries and my mountain of reference materials. Several theologians suggest that the naked person is a reference to Mark himself. If such is the case, the writing feels almost akin to something like, “I had this friend who…” when the speaker is really telling an embarrassing story about themselves. Then again, some of us have no qualms sharing about our own adventures in the buff.
Others believe that this was just some neighborhood boy, jostled from his sleep from the noise and commotion and as young men can be, was in too much of a hurry to adequately dress himself- he wanted to see what was happening (I can’t tell you how many times I was in too much of a hurry to put my pants on). Perhaps after the disciples fled like a bunch of pansies, the men who arrested Jesus attempted to capture him as well. This and the first hypothetical are concrete and could make sense.
Then there’s the metaphorical explanation- because if one holds that every word in the Bible is God-breathed, it’s officially acceptable to over-spiritualize every bit of it. Linen represented two different things when used as a symbol during the time of the New Testament. First, it pointed toward wealth. Secondly, it symbolized moral purity. The night of Jesus’ arrest was one of the most heinous in the history of the universe, so one could easily see that this young man represented the world as it set out to kill it’s Creator and Savior. It wasn’t as though much of humanity’s morality was in tact at that point though anyway.
The point that I’m getting at is that sometimes, exegesis has to be a bit conjectural. We don’t know everything about God, Jesus’ experience and the Bible, so we end up like the scribes of the time, reading what others have said before us, wondering if they were right. I hate to be wrong (worse, I despise being called on it for some reason, probably pride). In my overwhelming desire to accurately depict and represent God’s word, I’ve had to guess a few times. Or avoid writing about something at all.
Have you ever read Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard? He struggles similarly with the story of Abraham taking Isaac to the mountaintop. He talked of fully embracing doubts and difficulties with the bibles, being honest with yourself about having the doubts and completely walking through these doubts with “fear and trembling”.
You’ve read Kierkegaard? We should go bowling. I couldn’t ever word it as eloquently as he did, but you hit the nail on the head. There are just some things we need to walk through even if we are trembling. Or laughing, which might be more common for this guy.
Dude, the day I found out I could get Kierkegaard and G.K. Chesterton books on my kindle for free was a fantastic day in the Helms household. For me at least. I think I mostly just annoyed my wife. and I’m totally down for bowling.
I’ve got the app on my phone, I’ll have to look into it. I love Kierkegaard, not overly familiar with Chesterton, other than seeing a few of his books here and there.
Chesterton was a huge influence on the writings of C.S. Lewis. Here’s a couple of his quotes to win you over.
An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
and perhaps my favorite:
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
I’m sold. I’ll have to take a look at what’s out there and pick a few up.
Nope… Never happened to me… Then again I’m pretty dull and closed minded… soooooo yeah. Makes things a bit easier, don’t you think?
I’ve only ever heard that it was the style of the time to indicate who the author was in a very discreet way, but it does most certainly lend itself to the credibility of him as an eyewitness, which I think was the intent the whole time, but… refer to above…
Floyd, I love it. I’d never call you dull or closed minded. I’ll let you know if I ever think either of those. It’s just funny to me to see the different historical guesses people make because we haven’t been given all the answers.