Mark 14:43-52

The Process towards Execution Begins

Mark 14:43-52 – Jesus is Arrested

⁴³ At that moment, while he was speaking,

Judas, one of the twelve, appeared,

and with him a crowd from the chief priests, the scribes and the elders,

with swords and clubs.

Judas had moved quickly. Mark seemed uncertain of the details: he described the party sent to arrest Jesus as a crowd with swords and clubs. More likely it would have been a contingent of Jewish police – Levites charged with the responsibility of keeping order in and around the temple. People in authority would no doubt have dispatched them, though there had hardly been time to convene a full meeting of chief priests, scribes and elders. Probably some of the chief priests had given the orders.

⁴⁴ His traitor had given them a signal,

“The one I kiss is the one.

Take charge of him and lead him away securely.”

⁴⁵ When he arrived, he went up to him immediately,

and said, “Rabbi”,

and kissed him.

There was a deliberate poignancy in the circumstances of Jesus’ identification; he was betrayed with the kiss of a former trusted friend.

⁴⁶ They laid their hands on him and held him.

⁴⁷ One of those standing around pulled out his sword

and struck the servant of the high priest

and cut off his ear.

Obviously one of the disciples had carried a sword. The disciples, for all their later fear and disillusionment, at least initially did not desert him, though their response may have been more from panic than from courage.

⁴⁸ Addressing them Jesus said,

“Have you have come out with swords and clubs to arrest me

as though I were a rebel?

⁴⁹ I was with you daily teaching in the temple,

and you did not arrest me.

Still, let the scriptures be fulfilled.”

Jesus’ brief challenge passed without comment.

The reference to the Scriptures echoed no particular text, and seemed to have been Mark’s way of reassuring his community and his readers that, despite appearances, God’s plan was unfolding. Yet there was no inevitability in Jesus’ death. He was not the victim of inexorable fate, nor had God set out to have him killed by crucifixion. God allowed human freedom to have its way. God’s way of intervening was to turn all things to the eventual good of those open to the Spirit’s promptings. The Scriptures do not control the future; they provide no more than precedents or images to help understanding.

⁵⁰ They all abandoned him and fled.

Jesus faced into his fate alone.

***

⁵¹ There was a young man, a follower of his,

clothed with a linen garment over bare skin.

They seized hold of him,

⁵² but leaving the garment with them,

he fled off naked.

Scholars have been puzzled by this puzzling addition to the narrative, some assuming that it may have been a personal reference to Mark himself (making a personal appearance, as it were, in his narrative), possibly a young man at the time and curious to follow a posse of temple troops he had seen marching through the city.

More likely, it is to be understood in relation to another unidentified young man clothed in a long white robe who would later address the women at the empty tomb. A number of the details seem to have symbolic references.

The young man was unidentified: he could have been anybody and everybody.
Mark drew attention to what he wore. A linen cloth would later be mentioned as the cloth used to enshroud the corpse of Jesus (15:46).
And the man fled off naked.

It could be that the young man was a symbol of “disciple”. He was clothed in a death shroud, a reference perhaps to his inadequate faith. In apocalyptic writings, clothes often revealed the inner state of persons. He was stripped even of this inadequate faith, and was left with nothing but fear, emptiness and despair. The young man symbolised Jesus’ actual disciples, and served to illustrate their destitute spiritual state.

Next >> Mark 14:53-65