The Young Man With the Linen Cloth

The Gospel of Mark has the least amount of unique material, meaning that most of the stories about Jesus that we have in Mark are also in one of the other three accounts.  According to the Bible Dictionary, Mark’s record is only about seven percent exclusive.  But a detail that is unique to Mark’s gospel is one related to the arrest of the Savior in the garden.  As Jesus was being taken from the garden to be judged by the Jewish rulers, “there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked” (Mark 14:51-52).  So there appears to have been some young man, presumably a disciple, who came and followed the Savior in the night.  My guess is that the “young men” spoken of were those with the arresting party who had come “with swords and staves” to take the Savior by force (Mark 14:43).  They apparently didn’t like this young man following the procession, and they caused the young man to flee.  Who was he?  Why is this account only in Mark?  Why would he be out in the middle of the night with only a sheet on? 

                President McKay gave an interesting suggestion to answer these questions: he proposed that the young man was Mark himself.  This would of course would explain why the detail is unique to Mark.  Here’s what President McKay said in 1959: “There was one young man among them. I do not know whether we know about his life, but I like to think of him as a sort of independent thinker, not paying much attention to his mother's religion—his mother had joined the Christian Church but he did not pay much attention to it until he was disturbed one night by his mother's voice asking him to rise quickly, ‘don't stop to dress, throw a cloak around your body and rush to Gethsemane and tell Jesus that Judas and soldiers are coming to arrest him.’  I think that young man who fled naked from the men who snatched the sheet from his body was John Mark, the author of one of the four Gospels. We know he did join the Church, later, and that he labored with Peter” (see here).  That’s a very interesting suggestion and certainly seems like a plausible explanation for the rather bizarre story.  I’m not sure that we can know for certain, but perhaps we can think about why the story is there.  Does the story teach us anything?

                Certainly one thing that the story helps us understand is the fear that was among the disciples that night.  Right before the account of the young man with the sheet we see that the apostles had just fled, and now this shows us that another person had run from the Savior.  Jesus was truly going to face the terrible events that followed alone.  I have to wonder as well if we can’t also understand the story symbolically—without the Savior we are spiritually naked.  For example, Moroni wrote to the wicked: “For behold, when ye shall be brought to see your nakedness before God, and also the glory of God, and the holiness of Jesus Christ, it will kindle a flame of unquenchable fire upon you” (Mormon 9:5).  On the other hand, the righteous are spoken of in the scriptures as being clothed: “The righteous shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment, and their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even with the robe of righteousness” (2 Nephi 9:14).  Deserting the Savior that night left the young man naked.  It will be difficult for us to stand faithfully by the Savior and His servants in the days to come, but if we become afraid and don’t stay true to Him when the going gets tough, we will be left spiritually naked without the strength and protection that comes from the gospel.