The Naked Truth

Have you ever had a dream where you were naked in public?

I had one of those last night, but there was a twist. In my dream, I arrived at the scene of a terrible car accident. I followed my Red Cross emergency respondent training -- checking the scene and discovering two victims. The driver of the car, a woman, had been thrown clear of the car and was lying on the sidewalk with terrible injuries. Inside the car was a baby whose skull appeared crushed and who seemed dead to me. There was no one else around so I used my cell phone to call 911. Then I began to attend to the injured woman. In my dream that's when I realized that I was completely naked.

I had to make a choice: would I stay and attend to the wounded until help arrived, or would I flee the scene and find some clothes? In my dream, I made what I think was the right choice. I stayed to help, risking scandal and personal humiliation in order to make sure that the injured woman was cared for. Later in the dream, as if to vindicate my decision, the "dead" baby inside the car turned out not to be dead after all. He emerged from the car as an unharmed, fully grown adult. In other words, life was emerging from the wreckage of death.

Oddly, though, at the end of my dream I got no credit for tending to the wounded woman. The police implied that they were going to prosecute me for indecent exposure. So the dream ended on a disconcerting note. I was still going to have to pay a price for doing the right thing. In other words, my dream was teaching me something about the true principle of sacrifice.

After all, if Hollywood had written the Gospels, Jesus would somehow have been able to save humanity and miraculously avoid being crucified in some dramatic, by-the-skin-of-your-teeth ending. We typically want to believe that good can conquer evil without a price having to be paid. Very often in real life, however, as in my dream and as in the Gospels, the hero gets punished. I think that's what my dream was trying to warn me. If you want to do the right thing, prepare your mind and your soul. There's a price to pay.

The particular nude symbolism of this dream drew my attention to a phrase in the Gospel of Mark I read this morning that I'd never noticed before. In chapter 10, when blind Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus from the side of the road, after Jesus invites him to approach, the text continues (v. 50), "And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus." I'm not sure what if anything Bartimaeus was wearing underneath the garment he cast aside. But the wording of the text was not "casting away his outer garment." The totality of the phrase "casting away his garment" suggests that this impoverished beggar was casting away his only piece of clothing in the world in order to stand before Jesus utterly naked and vulnerable.

This theme of casting aside one's covering is reinforced earlier in the chapter, when Jesus says, "How hardly shall they that trust in riches enter into the Kingdom of God!" (v. 24). When the disciples are "astonished beyond measure" at this saying (did they trust so much in riches?!), Jesus offered the analogy of the camel and the needle, invoking -- in at least one major exegesis of this text -- the image of unloading everything one possesses, in order to get down on one's knees and crawl through a small opening.

When Jesus explains to his disciples that "to sit on [his] right hand and on [his] left hand is not [his] to give," he then drives the point home by explaining that "even the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" (vs. 40 & 45). In other words, the way of Christ is not about having, not about possessing, but rather about giving up.

Jesus' teaching that "whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein" (v. 15) speaks both to the passivity and acceptance that saving faith requires, but also to the vulnerability. A child comes into the world naked. And so when blind Bartimaeus rose to receive the Kingdom -- in the form of healing from Christ -- he too cast aside his garment and received it naked. It seems significant that Bartimaeus' willingness to be vulnerable was a demonstration of precisely what was required in order for his eyes to be opened, in order for him to perceive the world as it is, in order to receive truth.

When we truly serve, we put ourselves on the line. There may be good we can do safely, behind the lines, not risking ourselves. But there will eventually come a time when we realize that we can't do enough unless we are willing to risk it all. To save lives, sometimes we will have to bare it all.