A Finished Work – John 20:1-7 – Part I

 

A Finished Work – John 20:1-7 – Part I

(Easter Sermon 2004)

 

Opening Prayer

 

Humbly, I beseech the gracious bestowal of the anointing of the Holy Spirit who breaks every yoke that binds the people of God. With all due humility, I ask that I would decrease so that You may increase within me. Open the eyes and ears of our hearts and reveal unto us Your “good, pleasing and perfect will” for our lives. O most gracious and benevolent Master, give us knowledge of Your will for us and the mental willingness and spiritual power to carry it out. May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, our strength and redeemer. Amen.

 

Introduction

 

The smallest details are usually the surest clues that a job has been finished. If you want to determine whether a table has been set for dinner, you look to see whether the napkins have been folded and put in their proper places. The clearest sign that the dishes have been done is a folded and wrung dishtowel left over the sink. What is the major indicator that the laundry has been finished? You open your chest of drawers and find clean, fresh and neatly folded undergarments. The fold in a bedspread means that the bed has been made. I recall visiting relatives in Miami. These folks are meticulously neat and clean. They can spot a bread crumb in the middle of dark carpeting. Each room and its furniture have cleanliness equal to a museum. The smallest detail tells whether someone cleaned the room on any given day. Seeking to be a good guest, I resolved to adhere to their unparalleled standards of cleanliness. Each morning, after my morning routine of shaving, bathing and dressing, I made the bed. On the third morning, I learned that I was not making the bed according to household standards. My failure to leave a well-defined crease in the bed spread just beneath the pillows which yields marked fold on the sides meant that I had not made the bed properly. The lack of that side fold clearly exposed my inadequacy in making the bed. That minute and simple yet significant detail of folding certifies that a job had been completely and meticulously finished.

 

I.              Carpenters in the Ancient Near East

 

In his research for his latest novel, The Weeping Chamber, the Christian fiction writer, Sigmund Brouwer, discovers a minute but tremendously important detail which demonstrates that the work of salvation was accomplished thoroughly and irreversibly. Brouwer became intrigued and obsessed with a seemingly minor detail in John’s resurrection account. He focuses upon the evangelist’s specific care in mentioning the folded burial cloth. John carefully specifies that the cloth is folded neatly and set to the side. It is as if the Risen Lord or an attending angel seriously desired that anyone entering the Empty Tomb could not miss this detail. Brouwer asks, “Why? What is so important about the folded burial cloth? What does it mean? What did it mean to John’s original audience? What significance did this detail have for them? What did they think about the cloth? What did it mean to them? What lessons did they learn or gain when they considered this detail? What message did they think that John communicates with this detail?” Brouwer’s questions fueled his research. He began to rummage any documents, evidence and sources from biblical times that would contextualize the meaning of the folded cloth.

 

Brouwer discovered that carpenters of the first century had a distinct method of letting their employers know that the carpenters had completed a job. The average carpenter in the Ancient Near East was illiterate. He could not leave a note or an invoice. As a result, carpenters devised a system of communication to relay the message of a finished job and to request payment. The carpenter would leave a folded cloth in one of the corners of the job.   Following the building and sanding of a table, carpenters would leave a folded cloth perhaps sandpaper in the right corner. This cloth indicates finality and completion.

 

II.           John 20:1-7 – The Folded Burial Cloth

 

Most interestingly, the Johannine evangelist shares this detail of the folded cloth in his resurrection account. In John 20:6-7, he writes, “Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying to the side.”

 

On the first Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and the other disciples find an empty tomb with the clearest sign that the work of salvation had been finished. Like the good, industrious and faithful carpenter that He was, Jesus took His burial cloth and folded it neatly and left it in a corner. Thereby, He indicates that He has totally defeated death and built an eternal home for all disciples and anyone who would believe. The folded burial cloth demonstrates that “It is finished!”

 

This detail is more than a literary and rhetorical device. It is also more than an obscure detail that would be a detective’s delight. It is more meaningful than anthropologist or archeologist’s missing piece of a cultural or societal puzzle. In recounting the ironic story of the resurrection in which the evangelist assures his audience of Christ’s destruction of death, John eloquently embeds this invaluable detail to depict the Lord’s mission and purpose. Detailing the presence, shape and position of the burial cloth reflects Christ’s complete salvific work in establishing the kingdom of God on Earth and laying the foundation of the Church through His three and half years of preaching, teaching and healing particularly to the apostles and the seventy followers.

 

In the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John, the evangelist records the resurrection of Lazarus, a common man in historical era. Jesus miraculously recalls Lazarus to life within a graveyard, the setting of death’s irreversible finality.  This scene of the empty tomb at the end of the Gospel in which Peter and John discover Jesus’ resurrection extends the blessing of this miracle to anyone who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Mentioning the burial cloth laying aside equates with the removal of Lazarus’ grave clothes. Existentially, the Lord removes any adherent’s grave clothes or possible death. The symbolism of the burial cloth makes this divine promise accessible to an average person in biblical times and even today.

 

Singularly and uniquely, the Johannine evangelist includes this detail of the folded cloth in his resurrection account. Most readers of the Fourth Gospel often overlook this small yet significant detail. It is a potent and penetrating literary device that reflects the evangelist’s theological perspective. John notes, “Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside.” It is a significant fact that each of the four gospel writers emphasize that the disciples discover an empty tomb. Their bewilderment creates questions about the whereabouts of Jesus’ body. Where was it? Its absence did not make sense as it was not naturally possible. Did these early witnesses to the empty tomb immediately recall Jesus’ prior teachings about the resurrection? “Destroy this temple and I will build it back in three days.” “The Son of Man will go with you to Jerusalem where He will be crucified but I will rise again on the third day.” John unlike his synoptic counterparts combines these two important details to remind his readers of Christ’s salvific purpose as evidenced in the incarnation, atonement, crucifixion and resurrection.

 

“He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying on the side.” On the first Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and the other disciples find an empty tomb and the clearest sign that Jesus had accomplished the Father’s grand plan of salvation for humankind. The work of salvation had been finished. Customarily, in the Ancient Near East, carpenters left neatly folded cloths in the corner of table as a sign that they had completed the task for which they had been hired. Unlike today, carpenters did not return to a truck, write out an invoice and give it to the customer. Quite possibly, illiteracy contributed to the practice of folded cloths as the average person would not have had facility in language arts and an alphabet.

 

Parenthetically, “illiteracy” in that sense and historical period would differ significantly from any contemporary use of the word. During biblical times, people had substantial memories. They transmitted knowledge orally. Major classical books such as Beowulf, Odyssey and Iliad and even the Bible itself was transferred generationally and orally. Hence, the phrase, “knowing by heart,” became prevalent. Old Testament authors exhort their readers to recite scriptures throughout the day. Nonetheless, people who lived in the ancient world were “illiterate” but not necessarily uneducated.