Christianity: Strange, Wild and Free
A New Commentary of Mark 14:51-52
The Christian message is strange, not just in its encouragement of a strange kind of love but in the strange way in which it is understood. You have to seek it to find it, and you won’t get far without seeking it truly, deeply, and passionately. To find it, you have to seek it, not once, not twice, but again and again, until it becomes a habit. The Christian way of life will cause our previous way of life to lose its vibrancy and fade. The new life becomes a priority, not in itself, but as something like a draft for our life to come. In our hands, our life will never be complete. The more we understand this way of life the more we will experience its incredible benefits. We won’t want to go back.
Of course, this doesn’t stop people, perhaps a majority of people, from misappropriating Christianity. They use it as a supplement to their already existing lives. Christianity has been collected, studied, criticized, and controlled by myriad people, like a hobby that makes their lives more interesting. But their tamed and neutered version of Christianity no longer leads to the joy and freedom found when the gospel is fully embraced. Like a butterfly pinned in a display case, the beuaty of its raiment can still be glimpsed but the point of existence, its life, has been lost.
There’s a strange little snippet of early Christianity in the gospel of Mark that is too wild and too free for many people. They have tried to tame this story of a scantily clad young man running away naked and have missed the point completely. In two verses this story, as it stands, illustrates both the person who seeks Christianity and finds it and the person who tries to control Christianity and misses it.
“A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.” -Mark 14:51-52
Those who tried to grasp and control the young man ended up with little more than his cloak. That which was strange, wild and free escaped their grasp. The young man represents the one who sincerely seeks the message. He lost what little he had. But by the end of the story, he was wild and free.
This story has been read as a part of Mark’s gospel by generation after generation of people around the world. Their response has determined whether they have found the joy of Christianity or missed it altogether.
Now it has come to you. How do you respond?