Sermon for Evensong, Second Sunday in Lent
The Rev David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon at St John’s Church, Port Williams, for Choral Evensong, Lent II, based on St Mark 14:27-52.
“He left the linen cloth and ran away naked.”
Last words are often the most compelling or at least in this case, perhaps, the most perplexing. Who was this young man “with nothing but a linen cloth about his body” and who ends up running away naked? It must seem odd in what is otherwise a most disturbing and deeply touching scene, the scene of Christ’s agony of prayer in Gethsemane, his betrayal by a kiss and his arrest. It is all part of the intensity of the drama of the Passion. But how odd!
And what are we to make of the story of God’s covenant promise to Noah juxtaposed with the story of the building of the Tower of Babel with its last words? “There the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” (more…)