Arrest!

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Mark 14, chapters 43 through 52.

And immediately while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.

Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I will kiss is the man.

Seize him and lead him away under guard.

And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, Rabbi, and he kissed him.

And they laid hands on him and seized him.

But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.

And Jesus said to them, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me?

Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me, but let the scriptures be fulfilled.

And they all left him and fled.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's always a joy to gather with you each Sunday.

I look forward to it.

I'm always glad when another Sunday rolls around.

So thanks for joining us this morning.

We are continuing through the gospel according to Mark, and we are at the moment of Jesus' arrest.

So before we move into this text, let's pray together.

Father in heaven, we praise you for your loving kindness towards us.

We thank you that you show us your patience and the persistence of your love.

Lord, as we come in contact with the story of Christ moving towards the cross, whose eyes were fixed on the glory of the salvation that he would accomplish, despising the shame that he must endure on our behalf.

Lord, I pray that you would work the reality of this into our hearts, that you would help us see afresh the strangeness of the Lord who goes to the cross on our behalf and then calls us to, if we would come after you, that we would take up our cross daily and follow you.

Lord, would you help us understand what this means?

Would you help us by the power of your gospel to put to death the deeds of the flesh, to recognize that we have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.

Lord, that the life that we now live in the flesh, we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself up for us.

Lord, help us understand this truth and live it out daily in our lives.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So uh it it takes me a long time to read books, and I'm typically reading some old book, and so you all always find out what old book I'm reading, and it's like six months where I quote from one thing.

I think we all remember the movie Dick Years.

And there I I a while ago I read um uh the gulag archipelago.

Um it was not a book about islands, which is frustrating.

It's a book about uh Alexander Solsen's time in uh uh the the Russian gulags or the the uh gulags of the Soviet Union in the early 20th century.

Bad place to be.

So if you're looking for like a I don't know, lonely planet travel guide or something about beautiful island stays.

It's not the book.

The story begins, of course, the only entrance into the gulags is by arrest.

And so it the first chapter is called Arrest Exclamation Point, and I like that.

I like when things have names like arrest.

And so that's what I named the sermon.

And he begins by describing what the experience of arrest is like.

Uh he says, Arrest, need it be said that this is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you.

That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake, not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity.

I think this is a wonderful description.

An unassimilable spiritual earthquake.

You think of an event in your life which you are not able to bring into the story of your life as you had understood it.

And so all of a sudden you're you're shocked into this place of a total loss of control.

Once one way of saying it is one, at one time you dressed yourself and you went where you wanted to go.

But now, after arrest, someone else will dress you and they will take you where you do not want to go.

It's a flash of horror that breaks into your life, where the locus of control that once rested within you, and you could decide the things that you would do is now shocked away, and the locus of control is shifted to an external place.

The decisions are made for you, your freedom is taken from you.

This is the terrifying experience of arrest.

And uh Soltzenitson describes it as an experience which drives many people to insanity because it is such a break of a break into your life.

Who are you?

What does this mean?

He goes on and he says, that's what arrest is.

It's a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality.

You know, you what is what is impossible?

It's all it's almost impossible for us to grasp.

Some of you have had the experience of arrest.

I've I haven't had that experience.

But it is this the way that Soltznitzon describes it is you are brought under this impossible omnipotence.

You are suddenly subject to a power which is so far greater than you.

Consider the power of the state focusing in on you as a person, and then it all of a sudden you're helpless before it.

Now, I think these are accurate descriptions of what arrest is.

But the strangeness of our story this morning, and when you when you think of arrest in these terms, especially these spiritual terms, of what it means to the human heart, how could we possibly comprehend that the omnipotent one could be arrested?

That the power who holds all things together could be subjected to a power that is greater than him or outside of him?

How could the locus of control shift from the one absolute center of control to this external power which he is brought under?

You know, there's this strange contradiction in the arrest of Jesus Christ.

How are we to understand it?

That's what we're looking at this morning as we move into this story of arrest.

How is it that the omnipotent one could be thrust under this counter-omnipotence?

What does that mean as we look at it?

So, what we're going to see as we look at Christ's arrest is that this paradox that exists within it.

To us, for all of us, arrest means, in the sort of the maximal way we could experience this, our control being stripped from us.

And yet in Christ's arrest, we see this paradox, where in one sense, all of his control, humanly speaking, is taken from him and shifted to others.

He is along for the ride for the rest of the story on the way to the cross.

He makes no decisions.

But paradoxically, within this, we see that Jesus is the only one who is in any sort of way truly in control.

He is the one who is, in a sense, guiding the arrest.

He's the one who's making it happen and fulfilling the reality of the arrest.

This is the paradox of Jesus' arrest.

That's what we'll see this morning.

So let's look at the story.

Mark 14, 43.

It says, and immediately while he was still speaking, that is, Jesus still speaking to his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.

So we know that Judas had gone off after the Lord's Supper, and he went off alone.

Jesus said to him, Do what you're going to do.

And he must have spent some time gathering these group of people together, because there's this collection of people that are typically don't work well together, but when they unite around this co-belligerence against Jesus, they become this united force against him.

We have uh scribes, chief priests, and the elders, but there's also this group with him with crowd, a crowd with them, with swords and clubs.

They had gotten uh the Gentiles, they had gotten the Roman soldiers, of which there would have been a lot of in Jerusalem during the week of Passover, because the week of Passover always contained within it this threat of the zealots rising up against Rome.

And so they would easily be able to tell them, hey, there's a particular zealot who you need to keep your eye on named Jesus, and we need to go arrest him because he's violated some of our laws.

And that wouldn't have been difficult to recruit for.

But these groups of Jews and Gentiles have gathered together against Jesus, and the one who gathered them together is Judas.

And Mark knows that we know Judas' story, he's told it to us, but he makes this emphasis here at the moment of arrest.

He reminds us, Judas, one of the twelve, which shows us that this is not just an attack from people outside of Jesus, but this is a betrayal.

This is fundamentally a betrayal from a friend.

Now, I don't think that somebody who is not your friend can betray you.

They can attack you, but they can't betray you.

You can think of it like this: like a smooth-talking salesman who I've heard her out there.

Let the reader understand.

The reason that they can't really betray you is because you likely didn't extend friendship to them.

You wouldn't say, This is my friend.

My my my friend who I extended this trust to.

Judas is a friend of Jesus because Jesus had extended true friendship to Judas.

Jesus was the truest of friends.

He is the one who called Judas to be close to him.

He had shown Judas the truth of his teaching over these past three years.

He had shown him the wonder of his power.

He had even given Judas opportunities to participate in and experience the wonder of his power, the power of the kingdom of God that Christ was bringing into the earth.

Judas would have gone out and casted out demons.

He would have come back and celebrated the wonder of what Christ's power was able to accomplish.

He would have done that strange thing where you reach into a basket with not much bread in it and you keep pulling out more bread.

And he would have handed it around and he would have come back and seen this is a miracle.

He is the one who has fed and taken care of us.

Jesus had even extended levels of trust where he had delegated particular responsibilities to Judas.

We learned that Judas is the one who was in charge of the finances for the twelve.

He was in charge of the money bags.

And this shows that Jesus was willing to extend these levels of trust.

You know, Jesus was a true friend to Judas.

It is a betrayal because Judas had received the friendship of the Lord.

And that's what makes the act of his betrayal so much more horrible than a mere attack.

In verses 44 through 45, Mark describes, says, Now the betrayer had given them a sign.

He'd given the crowd a sign, saying, The one I will kiss is the man.

Seize him and lead him away under guard.

And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, Rabbi.

And he kissed him.

Why a kiss?

Why does Judas why does Judas choose this as the sign to identify Jesus?

He could have pointed, you know, the him.

No, no, no, him.

That's sufficient.

Pointing, I think, had been invented only 30 years before.

But instead, he chose the kiss.

The catastrophe of betrayal.

And all of you will experience this.

You'll probably even do it at some level.

The catastrophe of betrayal is that the friendship itself becomes the weapon.

The trust that has been extended becomes the means by which you are taken advantage of.

By which your enemy exploits.

This trust which is extended for your mutual joy and upbuilding, it suddenly becomes the place of vulnerability and attack.

It is far worse than attack from an enemy.

It is a far more terrible horrifying experience than attack from an enemy.

It is like what David describes in Psalm 55.

He says, For it is not an enemy who taunts me.

Then I could bear it.

So what David is saying is this experience is unbearable.

It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me.

Then I could hide from him.

But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.

Now the terror of that experience is the very one whom you would desire to fight for, you now must fight against.

The very one who you would go to to help you understand and process the difficulty of the attack that you're facing is now the one who is attacking and is now suddenly off limits to you.

And then your whole world is reframed, almost like how your whole world is reframed in an arrest, because you had extended this trust and you had entered this space of safety, and you had lived in it as though you could let your guard down and be yourself.

There are few places like this in the world where you would allow such an intimacy to develop.

And the extension of friendship is one of those places.

And now suddenly you look back over the whole friendship and you realize there was no friendship extended to me.

What did any of that mean?

Where am I?

What other places am I extending trust?

But I'm actually just setting myself up for betrayal.

I'm actually just creating more and more vulnerabilities in places of danger in my life.

And so your whole world gets thrown up into the air with the experience of betrayal.

And it seems like that type of thing, which is unavoidable.

And you'd think, well, why can't I just run away from this situation?

And why can't it just be written off?

You know, there are there are some instances where, you know, we're a church and you the door is unlocked, you can just walk in.

And uh occasionally, not often, but occasionally some folks will come in and get involved with the church, and then you'll realize, like, oh no, these people are insane.

Which can happen.

And typically that's okay.

But but sometimes you you realize like these people actually need to, somebody needs to ask them to leave.

And then I look around and it's like, I'm the pastor here, aren't I?

And I and so it's sometimes it's you just have to send an email.

And you don't know them very well.

And so it's like, hey, um one email I've sent is thanks so much for all the feedback.

We don't know each other very well.

This is a lot of feedback very quickly.

Um uh I I agree with your assessment that you should not come to church here.

We're uh we're in perfect alignment, and I would I um let's uphold this together.

The reason that you do that is because it's for the sake of the body.

You see people coming in and taking advantage of others, entering into manipulative relationships with others.

This is this is real, scriptures speak about it.

And it's no big deal.

But when that is brought into relational proximity with real friends, and real closeness, there is there is this terror and and and horror in that experience.

When it's brought into your family or your close friends, it is a it is a it is not just an attack from an enemy, it is it is heartbreak.

It's heartbreak along with it.

And then this wonder of where do I go?

Now I think the sign is the kiss.

Because it's showing to us that the reason Christ was able to be betrayed is because he entered into true friendship with sinners.

And that there's a sense in which this is the inevitable outcome of the incarnation.

Because the original sin that exists in the world since the fall of Adam was a rejection of God as God.

God had been in friendship with us, and we rejected him.

And so when Christ took on flesh and humbled himself to the point of becoming a man, and then he enters into real friendship with us, the inevitable outcome that Christ knew is that this friendship will result in.

Betrayal.

Christ Himself creates the context for his betrayal.

So was he a fool?

You know, when we experience betrayal like this, so the typical response, I think, the response of my heart is to think, okay, well, well, I'm going to set up more boundaries, set up more walls, I'm going to reassess all of my friendships to make sure that this terrible experience doesn't happen again.

And I'll make deals with myself and deals with others to make sure that that sort of experience doesn't happen again.

Well, Jesus knows all things, but is he a fool for entering this type of friendship, for extending this friendship towards sinners?

Do you not see the kindness and the tenderness of our God?

Do you not trample upon it?

He's no fool.

He is no fool.

He understands that he is entering this friendship, which cannot be reciprocated.

But by entering this friendship, he knows that it is a friendship that he is going to accomplish.

On behalf of the ones who are treating him as enemies, on behalf of the friends who become his enemies.

You know, there must be some sort of twist in this.

Because God is, we see in Jesus Christ, he enters this reality of friendship with sinners, but we know that he is not a fool, and he does not set out on tasks which he will not be able to accomplish.

He enters this friendship knowing the cost of entering a friendship with sinners, but he knows that in the depth of his love, he will pay the price for this rejected friendship so that he might establish a friendship which will last eternally.

That's the mission that he's on.

It requires rejection.

But on the other side of the rejection is the establishment of a friendship that is more glorious and wonderful than any we could have possibly imagined.

He is not a fool.

He is just an incomprehensibly good friend.

An unimaginably loving and kind and generous friend.

What Jesus understands is that this betrayal and the pain of the betrayal actually connects to something higher and more wonderful and more glorious that they can't see yet.

And it requires his death in all sorts of ways.

You know, there's an encouragement for this for those of you that experience betrayal, and for those of you that have betrayed close friends or family or whoever you've betrayed.

The encouragement for this is that there's a hope on the other side of betrayal.

That the desire to close up your heart for safety, well, there's a greater risk.

The greater risk of closing up your heart is that you might lose your heart altogether, lose your capacity for friendship altogether, lose your capacity for love altogether.

So that option is not tenable.

But there's a hope because in Christ entering in these friendships and experiencing the death and betrayal of these friendships, it actually accomplished the creation of a greater and higher and more wonderful and more beautiful friendship than you could anyone seeing this could have possibly imagined.

And for those of you that have betrayed, I hope you recognize that when I'm when I'm making this distinction, I'm speaking to all of us both times.

We recognize that the patience of our Lord, the wonder of his grace, is that he was willing to press into friendship with us despite our betrayal, to bear the absolute cost of it.

What a friend we have in Jesus.

It's hard for us to rationalize because it's unimaginably good.

It's an unimaginable love, an unimaginable glory, a wonder which would transform our lives.

Now the disciples don't exactly see what's happening here.

So in verses 45 through 46, the kiss takes place.

Jesus actually calls him friend.

That's not recorded in Mark.

And they laid hands on him and seized him.

Verses 45 and 46.

Actually, I think I might have that wrong.

46 and 47.

But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.

So Jesus gets seized, and then one of the disciples who is with Jesus takes his sword and cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest.

Part of this is like, okay, finally.

Disciples are stepping up to the plate a bit.

They couldn't stay awake in the garden and pray.

But at least the high priest's servant doesn't have an ear anymore.

From Luke and uh and John, well, uh from John we learn that the man who cut off the high priest's ear was, of course, Peter.

You know, Mark doesn't say it, but it's like if we had to guess of Jesus' disciples, probably Peter.

And he can be a bit hasty.

So he cuts off the ear, and also in John's gospel, we learn that the servant of the high priest, his name was Malchus.

And from Luke and John, we learn that when the high priest's ear was cut off, Jesus, now this is strange.

There's this strangeness of the of the power dynamic that's taking place here because Jesus is seized, but he's able to reach out and heal Malchus's ear.

From Matthew, we hear Jesus' reaction to Peter drawing his sword.

In Matthew 26, 52 and 53, it says, Then Jesus said to him, to Peter, put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.

Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?

To which Peter said, I got I guess I didn't think that.

Jesus, in his rebuke of Peter here, which is recorded in Matthew, he creates this sort of barrier for the church.

Where he explains to the church, my kingdom is not the type of kingdom that will advance by the sword.

You will not be able to, by brute force, advance the kingdom of God.

And he exposes to Peter Peter's own misunderstanding of the power dynamic that's taking place in front of him.

Peter sees Jesus under arrest, and he thinks he understands what arrest is.

The reason that Jesus is under arrest here is because, well, look at all the swords and clubs.

There's just more hard power.

And Jesus wasn't able to overcome that.

And so what we have here is just a competition of brute force.

That's where the real power is.

That's where the real power is finally.

Ultimately, this comes down to just a competition of brute force.

And with that level of clarity, Peter, not without courage, says, I'll enter that.

And I will bring some sort of parody between the brute force here, and then that will mean that Jesus isn't under this control.

But Jesus lifts up his eyes and he says, Do you think that this is a competition of brute force and that that's why I'm being arrested?

Do you think I just happen to come out on the weekend of this deal because I misplanned my exit from the garden?

And Judas got out first and they brought more people than I expected them to bring?

Do you not realize that I could appeal to my father and call down, let's say, twelve legions of angels who would come and defend me?

This is not happening because of my lack of power.

That's not the story that we're in.

Christ is the one in this story who has all the strength.

So the emphasis in Matthew's Gospel and also in John, there's this emphasis on this rebuke of Peter for him taking out the sword and cutting off the person's ear.

But in Mark's gospel, we actually don't have this emphasis.

It's sort of strange.

And since we're preaching through Mark, I want to try and discover what the emphasis of Mark's gospel is in this story.

He tells us that someone takes a sword and chops off the ear of the servant of the high priest.

And then in Mark 14, 48 through 49, we see that his emphasis does not go to Peter and this rebuke of Peter.

Instead, it goes elsewhere.

And Jesus said to them, in verses 48 through 49, right after it says, He cut off the ear, it goes right here.

Jesus said to them, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me?

Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me, but let the scriptures be fulfilled.

So where Jesus goes is he says, You've come out with swords and clubs to capture me as though I'm a robber.

This is the force that you're showing against me.

So you're imagining me to be this type of person who's this particular type of threat.

Now I think part of what Mark is doing there is he shows one of his own disciples take up the sword in this dynamic.

And then he rebukes the ones with swords and clubs.

And I think what he's saying there is nobody understands the dynamic that's taking place here.

They think that they can operate within the power of brute force, and that that will accomplish all that needs to be accomplished in this circumstance.

But what you're really operating in is a lie.

The lie, in what Jesus does, and what I think Mark is emphasizing, is that they are operating, all of them are operating at the level of a lie.

And the true competition that's taking place here is not between one source of power and another source of power.

It's not just between two competing foes so that we can see who the stronger one is in hard power terms.

The actual competition that's taking place here is the one between truth and lies.

And so what he is exposing, what Jesus is exposing, is the lie of the way that they're treating him.

You come out to me, you treat me like a robber.

What evidence do you have to treat me this way?

Because here's the reality.

Day after day, I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me.

And then finally, Jesus lays out the level at which the story he is participating in is actually taking place at.

Because he says this, but let the scriptures be fulfilled.

Here's what Jesus knows.

The truth of what he is going to accomplish is plainly revealed in the scriptures.

What he knows is that when he is arrested, that there is this terrible injustice that is taking place.

And so the question is, how do we overcome these terrible injustices?

How do we overcome the ultimate injustices of the world?

And what Jesus knows is there's someone who sees.

God Himself sees this terrible injustice that is taking place.

They think they're getting away with something.

And they think they're able to get away with it because they're able to cover it up with the brute force of their power.

But there is a greater power that they had not considered.

The greater power is the one who sees the injustice that's taking place.

And Christ says, I will live in line with that truth and entrust myself to God as he has shown himself to me in the scriptures, and I know that by entrusting myself true justice will be accomplished.

Now I think that partly because I'm going to bounce out of Mark to try and prove this.

You know, there's these strange parallels between this story and a story of David when his son Absalom launches a revolution against David.

And David, who's the right king, is removed from the throne, and he actually walks across the brook Kidron, which is exactly the brook that's mentioned in John at this very scene.

And we learn, and while he's walking away, there's uh a man who's hurling these insults at him.

And what he's saying is, this this man is he's the son, he's uh one of the descendants of King Saul.

So he's the one who thinks he's the true king, the one entitled to be the true king.

And as he is as he is describing this, there's this uh there's these strange parallels.

So he's he's from the king, and he's shouting, see, God's vengeance has come upon you because you wrongfully overthrew King Saul.

And he's hurling these insults at King David as he's walking, and one of King David's close uh companions says, Are you gonna let him talk to you like that?

Why don't I cut his head off?

It's good to have friends.

It's important to have friends.

And David says, The Lord has sent him to curse me.

But the Lord is seeing the cursing that he is hurling at me.

And the Lord will reward me for the cursing that I am enduring.

So don't go cut his head off.

That's a weird dynamic.

But we see what David is doing there is he's saying there's another story taking place here.

Because right now it feels like just us and him.

And it feels like just this competition of earthly kings.

And the way that competitions between earthly kings are settled is who is the stronger earthly king?

But David says that this is not just a competition of earthly kings.

I'm the one who's been chosen by God to be king over this, to be king over this nation.

God himself sees the insults that are being hurled at us by our enemies.

He will accomplish true justice.

And so it is not a weakness of restraint or fear that's being shown.

It is entrusting himself to the true power.

And imagining something beyond what any of them could imagine, which is resurrection.

Some impossibility on the other side of this.

This is just interesting, and I want to share it.

Um but this is just one of those that's interesting things in the Bible.

There's no application from this.

If you're interested in applying this to your life, you can zone out for a little while.

Uh the man who is hurling the insults, his name is Shemai, which means to hear.

And he is of the line of the king.

And the man whose ear is cut off, ear, what do you guys listen with?

The man whose ear is cut off, his name is Malchus, which means king.

Which is kind of interesting.

I think we're being drawn exactly back to this moment.

And we're seeing that that moment was only a shadow of the true king who would come, and who would show us the participation in the highest story, as he entrusts himself not just to the rejection of his people and the hurling of insults, but to death itself.

Such was the height of the story and the trust in God that he knew was taking place.

That's what we see Jesus doing here.

But what's the real punchline that Mark brings us to?

The real punchline is in Mark 14, 50, and they all left him and fled.

Jesus shows his disciples that the path to the higher story of entrusting yourself to the justice of God as the true power in the world, that the truth of God is the true power that overcomes the lies, no matter how powerful the lies seem to be in earthly terms, when he shows them that the path towards that truth is not by means of the sword, that they have no possibility of accomplishing their rescue by meeting them with the like power, but that the only way to that higher story is the cross, and that he is showing his people that they are called not to take up the sword, but to take up the cross, they all left him and fled.

Mark is Peter's gospel, you know, so it's so it's sometimes helpful to think of in terms of how Peter is looking at this story.

And it's like Mark is explaining the situation, he's explaining the situation to Mark, and he's like, here's what's important to see here.

Some of us thought we could take up the sword.

And we were willing to do that because we understood the dynamic of uh there's pressure, and so we can accomplish this victory by our own power.

But there was only one there who was willing to take up the cross, who was willing to take up the cross for us, his enemies, so that in taking on our punishment we might be reconciled to him.

And there was only one there who was willing to show that depth of love, and who was willing to go to that place of suffering, because none of us understood that the cross meant anything other than defeat, because for all of us, all the cross means is defeat.

But for him, because he was sinless and because of his depth of love towards us, he understood that his march towards the cross would mean victory, because he had a faith in his father that he would bring him back from the dead, that he could lay his life down and he could take it up again.

Jesus was different from all of us.

And I think that that's why Peter lays out this gospel in these terms, where what he wants to show is, you know, we were willing to take up the sword, but when it really came down to what God was asking of us, we all fled.

But he didn't.

Only one didn't flee.

And then he ends this story, Mark does, by showing this emphasis of one person who flees.

He says in Mark 44, 41.

That's not right.

51 and 52.

Yeah.

Numbers.

You know, math was never my strong suit.

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.

And this is one of those strange little moments in scripture.

Oftentimes uh it's been thought that this is Mark himself writing this, and maybe it is.

Uh excuse me, we know it's Mark writing this, but Mark is writing this about himself, that he is the young man who flees.

Maybe.

I don't know.

But Mark wants to include this image that they had remembered as this final image of Christ's arrest, which is a young man who follows, and he's following Jesus.

He might have been uh awoken by the by the sound of the crowd coming out to arrest him.

He might have been following along with the disciples, kind of interested in what was happening there.

He is definitely uh allied with Jesus in some ways, pulling for Jesus.

He's wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him, but he they just grabbed the linen cloth and he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

In a lot of, if you read a lot of contemporary commentators, I gotta hustle up.

I'm trying to do shorter sermons.

If you read a lot of contemporary commentators, they they deal with things like this and they're like, did this really happen?

Here's reasons to believe why this event really happened or why this event was added later.

Don't, this is this is silly.

This is a silly level of analysis for the scriptures.

Because did the scriptures really happen?

Yes.

The scriptures really happened.

But then they're like, but then if they if we're talking about things that just really happened, then we can't analyze them at the level of what they might mean.

But that's silly because the scriptures are not just giving us this history book, they're teaching us how to understand the meaning of events that really happened.

You see what I'm saying?

So, yes, this really happened, but but there's meaning here that Mark is drawing our attention to.

Here's what I think is something that's being showed, and I and I hope that this becomes an encouragement for all of us.

He's dressed in a linen cloth.

In Revelation 19, 8, we learned that the ones that are that are the church is finally able to put on this linen cloth.

And you know what the linen, you know why they're able to put on the linen cloth?

What the linen cloth is?

It's the deeds of the righteous.

Our righteous deeds we're clothed in.

And that's what we attend the wedding feast of the Lamb in.

Clothed in our our righteous deeds.

Well, he is stripped of his righteous deeds as he flees.

I think this young man is the church.

He is us.

That's why this is shown.

And we are stripped of our righteous deeds.

We have no righteousness to offer the Lord.

He needs to accomplish this for us.

We are naked and thrown into the outer darkness.

That is where we are headed outside of Christ.

Christ goes through, he dies on the cross, and then when he's brought down in Mark's gospel from the cross, Joseph of Arimathea wraps him in a linen cloth.

That's the next time we see a linen cloth in the Gospel of Mark.

Jesus is the one who didn't avoid the cross.

But he went to the cross.

He's the one, our only hope of salvation, because he is the one who went to take our punishment for us.

And so he is the one who is clothed in this linen garment.

He deserves it.

He's the only righteous one.

And then later, in Mark's gospel, every other each of the other tellings of this, we have angels in the tomb.

Strangely, Mark says there's a young man sitting in the empty tomb.

This is the next time we see a young man in Scripture.

Now, I think it is an angel.

But I think that Mark is telling us this because he's wanting us to make these connections to see what did the resurrection mean?

What did Christ going through on the cross mean?

And you know what the young man is clothed in?

He's clothed in a white robe.

Now, a white robe is what is given to the martyrs in Revelation.

But we saw that the young man was the one who fled, wasn't seized, he's stripped of his righteous deeds because he wasn't willing to be a martyr.

Only Jesus was.

That's why Jesus is clothed in linen.

But now, on the other side of the resurrection, the church stands willing to be the martyrs.

Why?

Because of what Jesus accomplished on our behalf by his sending of the Spirit to transform our hearts.

Here's the story of the gospel.

You weren't willing to go to the cross.

In fact, you couldn't.

Because when the wrath of God came down upon you, it would have been justly deserved in our sin.

Jesus went to the cross on our behalf, and then he gives us, he clothes us in his righteousness.

So now, how do we live?

Having been clothed in the righteousness of God, as the ones who fled from the call to sacrificial love, to the martyrdom that he calls us to, now we present our bodies as a living sacrifice.

We are the ones who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, seeing what Christ has accomplished on our behalf, we are clothed in his righteousness, and we are able to go to war with the flesh, to put to death the deeds of the body, so that we might be saved in him.

Because we have been saved in him.

We are the ones who can be clothed like martyrs.

And we do it every day.

So look at Jesus being arrested.

Consider his willingness to entrust himself to God, because he knew that there was a higher power there.

Look at your war against sin and the lies and deceit that sin calls you into, and consider I will entrust myself to God, and it will look like an arrest, it will look like a sacrifice, but I know that there is a higher story and there is a resurrection on the other side of this.

Okay, now let's take communion.

In 1 Corinthians 11.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Our Lord's death calls us into, putting to death our flesh.

He took the bread and he broke it.

He took the cup and he said, This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus went to the cross because he is a true friend.

He clothes us in his righteousness to make that friendship real.

He promises us this work in our hearts so that we might not be the ones that flee anymore, but we might be transformed in the ones who can live as living sacrifices, testimonies to the work that He did on the cross and accomplished in our hearts.

So take up your cross daily.

I don't know what yours in particular is right now, but there is one for you.

There is flesh to be put to death, there's self-denial to be done.

You don't have a God who is unfamiliar with doing that.

You don't have a God who is unfamiliar with the weakness that you experience to call you in that you need to be called out of.

So let's partake in this communion in remembrance of him.

Holy Father, as we remember this communion that we will partake of this morning, we look forward to the wedding supper of the Lamb, where we will be clothed in righteous deeds, a righteousness that you accomplished for us.

Lord, that we will be clothed in robes as martyrs.

Many of us will not die for the sake of your name, but every day we are called to live as martyrs for you, putting to death the deeds of the body, so that we might live in you.

Lord, you have gone before us to accomplish our victory in that.

Let us look to you, meditate on you, entrusting yourself to the Father, beyond all entrusting yourself, that that would be the highest power.

Lord, let us live lives that are in line with the truth, trusting the goodness and kindness of our God, which is shown to us in Him sending His Son, that we might be reconciled to you.

Holy Father, we pray that you would bless this meal in Jesus' name.

Amen.