The (Not So) Great Escape

Back at Christmas, I left Genesis to tell the story of Baby Jesus being adored by somebody other than shepherds, wise men, angels, or His parents. It’s just about Easter now, so I thought it would be appropriate to do the same thing again: tell a story surrounding Christ’s awesome sacrifice for us that people hardly realize is there. As soon as I thought about doing it, I knew exactly what the story would have to be, but I didn’t think there was enough there to make a story. I tried to think of another one, but couldn’t come up with anything. As soon as I started researching it, though, I found that there is enough speculation by Biblical scholars down through the years concerning these two verses in Mark to really create a fascinating picture. I’m going to just relate the narrative, making the speculations a part of it. None of the details will be anything I made up (except that I suppose that a teenager would be tired after a celebration with illustrious guests), but there will be a lot of extra-Biblical content. The story I did at Christmas was about a couple of very old people. This one is about a young one.

It was late and a teen-age boy, considered a man because he had passed his bar mitzvah, had gone to bed. The exciting guests who had been in his home earlier for Passover had gone, and Mark was exhausted. Their guests had been none other than Jesus of Nazareth Himself and His disciples! And one of those disciples was Peter, a man Mark very much admired. It had been an exciting evening, to say the least.

But Mark was not allowed to sleep the whole night away. Terrible noises of a huge crowd and trouble woke him up, and he just had to see what the commotion was. Quickly, he put on what would today be considered the equivalent of a bathrobe—and not a cheap one either; Mark’s family was very wealthy—and ran outside.

He arrived in the garden in time to see a crowd of soldiers surrounding Jesus and His disciples. The soldiers were arresting Jesus!

Mark saw his hero, Peter, take action. Peter cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest! And then Mark saw the miracle of Jesus heal the ear.

But the soldiers got Jesus anyway, despite Peter’s efforts to keep it from happening, and at that point, the disciples, even Peter, ran away.

All of them got away, but a few of the soldiers, in looking for them, saw Mark, and grabbed him, thinking he was one of the disciples himself. It was all Mark could do to get away, and in doing so, he left his nice linen robe behind.

He had nothing on under it.

If the many people who have gone before me are right in speculating that this was indeed Mark, then it wasn’t going to be the last time he ran away when the going got rough. Nor would it be the last time he was shamed for it.

Several of the commentators I read said that this showed that the disciples of Jesus, though they were forsaking Him in His time of trouble, had the protection of God on them. Not one of them was caught. What happened to Mark, and far worse, would have happened to any of the disciples had not God kept the soldiers back and allowed them to make their escape.

The only one person the soldiers caught was a boy who had heard the commotion and had come out to see what it was. He wasn’t a disciple at all.

Not yet.

There would come a time that he would be a servant of Christ, though weak for a time. And there would come a time when he would sit down with his great friend and mentor, Peter, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit pen the shortest of the Gospels, the one that Biblical historians say was the first of all.
But on this night he was a scared kid, running naked back to his house to escape a power that was soon going to be defeated by the One it appeared to be defeating. Perhaps the soldiers let him go because they thought he was nobody.
If they did, it wouldn’t be the only thing they were wrong about that night.