I was asked about this not long ago and I think it’s worthy of some consideration. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all record some version of the arrest of the Lord, but Mark’s account offers something not found in any other account…
And they all forsook Him, and fled. And 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. And they led Jesus away to the high priest: and with Him were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes…
(Mark 14:50-53)
If you remove the two middle verses from the above quotation you get the same picture painted across all four Gospel records: Jesus is arrested, His disciples abandon Him, and then the Lord is led away to the High Priest for His sham of a trial to begin. Mark, however, adds the idea that there was someone else there. This man “followed” the Lord, wearing only a linen cloth over his otherwise naked flesh. Considering that the Lord was arrested in the dead of night, I think it’s reasonable to assume this man had not been following the Lord from the upper room (where He’d just been, taking His last supper, etc), but instead perhaps noticed the Lord and His disciples out and about in Jerusalem and, out of curiosity, decided to follow them to see what was going on. That’s purely speculation on my part. All we have to go on is what Mark tells us.
Then, when arrests started being made, and all the disciples scattered, this man was caught up in the hysteria and had his clothing ripped off his body. If you’re wondering how that is possible, you should remember that the linen cloth he was wearing is something like a night gown. Try to imagine what Ebenezer Scrooge wore when the ghosts of Christmas past/present/future came to see him…
If someone gets a handful of that garment and you’re desperately running in the opposite direction, it’s very plausible that the garment will stay and the rest of you will go. That’s what happened here. The man, now naked, fled from the soldiers along with the rest of Jesus’ disciples. So…who is this guy? Why did Mark write this? Why did the Holy Spirit decide it was necessary for us to know this?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m at a loss. As said, all we have is what Mark tells us. I can tell you the prevailing theory, and that is that Mark himself is the man in question and this is his was of subtly introducing us to himself in the text. He wouldn’t be the first Bible writer to write of himself in the third person. The Apostle John, who wrote the Gospel Account that bears his name, regularly refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” instead of just using first-person pronouns. That said, there’s no specific evidence that this man is Mark himself.
Whoever this man is, I’m glad he is mentioned in the text. It doesn’t really matter to me that he was fled the scene naked, but I am reminded of something when I read that he fled the scene. Already in Mark’s account we’ve read how Judas betrayed the Lord. After that, we read how the rest of the disciples betrayed the Lord. Likewise we read how the religious leadership of the Lord’s nation betrayed Him. Everyone is betraying Him left and right, and now we’re given a sneak peak at the common man, the regular folks, the unnamed people littering the streets of Jerusalem at all hours of the day and night. Who is this guy? It doesn’t matter. He’s nobody. He’s everybody. He’s just a person…
and even HE was so desperate to run away and avoid being arrested with Jesus that he fled the scene butt naked!
This guy, whoever he was, cast his lot in with the rest, conceding to all that he too was weak and cowardly and, like the others, refused to be arrested and potentially die with the Lord. Like the others, he too betrayed Jesus, choosing to care more about his own life than the life of His Lord. I’m glad I read about him here, and I’m glad that I’m not given his name… so that I can insert my own in his place. That man is me. He is you. He is all of us.
At one time or another, we’ve all been Judas.
~Matthew