“Do not forgive them, Father. They know exactly what they are doing.”

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The Formerly Rich Young Man

by Halden Doerge

In a previous post about the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17-21) I suggested that there’s no reason to think that the man did not indeed go away intending to do as Jesus commanded, by selling all his possessions and following him. In the comments someone suggested that there is a tradition that suggests Barnabas may be the rich young man in question here. I did some digging and couldn’t find much of anything on that point, but I did find another possibility that actually has support from the text of Mark itself.

Could it not be that the young man in question is simply Mark himself? I think we may catch a hint of this conclusion in Mark 14:51-52 where the narrative tells us that “A certain young man was following [Jesus], wearing nothing but a linen cloth.” This unidentified young man is generally thought — at least in all the commentaries I’ve come across — to be Mark.

Now, it could be that Mark just wanted to throw in some superfluous information by describing the nature of the young man’s (lack of) clothing, but given the intentionality that characterizes the narrative patterns of Mark I’m inclined to doubt it. Why tell us that the young man was dressed only in a sheet that he had wrapped around himself? Why make a point of the fact that he was following Jesus? Could it be that the complete lack of possessions, even clothing, his young age, and his description as actively following Jesus are meant to point us back to the story of the rich young man? Seems like a pretty valid connection to me. I don’t think there’s anyone else mentioned in the gospel of Mark who might qualify for this. Let us follow this line of thought. . .

Symbolically, this event is the culmination of the story of the rich young man. Unlike the others who desert Jesus and flee immediately (vs. 50), he continues to follow, to the point of being seized, at which point he makes his escape by leaving the very last of his possessions behind. His journey of discipleship is complete, he has been utterly dispossessed by following Jesus, right down to his clothing. And finally he has been driven into exile by the powers that set themselves against the mission of Christ.

The rich young man has been dispossessed of everything in following the Messiah, and is left scattered, naked in the dark. The only thing that can make this come out right is a hope beyond hope, a veritable new creation. Discipleship brings the young man to a null point, a point that can only be rendered meaningful by a radical disruption of the status quo. Only resurrection can make dispossessive discipleship of this sort anything more than a pathetic joke.

Halden Doerge is an editor with Wipf & Stock Publishers.

Apparently Doug Wilson has also referred to this possibility, so it’s nothing new. It certainly supports Jordan’s claim that the disciples were people of means.

See also Charity, not Revolution and Uneducated Fishermen? Nuh-uh!

“One of the elements of theological discipline that has been lacking for a long time among theologians has been the consistent practice of doing commentary on Scripture.

What was once a standard practice of theologians seemingly went quite out of style during early modern times. Today of course, this lacuna is being swamped with ever-new series’ of theological commentaries. I take this to be a good thing, and hope it doesn’t just become a fad.

So now every theologian writes one biblical commentary as some sort of badge of acomplishment and then goes back to business as usual. I hope that isn’t where all this goes, but somehow I doubt that we’ll be having theologians of the calibre to church out commentaries on multiple books of Scripture along with multivolume works of dogmatic theology anytime soon.

However, one ray of potential hope that I see is actually the theo-blogosphere. What a better venue could there be for theologians to take up the discipline of regular, ongoing comentary on Scripture than through blogging? I am hoping to start doing some of this myself in my upcoming teaching work that I’ll be doing on the first epistle of John. I hope that others will take up this idea and run with it. I can hardly think of a better thing to see happening among the theology blogs that theological commentary on Scripture.”