Reflecting on Mark's Gospel - Mark 14:43-52

 Things now move quickly. Even before Jesus has finished what he was saying, Judas arrives with what appears to be something of a mob sent by the religious leaders. They have come to arrest Jesus, and they are not taking any chances with regard to possible resistance, and so they are armed with swords and clubs.

With great irony, the moment of betrayal is marked by a kiss as Judas uses that as a means of identifying just which one is Jesus. I wonder what are the ways in which we betray Jesus.

So, Jesus is arrested and there is a relatively small scuffle. One of those with Jesus draws a sword, though we might wonder how it was that any of Jesus’ companions happened to have a sword. We have been told that it was just Peter, James and John who accompanied Jesus to Gethsemane, so it presumably one of these three who carries out this violent act. Indeed, John’s Gospel records it as being Peter, though the other three gospels, while all mentioning the incident, are silent on the matter of the perpetrator’s identity.

Jesus simply asks the arresting party why they have come in such force, and in this unusual way, given that he was readily accessible to them while openly teaching in the temple. To the three disciples, the game is up, and so they flee, as do any other Jesus supporters who might be hovering in the background – and we know there was at least one because of the reference to the young man who was grabbed and escaped by leaving them holding his clothes and running off naked. We cannot be sure who this was, but some suggest it was Mark, the writer of this gospel, giving us this detail in order to say, ‘I was there.’ I wonder how quickly we would have run off.

Brendan Byrne (A Costly Freedom) offers an interesting thought on our place in this scene with his comment about the young man who ran off naked. He says – “My own suggestion would be that the young man is a symbolic figure representing believers who have followed Jesus and received their baptismal robe but who, when discipleship has meant arrest and the threat of death, have abandoned their baptismal allegiance and become deserters.”