Debby Topliff

I chose the name, “Naked Boy”, for the title of my two comprehensive paintings of the Gospel of Mark because I believe that Mark makes a cameo appearance in Mark 14:51-52 as the young man who flees naked from soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. The writers of the gospels are called evangelists—people who share the good (eu) news (angelion).

But as I wrote a script for the audio tour I’m recording for ArtPrize, I realized there is another naked man in the story, in Mark 5:1-20. This is “Legion”, the man possessed by many demons. He lived in the caves in the Decapolis of the east side of the Sea of Galilee, a pagan territory the Jews stayed away from. He howled day and night and cut himself with stones. Jesus crossed the sea in a violent storm to reach Legion’s neighborhood. When Jesus set him free, the unclean spirits went into a herd of swine—about 2,000—and the pigs ran off the side of a cliff and were drowned in the sea.

When the townspeople saw Legion dressed and in his right mind, they were afraid. He wanted to go with Jesus, but Jesus told him to go home and tell his friends how much the Lord had done for him. And that’s what he did.

I can’t prove the correlation, but in Mark 8 when Jesus feeds 4,000 people in the Decapolis region, I wonder if many of them learned of Jesus through Legion—another naked evangelist.

This story takes on deeper significance for me because next week my paintings of Mark will be hanging in Hoi Polloi on South Division, right in the center of Grand Rapids’ “Heartside” neighborhood, just a few steps from a homeless shelter, kitty corner from a park where the homeless find a place to sit. I’ve seen people sleeping in the doorway of Hoi Polloi and lines waiting for free meals.

How can we be Jesus to these suffering ones he crossed the Sea to free?