On Good Friday, we remember the crucifixion of Jesus. What we see is not just how broken the world is, but how whole it could be.
The Naked Man, the Passion, and the evil of the world
Good Friday | Mark 14:26-15:47
While there’s a lot going on in the Passion, I’d like us to take a moment today to dwell on a part of the story we don’t think about.
Naked Guy.
It’s like we’re embarrassed by him and avert our proverbial eyes. We don’t get him.
He exists for us in this story like a streaker at a ballgame. His presence seems a distraction from the story. Even giving him attention now feels off. Particularly that I want to laugh at him—which seems so wrong in the midst of this somber moment.
He exists in the text with a bit of anonymity and yet a kind of pseudo-fame. Like we should know him. His presence feels oddly newsworthy.
In the Director’s Cut
It happens right after the betrayal, the Judas Kiss, which signals to the guards which one is Jesus. They move to arrest Jesus. But he calls them out. They have, after all, come under the cover of darkness to do what they were unwilling to do in front of others.
The people scatter. And it says:
“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.”
The presence of this young man isn’t supposed to be comic relief, even if those of us with seventh-grade humor find it funny.
And yet it so strikes me as trivial. The kind of detail that would easily be cut from the theatrical release of the film.
But here it is, in the Mark Cut.
Why it is Important
I’ve already admitted that its the kind of detail I’m drawn to. It’s so weird.
And let us also remember that Mark is the kind of storyteller in which everything is important.
So why is it here? Well, I have two theories.
One: It’s about seeing
Jesus was being arrested by “a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders.” And he confronts them—not for the terms of the arrest, but the circumstances.
“Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me.”
Jesus is saying that he has been utterly transparent this whole time. And yet, they are coming after him when they can’t be seen.
But the timing isn’t the only part. Mark doesn’t refer to an army or soldiers or even a special guard. The people who have come to get Jesus are “a crowd with swords and clubs” and Jesus confronts the violence they threaten directly.
It is hard to read this today and not think of a lynch mob. Neighbors coming out for an extrajudicial killing. Not under the eyes of the law, but behind it, around back, so we don’t have to account for it.
Two: It’s about being seen
We recall that for the Hebrew people, your seeing someone’s nakedness brings shame upon you. They had laws against depriving people of clothes. The most notable is one that made it illegal to deprive people of their coat, even if they owe it to you. Precisely because if you take it, they could freeze to death. And for that you would be responsible.
The frequent modern example of police taking tents away from the homeless comes to mind.
This is the law highlighted in the Sermon of the Mount when Jesus suggests that if somebody sues you for your coat, give him your cloak, too. Reveal through your nakedness the shame the court is encouraging! They all, including the judge(!) are made guilty.
We as people of faith lost track of this long ago. One’s nakedness doesn’t bring shame to them. Poverty, theft, abuse, those things which deprive people of dignity bring shame on us.
Reading this passage through the eyes of the Hebrew Scripture reveal a deep shame for the “crowd with swords and clubs”. For they literally deprive this young man of dignity.
It’s about exposure.
Exposure to the elements: weather and society.
The Naked Man isn’t just a titilating moment of public nudity in an otherwise straightforward story of Jesus’s death. It’s a revealing of the shame, indignity, abuse, and coercive power at the heart of the Passion.
Or, more specifically, at the heart of the evil trying to prevent God’s kin-dom from coming.
This crowd as a makeshift army, hiding like pretend patriots who refuse to confront Jesus on fair terms. This is not an arrest: it’s a kidnapping. And he won’t come before a court of law; they’re planning a lynching.
But they cannot hide from it.
God’s love is indomitable.
They expose a man cruelly, fearfully, and parade him before the people, bruised and bleeding, like a portent for what is in store for all who get in their way. Then they foist him up on a cross to die. In plain sight. This is what they show. Cruelty is what they show off. Human evil. Venomous rage. Destruction.
They want the shame to be born on the exposed. Amass a double-portion of cruelty. Masquerade the violent as victims and victim as the source of evil. They make Jesus the scapegoat. And rather than let him die, they’ll just kill him so they can show him off.
The savior of the world is scapegoated as a poison for the world.
Confronting Abuse
Jesus confronted the powerful for their abuse and they abused him. We’ve let that story of human power be the spin that protects the powerful and we’ve ignored the teaching Jesus brought with him.
Jesus confronted evil to free us. Not spiritual or metaphorical evil. Human evil. He didn’t confront evil with evil. Or run away from it: fight or flight. Nor did he come alone, like evil is singular and individualistic.
He came to reveal the evil for what it is: weak, scared, and selfish.
Then he offered himself, sacrificially so we could see what evil would never reveal about itself. What only love would dare to share with the world.
That God’s love for the world is countered by human betrayal, justice by systems of injustice, hope by fear, beauty by violence and oppression, freedom by the tyranny of chaos, truth by deceptions, and power by the refusal to accept responsibility.
And yet Jesus faces that evil, exposes it, and in so doing, reveals what true love, justice, hope, beauty, freedom, truth, and power look like.
This is what is revealed by the cross. The limits of evil and the boundless potential of God’s kin-dom.
And this is where we stand, waiting and hoping. But this moment is what we’re called to wrestle with. This feeling of loss and confusion and excitement and hope. This the point.
To not only reveal the evil of the world. But also it’s goodness. Our goodness. And the work we have left to do.