Day: September 16, 2018

Then they took Jesus to the high priest; and all the chief priests, elders, and the teachers of the Law assembled.

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privilege
means never
having to say
welcome

you come
burdened
with chains
without agency

all who enter
are bound
to agree to terms
already drafted

our name is Council
you question
our authority
prepare to die

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The high priest was appointed by the Romans and the other groups mentioned have their own reasons to collude with the Romans. Together they act as a kind of parliament or advisory council and as the kinder and gentler face of occupation. Remembering the parable of the vineyard, it seems that many of them were also absentee landowners who also had an economic incentive to keep a lid on change. We are entering into a system based on power, which requires manipulation and lies.

The first evidence of irregularity in due process is a meeting called in the night. We are already in the midst of an ad hochearing very similar to an after-meeting gathering in a parking lot to re-do of just-made decisions.

This meeting, at the high priest’s domicile, is the equivalent of a smoke-filled backroom where deals are made outside of public view. It is a place where institutional malice aforethought can take place.

Those who deconstruct narratives can have a field-day with the distance this scene comes from the arrest of Jesus. Between the arrest and here there have been three events—the cutting off of an ear, an aside to those carrying out the arrest, and a youth running away naked. None of these have moved the story along, but they have added style and given opportunity to review the scene from other perspectives.

We have seen the arrest through sleep-crazed reactions to a stressful situation trying to live up to promises to die with Jesus—what is one sword against a mob? We have seen irony out front—why go to this nighttime charade outside the walls when it could have been ever so much easier at a number of earlier points? We have seen a mysterious figure flee helpless—where are the guardian angels?

Abusive Power continues to this day—think Black Lives Matter and Me, Too. Too many have been falsely killed/raped/detained.

but he left the sheet in their hands, and fled naked.

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when our identity
is known by
the corporate insignia
we willingly
put on every day
there comes a time
to give the economy
of the time
what belongs to it

leaving a corporate shroud
behind
in its owners grasp
turns one to a shadow
haunting
all who lay burdens
on others enslaved
to provide their place
and time of power

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Just like in an earlier episode when someone with a sword cut off an ear, this scene had no groundwork laid for it and no follow-up. If it were not for Mark’s frequent interruption of one story with another, these could be seen as arbitrary insertions from other stories about the arrest that were too dramatic to leave out and just stitched in.

What this episode does do is highlight that the disciples are not only quick to run away, but willing to go to every length to do so. In this case to run out of their clothes—to run away naked.

Waetjen₂₅₀ does put a positive spin on this scene when he looks back on this moment from the vantage point of another youth announcing that Jesus has risen, and sees the “youth” as Mark’s narrator.

The youth of 14:51–52 fulfills the strategy of the implied author by serving as the ideal disciple in mirroring the reality of dying with Christ in baptism and its witness to the judgment of the Day of the Lord, which Jesus inaugurated and suffered.

This allows Waetjen, and others, to turn this transformation of a naked youth into a white-clad youth in a tomb being a sign of transfiguration for the disciples’ turn from inept students to fully fledged, spirit-filled, leaders in Galilee and beyond. This reading rests on references to a linen cloth and the age of the characters. Readers can tuck this away in their memory and see what they think of it at the end of Mark’s gospel.

My preference is more in keeping with La Verdiere2₂₅₃ who notes the short scenes of swordplay and running away play, “a symbolic, literary role in the story, if not a historical one.” The energy present in both of these incidents adds images of importance and intensity to the narration to raise the stakes of betrayal.