Sermon by the Rev.
Andrew S. Rollins
Palm Sunday (Year B),
April 5, 2009
Text: Mark 14:32 –
72, 15:1 - 47
Title: “A Certain
Young Man”
All of them deserted him and fled. A certain
young man was following him, wearing
nothing but a linen cloth. They caught
hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran
off naked.
A Certain Young Man
This reference to ‘a certain young man’ occurs only in Mark’s
account of the Passion. It’s an odd detail. According to Mark, there was ‘a certain
young man’ who followed Jesus and his disciples into the
There is a long-standing tradition that this ‘certain young man’ was the Gospel writer Mark himself. Mark may have included himself in the scene as a sort of anonymous signature to his gospel. Maybe this was his way of saying, “I was there” without actually mentioning himself by name. We’ll probably never know for certain.
But whatever the true identity of this ‘certain young man’, this odd detail serves to emphasize an extremely important fact about the Passion of Jesus Christ. Mark wants us to remember that all of the men who had befriended and followed Jesus fled. And I mean they fled hard! No one stayed. Not a one. It was a total desertion. And they didn’t just slip away into the night. They turned tail and ran hard, knocking each other down -- “Get out of my way!” through the gate, over the fence, every man for himself, mad dash. And the last one thing Jesus and his captors saw was the naked butt of that one last pathetic friend of Jesus. Sorry – but it’s right there in the Bible. He ‘ran off naked.’
Jesus was left totally alone in the
Jesus at the Hands of
His Friends
During Holy Week, we remember that Jesus suffered at the hands of his enemies. He suffered at the hands of the chief priests and elders, who had long plotted against him, and finally handed him over to the Romans. Then, of course, Jesus suffered at the hands of the Romans who actually put him to death. We remember that Jesus suffered at the hands of his enemies.
But Mark would not want us to forget during this Holy Week that Jesus also suffered at the hands of his friends. Jesus suffered at the hands of his friends. And perhaps that was the worst suffering of all. Those disciples had traveled side by side with Jesus for some three years. Jesus had trained, instructed them. He had poured his life into those Twelve. Along with his teaching, Jesus had given them the gift of his companionship, his friendship. He’d called them ‘my disciples’; they’d called him ‘the Master.’ These were the ones who had attended all the confirmation classes; they headed the committees and gave to the capital fund drive; they wore the silver crosses and sang the hymns in four part harmony. They were you and me.
At the Last Supper, all these friends of Jesus drank from the same cup. And they all pledged to die with him -- not just Peter (14:31). But when the point of testing came, they all abandoned him to his fate. They all deserted him. Their discipleship was a wholesale failure.
They Are Us
Mark is not just reporting the facts of what happened that night. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, Mark is writing for us today. We are Jesus’ friends. Will we betray him? Will we disown him? Will we dessert him? This is meant to speak to us.
“No. We’re different. We’re more spiritually mature. We’ve progressed as a human race. We’ve advanced in our discipleship and are more reliable and trustworthy. We have . . . chocolate crosses now, after all.” No, we are just like the disciples. We are full of bluster one minute. The next minute we’ve fallen asleep. Then we wake up, but only to run away.
In our lives as Christians, we all have these crucial moments of cowardice, betrayal, and faithlessness. John Eldredge recounts the true story of one squad of paratroopers on the night before the Allies hit beaches at Normany for D-Day. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were dropped behind enemy lines to cut off Hitler’s reinforcements. “Alone or in groups, they moved through the dead of night across a country they had never been to in order to fight an enemy they couldn’t see or predict. It was a moment of unparalleled bravery . . . .” (We think of The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan.) But not every paratrooper was a hero that night. Eldridge writes, “Too many hunkered down in the hedgerows to await the day; a few had even gone to sleep. Pvt. Francis Palys of the 506th saw what was perhaps the worst dereliction of duty. He had gathered a squad near Vierville. Hearing ‘all kinds of noise and singing from a distance,’ he and his men sneaked up on a farmhouse. In it was a mixed group of both American divisions. The paratroopers had found [liquor] in the cellar . . . and they were drunker than a bunch of hillbillies on a Saturday night wingding. Unbelievable” (Wild at Heart, John Eldredge).
Our cowardice and betrayal may not be on that scale, but that’s just because we haven’t had the opportunity. Our small betrayals just point to the real likelihood that, if we were truly put to the test – at the point of the sword, so to speak – we would probably leave that soldier holding our linen cloth just like that ‘certain young man.’
I suppose I could command you, ‘So don’t fail. Just don’t do it!’ But you will. You will fail. Or, I suppose you might say, “Not me. I’m different. I will never betray him.” But Mark has anticipated that response. Mark says, “Don’t forget. Peter claimed he was different.”
The Faithfulness of
God
More than in the other three gospels, Mark’s portrait of the Twelve is one of failure. I think what Mark is saying is that at the center of the real experience of every Christian is always some deep, total failure. We could share stories of our marvelous victories in Christ, moments where we stood firm, times where we suffered alongside the Master, occasions where we were God’s to the Church. But Mark, writing through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, knows us better than that.
The Gospel is the story of God’s faithfulness to us, despite our own unfaithfulness. To failed disciples, Jesus says he will be faithful. That’s the ‘new covenant’ he made with them (and makes with us) at the Last Supper. He commits (he covenants) himself to them. He promises that he will remain faithful to them, knowing that they – you and me – will not be faithful.
That experience of total failure (they all ran away, one naked), and Jesus’ subsequent forgiveness of them, launched the Church. Those first disciples really experienced God’s forgiveness. They hadn’t just read about it in a book, or watched a DVD about it, or received it as a teaching, or affirmed it as a doctrine. They had actually lived through total failure, total desertion, and personally experienced forgiveness for the Master.
As I said before, there have been many attempts to explain the identity of this ‘certain young man’ in Mark’s gospel. The explanation that I like best is that Mark intentionally left the face of this character blank as a means of inviting us (his readers) to insert ourselves into this scene.
This Holy Week, let’s step into this scene and be honest about who we are, so that we can hear as if for the first time that Good News of what God has done for us.