Reading from the Gospel of Mark 14:1 – 15:47
On Palm Sunday the Gospel reading is from one of the three Synoptic Gospels (John is reserved for Good Friday and Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion). This year we read from Mark, the shortest Gospel, which includes a puzzling detail that is not found in the other three Gospels.
Prior to Jesus’s arrest, Jesus informs the disciples that one will betray him and the rest will have their faith shaken.
And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”
Mark 14:27-28
Peter speaking for the disciples denies that his faith will be shaken. Jesus gives Peter the prophetic warning of the cock crowing. What is different in Mark is that right after the arrest, Mark indicates that “they all left him and fled.” These six words highlights how the disciples’ faith was shaken; by abandoning Jesus.
Even further, Mark emphasizes the complete abandonment with the account of the young man:
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.
Mark 14:51
This young man, not a discipline of Jesus, but an anonymous follower, was so concerned about fleeing that upon being seized he squirmed out of his clothes and would risk the shame of nakedness to flee from Jesus. He did not receive the warning from Jesus about his faith being shaken. Even without this direction message, Mark’s narration emphasizes the fundamental desire of all of humanity, represented in this young man, to flee from difficulty, to flee from fear, and to flee from Jesus. This harkens back to Genesis and the shame of Adam and Eve felt when they discovered they were naked when fleeing from God.
Now completely abandoned, Jesus suffers cruelty alone. He is rejected, scourged, and crucified.
At the end of account in Mark, we start to see the story arc. Jesus’s body is wrapped in a linen cloth when laid in the tomb. Jesus’s beaten, bloodied, and naked body is covered in a linen cloth. Not the same linen cloth that the young man left behind from, but a linen cloth. The young man wore nothing but a linen cloth and left it behind, and now all that covers our Lord is a linen cloth.
This powerful connection through the linen cloth shows the power of Jesus, even after crucifixion, to overcome our instruments of sin.
The final arc in the Gospel of Mark is lost in the Liturgy, since John’s account of Peter running to the tomb is read on Easter. But it is worth going back and finish reading Mark. Read carefully.
When the three women enter the tomb (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome), who do they encounter? To their surprise it is not Jesus.
It is a young man dressed in white.
Here is where the Mark’s narration is at it most poignant. The young man who fled Jesus is now welcomed back to Jesus and clothed in glory. Jesus is the way to wash away our sins.
He has Risen. Alleluia.
The Small Pencil Catechist 