Friends
Peace be with you.
I am not a morning person. I marvel at people who enjoy waking up early. I wake up at 5:40 most days, not because of personal desire but because that’s the time they wake up at Conception Abbey in Missouri where I am an oblate. This way, I can start prayer with them at 6:00 and mirror their day until I enter the confessional at 7:45 am. During that entire time, there’s a subconscious part of me that would very much like to curl up and go back to bed. However, I know that, once I get my black clothes on, the time for sleep has passed and it’s time for work. I’m like a service dog with a vest on.
Last week, during the reading of the passion according to St. Mark, you may have heard a rather interesting detail. It’s present only in that gospel and tends to be forgotten quickly after it is read, if you don’t remember this, don’t worry. The detail I’m specifically talking about comes from Chapter 14 verses 51 and 52. This happens as the temple guards are arresting Jesus. Judas comes and betrays him with a kiss. One of the bystanders cuts off the high priest servant’s ear and Jesus says they could have arrested him when he was teaching in the temple but, instead, they waited so that the scriptures could be fulfilled. All of Jesus’ followers flee and then it has the two verses I alluded to which say, “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking, that this is the origin of interrupting a sporting event by streaking. However, I think that more comes from a type of arrogance that can only be spawned from some form of liquid courage. Most commentators believe this young man is meant to symbolize the shame the disciples feel in deserting Jesus in his hour of need. Shortly after telling him they would never desert him, Jesus’ followers all do so and, just as the naked Adam and Eve felt shame after they ate from the Tree of Good and Evil, so this naked young man comes to symbolize the shame of the apostles.
When Mary of Magdala and the other women go to the tomb, they are greeted by a man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side of the tomb who assures them that Jesus is not there because he has been raised. The commentary I read said, just as the young man in the garden symbolized the shame of the disciples, so this young man, perhaps the same young man, symbolizes the life of the baptized. Indeed, during the Easter Vigil in the early church, men and women would be led off separately to a separate room called the baptistry where they would remove all their clothes, enter the baptismal font to become fully immersed in the waters of baptism, and then exit to put on a white baptismal garment. We don’t do that here at St. Patrick’s but some other churches may do a variant on this. The Catholic Church has, nonetheless, retained the idea of putting on a white garment after you are baptized to symbolize the purity of being washed clean of our sins. Note, however, that we don’t return to the naked and unafraid state of original innocence that Adam and Eve alone experienced prior to The Fall. We have been forgiven of original sin n baptism and walk with the innocence and grace offered to us and sons and daughters of God.
I think it’s also instructive that the young man tells Mary Magdalene and the other women to go and tell Simon and the disciples that he is going to Galilee and he will see them there. It’s like they’re all being told that it’s time to get to work. There’s no time to keep staring into an empty tomb. People need to know that Jesus has been raised and has conquered sin and death. That’s really the message that isn’t confined to this interaction with these women early on a Sunday around 29 AD. It’s time for us to put on our work vests and tell others that Jesus is risen, that he has forgiven us, and that he loves us. In this world where the gospel message seems to be increasingly relegated into people’s private lives, we must share the message of this young man: He has been raised!
