Mark 14:15-52
"Now a certain young man having a linen cloth wrapped around his naked body, was following Him. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth behind and ran away naked."
I skimmed past those words to the next ones, the way you do when you're not paying attention to the familiar; like someone's face that's always been there and, you assume, always will be so you will notice tomorrow when you have more time. But then, my mind did a double take and I turned around and went back. I looked down at those words on the page and picked them up to look closer, reading them over and over again. Something rolled like truth over my heart.
This boy, this young man, had more than enough. Linen was expensive and reserved for the out of the ordinary in life. But he....he had the luxury of wrapping up in it to do the most ordinary of things; to sleep. In the middle of the night, Love walked by him and the townspeople raged fury loud. He grabbed his linen sheet, this boy, to wrap around himself and followed the crowd. They shook their fists at this Son of Man. They'd built their world just so on ways of doing things, ways of not doing things. They were clothed in their own security, buttoned up tight, smug and angry.
Who was this Man, who called Himself "Love", to show them a mirror and ask them to look in it? Their reflection demanded a death, but they didn't want to die. So He would. Young man in linen, swept up in the furious death march swirl, was comfortably invisible. It seemed safer that way. In the beginning, it felt proud and promised importance to be seen as a part of this new "kingdom". Now, he was clutching his linen, counting on it to keep him from paying any price he didn't feel the courage to pay.
From the center of the mob, hands reached out and caught hold of him, it says, and the young man rattled inside and panic ripped his linen covering from him and he ran naked from the dreadful possibility of being exposed as some kind of follower, some friend, of this condemned Man. He wasn't ready to give his all for this, so he bared all and strained for distance to keep himself safe. What if this Man, and all that He'd promised, wasn't as big as what life was screaming in the streets. What if his linen was all that he'd had to protect him and now he had nothing at all?
The question worked it's way through my veins cold as I remembered my own linen shrouds. I'd heard these same words, these promises of the Man called Love. They fell on me true and I thought to wrap myself warm in them but always the doubt made the wind blow and I groped greedy for comfort. A house in the country, rules for living, home ground grain and just the right clothes all stitched themselves into my "Love plus something else" blanket and I pulled it tighter around me so no one could tear it off of me and hunkered down lower when it threatened to shred. And then, one day, life got loud and my panic overcame me, and just like the young man in linen, I ran out from under my blanket and tore off down the street with nothing. I was naked in front of everyone. When I'd stopped running it occurred to me that under that thin blanket of protection I'd created for myself, I'd always been naked. Silence filled my soul. It turns out, I was naked from the inside out.
I've kept company with that fearful young man who ran away. I understand him. And I know what it feels like to stop running and look into the eyes of the Man called Love who came here long before I would realize I was naked, and trust Him to be more than enough. This Christmas as I hang the last ornament and plug in the lights, I've got a special gift planned just for Him. I'll lay a linen cloth just under the tree. I won't be needing it anymore.
