One thing I like to do when I read the gospel accounts of the Passion is to concentrate on specific people in each scene. This year, I’ve been thinking about John Mark. Most scholars agree he is the disciple who wrote the New Testament book of Mark. It is a fast-paced, Headline News version of the gospels, with special attention to the servant leadership of Jesus Christ.

John Mark’s mother was evidently one of those “prominent women” who supported the work of Jesus. In the early days after Pentecost, the church in Jerusalem often gathered at her house. That is where Peter went when he was released from prison by a miracle. (and got the door slammed in his face by a shocked servant girl.)

Barnabas, the Son of Encouragement was Mark’s cousin. He managed to take John Mark along on some trips with the famous Apostle Paul. (They had a bit of a falling out, but it was later reconciled. Proving, once again that Christianity would be perfect if it were not for all those people in it!)

The Apostle Peter called John Mark his son in the faith. It seems probable that Mark got much of the information for his gospel from Peter.

All those things could make a young man rather full of himself. But we don’t read that in his book. Instead, the only time we have a hint that John Mark might be giving us an eye-witness account is in the Garden of Gethsemane.

After the heart-breaking betrayal and arrest, Mark’s gospel says “And they all left Him and fled.” Then, the account goes on and tells the story of “a certain young man” who was following them wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body. I don’t know why he was wearing only a sheet. Scholars don’t know why. Some suggest the commotion woke him and drew him from his bed. Whatever the reason, there he was. And when the soldiers grabbed Jesus, the boy dropped his sheet and ran for home. Naked.

Maybe it wasn’t Mark. But if everyone had fled, who would have seen the naked boy and told the tale? I think Mark told on himself. I like to think by the time he wrote this fifty years or so later, his place in the Kingdom of God was so secure, his relationship with Jesus and the other disciples so tight, that he had no problem recording his own embarrassing moment for the world to see.

I can’t imagine any other reason to include this detail in such a gripping, gruesome, moment except to say, “I was there.”

And, if that’s true, then I love him for it.