About That Random Naked Guy in Mark’s Gospel…

Illustration by Mikey Karpiel.

Any normal preacher would read the story of Jesus’ arrest in Mark and proceed to tell you about why Judas betrayed Jesus with that kiss or what Jesus means when he says that the scriptures will be fulfilled. But I still have too much of a twelve-year-old boy in me, so my eye focuses on that random naked guy at the end of the story (14:51-52), because that’s just plain weird. Mark throws in this one little detail: When Jesus was arrested, there was this fella wearing some kind of toga, and the soldier who had come for Jesus grabbed him, too. But they only grabbed the fabric, and he got away free. Naked, but free nonetheless.

The most common speculation about why the random naked guy shows up in the story is that Mark is revealing something of his own experience: Mark himself was the naked guy, and including this bit in the story was his own confession. He’s telling us that he didn’t cut it when it came time to defend Jesus, and he wants his readers to do better. But I don’t buy that explanation.  If this random naked guy was the author of the gospel and he’s confessing, it’s not to provide a moral lesson. Instead, it’s to say that the disciples’ response to Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion and death started with this guy, and it didn’t get better.

The random naked guy ran away to save his hide, if not his toga. Then Peter denied ever knowing our Lord. By the time Jesus hung dying on the cross, no one was left. Anyone in the story that you might have expected to stick by Jesus, including the eleven remaining disciples, had closed up the discipleship shop, shuttered their windows, and barred their doors. Leaving Jesus’ cry of dereliction with a response of silence. “Eloi, eloi,” and then … just crickets.

Everyone ran and hid, but only the random guy at the arrest had been naked. He has good company in the Bible. When King David had the Ark of the Covenant brought into Jerusalem, he stripped down to his birthday suit and danced the goofy out of excitement at the presence of the Lord. When Noah finally left the ark, he promptly got himself black-out drunk. His sons found him naked, grabbed a cloak, walked into the tent backwards to avoid seeing anything that would embarrass old dad, and they covered him up.

The most important naked folks in the Bible, though, can actually help us understand something about our random naked guy in Mark. Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden. While it might be a problem for illustrators of children’s Bibles, it wasn’t a problem for God. Yet when our father and mother in the Garden sinned, they came to see their nakedness as a shameful sign of their sin. They made loincloths out of fig leaves and covered themselves, and they hid from God. They couldn’t fess up to what they had done.

If the random naked guy in Mark’s gospel is the writer himself, then he’s doing exactly the opposite of what Adam and Eve did. He’s not afraid to admit what shames him. He’s no better than Judas the betrayer or Peter the denier. He’s the naked guy who runs away. And by telling the truth about his inability to stick with the Lord, he winds up exactly where Jesus wants him, exactly where Jesus has a chance to do something with him, exactly where he can become the recipient of what the Lord has to offer.

In his 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, Martin Luther wrote, “It is certain that we must completely despair of ourselves in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.” What he means is this: Christ comes for sinners, not for pious religious people who have their act together. In the gospels, the people who are on the receiving end of his mercy are the down-and-out, the hopeless, the outcast, the lost and the least. It’s the people who have nothing to present to God who actually get the full measure of Jesus’ power and grace. It’s the paralyzed man who had to be carried to Jesus. It’s the woman caught in adultery. It’s a tax collector like Zacchaeus. It’s the Gerasene demoniac. And it’s every last dead person he encounters, from the dead son of the widow of Nain to the rotten, stinking four-days-dead Lazarus.

Mark seems to offer a first-century version of a cable TV make-over show. He knows that if you want what Jesus has to offer, you can’t come to him wearing the wrong thing. And the right thing for your appearance with the Lord is always simply no thing. As the great hymn, Rock of Ages, says, “Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to thy cross I cling. Naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace.” If the random naked guy is Mark, then he’s displaying more than his physical nakedness. We also see his spiritual state. When you get asked about what you’ve done for the Lord and actually say, “Well. I guess I’ve got nothing,” then you’re at the place where, as Luther said, you can obtain the grace of Christ.

The summer after I graduated from college, I worked on a traveling day camp staff. One week the six of us had run a camp for elementary-age kids at a lakeside camp that had been rented from the local Baptist church. On the last day of the camp week after all the parents had picked up their progeny, and after we had spent our last energy cleaning and putting everything back in shape for those Baptists, we six Bible camp counselors decided to do some clothing-optional swimming.

The camp was on a secluded bay, and it was supper time, so no one would be water skiing. The other five thought it was fine to stand with males and females facing away from each other and leave their suits on the beach. But I thought better of the situation and grabbed an empty plastic milk jug. I waded out to chest-high water and put my swim trunks through the handle of the floating milk jug and kept ’em handy. Apart from getting ribbed for being such a prude, all was well and good.

Well, it was until all the Baptists drove into camp, parked their cars and walked toward the beach for their church potluck picnic. Now my fellow counselors who were certain of their own power and freedom were faced with the real possibility of the summer’s early end. How were they going to get their swimsuits, except to turn to the one whom they mocked for not being cool enough? Now they knew they needed the guy in possession of what came to be known as “The Lucky Jug.” I donned my trunks under water, walked to the beach, snatched up the swimwear, distributed it to the proper people, and the Baptists were none the wiser.

That is exactly what the season of Lent is about: knowing your nakedness and then relying on the one you mocked and killed to give you the life you thought you’d created yourself. If it’s essential that we come to Jesus with nothing, absolutely nothing of our own as proof that he should regard us well, no Bible reading, no church attendance, no giving level, then Jesus promises to give you more.

On Easter Sunday, the gospel will tell of a bundle of cloth left behind in the tomb. The risen Jesus walks out of the tomb with a naked resurrected body, and he leaves his grave clothes behind for you. In fact, the word for the linen cloth the random naked guy left behind is the same word as the one for grave clothes.

In Galatians, Paul says, “For all of you who have been baptized have clothed yourselves in Christ.” When you’re at your wits’ end, at the end of your rope, and at the end of your life and have no other hope, this promise remains: Christ clothes the naked with his righteousness. Jesus, God in the flesh, wraps himself around your shame. Christ takes on sinners and spins such fine garments for them that in the Revelation the hosts of heaven look at them and say, “Wow. Who are these people arrayed in white?” The answer is that they’re the ones who were brought low in life, the ones made naked and who knew it, the ones who came to Jesus in their need. There’s an echo of those robes in every baptismal gown, pastoral alb, and funeral pall that announces the naked truth that death is covered over in the Lord’s resurrection mercy.

You gotta love that random naked guy who ran from the danger of Jesus’ arrest and, like you and me and sinners everywhere, found himself running right into the Lord’s arms. How else could Mark the naked runner have ever had the courage to tell the story of a God who comes in the flesh, who is abandoned and killed by the very people he’d come to save, and who rose from the dead with a glorious eternal obsession to clothe, claim and forgive sinners? Mark knew what it meant to have his sin covered over, and so do you. You clean up so nice.