Reliving The Passion #16

Mark 14:50–52

And they all forsook him and fled.

And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body; and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

Here, suddenly, appears “a young man” whose entire person shall be reduced in history to this single act: that he also suddenly disappeared—in fear and forever.

Things are heating up. In the fires of serious persecution the truer elements of one’s character now are revealed. Everything fraudulent, cheap, or hypocritical burns. Every pretense turns to ash. All my false words blow away. What I really am—the core character, the thing God sees when he looks at me, the irreducible person—I am indeed before the people. What I am, I am: I seem no more nor less than the thing I am. No clothing hides me—no, not so much as a linen cloth.

Ecce homo! Behold the thing itself, unaccommodated man, poor and bare and forked and—what? What is the stuff of the me?

What? Well, there was the woman who anointed Jesus for his burial. That nameless “she,” when reduced to the basic character, was love, pure love, love lavish and sweeter than nard, but love alone: this was the she.

But again what, in the extremes of human persecution and pain, is the actual me of myself? Well, here appears this fellow who “followed him” only until his person is seized. And then, spontaneously, the young man takes to his heels and flees—to save his self, which, therefore, is the core of him and the truth of his character. Where the woman was love at the core, this nameless “he” has a self which he will not lose, nor give up, nor deny, but which at all costs he will save. This is the he: his self alone.

And who, under the same circumstances, am I? Or what shall I prove to be?

It’s not as if I haven’t been warned. Jesus has spoken at least three times of his suffering and death—and fully as many times he’s declared that if I intend to come after him I must deny my self and take my cross and follow him. “For those,” he said, “who would save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for my sake and the gospel’s will save them.” Who can forget such words? “Go, sell what you have; and come, follow me.” Those words. And these: “The cup that I drink—you will drink.”

The cup.

And I, with all his disciples, heard and agreed. “Yes,” we said, “we are able to drink that cup.” And I meant it! No, I was not lying. I would do anything for Jesus. But that was during the period of words and learning. A sort of prelude, I suppose. Sunday school, confirmation, sermons, study: preparation. A time of pieties and promises.

Well—here comes the cup!

Here’s the real world, and the world’s at war! And my deeds are my words now, and deeds don’t lie.

O Jesus, they’re grabbing at me! Me! Suddenly I’m not an observer. I’m involved! They’re tearing off my last possession! What am I going to do? Sell out? Sell everything to save my life, my bare self? Run away naked?

Or what’ll I do? Lord, you don’t seem a very strong force beside me now; you’re suffering too! And you want me to stay with you? Do you know how much your call to “deny myself” looks exactly like dying right now? I mean really dying?

What will I do? And when I do—

—what will I be?

And who—?

Christ!

Take my life: I consecrate it to thee. Take all that I have and all that I am; replace the self in me with thine own holy self—that when the wicked world would kill me it finds me already drowned in thee, untouchable. Death in the world is death indeed. But death in thee is life forever!

Amen!