“Did Jesus make his own bed?” A key question for Easter and more to the point, one that I have never asked before until this week.
By and large the Gospels don’t usually go into much detail: they normally just give the basic outline of the various events in Jesus’ ministry, leading up to the cross and culminating in his resurrection.
Jesus must have done countless miracles but John in his Gospel recounts just seven, each for their particular significance. So when he does give a detail, especially one offered for no apparent reason, it comes as a surprise.
One example is when the risen Jesus calls out to his disciples fishing in the Sea of Galilee, instructing them to “Throw your net on the right side of the boat!” (John 21:6) There’s a huge catch and then we are told: “It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn.” (v11)
Yes, a lot of fish but why the number, why tell us 153? Scholars have long debated the significance of this number. Over the years we have been given all kinds of solutions, some very whacky indeed.
Top prize has to go to Augustine of Hippo who argued that the significance lay in the fact that 153 is the sum of the first 17 integers, the sum of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the ten commandments. Not obvious to the rest of us, Gus!
There is, in fact, a more mundane explanation as to why John includes this number. As a professional fisherman he invariably counted the number of fish caught: a habit, a well-worn routine.
Whenever I go for a run, any run, I invariably time myself. Last evening just a jog through the fields with one stop for a photo, nothing special. I look at my smart watch now and it tells me I took 1:03.30. Entirely irrelevant but it’s what I’ve been doing for most of my life. I just do it.
And it’s what John did. There were 153 fish, as simple as that. An important detail to him. And to us, showing this historic haul actually happened. Jesus did rise from the dead.
The four evangelists recount the resurrection of Jesus in different ways, from their particular perspective. (Incidentally, I recall a brilliant lecture from John Wenham who explained the dynamics of the resurrection appearances to the different disciple-groups depending on where they were staying. It’s in his book Easter Enigma: Are the Resurrection Accounts in Conflict?)
There’s one detail in John’s account which appears in no other. At the behest of Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter along with “the beloved disciple” (presumably John himself) runs to the tomb. He arrives behind John but unlike John goes straight in. And then we are told: “He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.” (John 20:6f).
Not something I’ve ever thought about. Why this detail? And more, John then tells us that ‘the beloved disciple’ follows Peter into the tomb: “He saw and believed.” (v8).
The big question, one that I have never asked before, is what did he actually see from inside the tomb that caused him to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead?
It is Richard Martin in this week’s BRF Guidelines who has opened my eyes to what for all these years has been hiding from me in plain sight. It is the strange detail of the folded cloth in the empty tomb. And more to the point, who folded it? And why?
By any reckoning Nelson Mandela was a remarkable man. He seemed untouched by finally becoming the first President of South Africa after some 27 years in gaol. And apparently he made his own bed, even after attaining high office. It was one of the habits he picked up during his prison years.
So the film crew who followed him to Oslo were amazed to find him, on the morning he was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, making his own hotel room bed. On other occasion while visiting Shanghai the hotel management had to be persuaded by his personal assistant to allow him to make his own bed. It’s what he always did.
As Martin points out in his commentary John along with the other disciples had been with Jesus for upto three years. They had travelled together, eaten together and presumably stayed together – although I have no idea how people in their culture slept. But however they did it, they would have been familiar with Jesus’ personal habits.
So working backwards from the folded cloth, it looks as if Jesus was a particularly tidy person. “Only he tidies up as carefully as that, only Jesus folds up his clothes lie that.” The folder cloth is a give-away. Jesus must have done this, it’s what he does. He must be alive!
Martin concludes: “Now you could use this story to teach your children the divine example of making your bed each morning. But that I would suggest is not the evangelist’s intention!
“Rather, he is showing us that the humble, servant-hearted Jesus who washed his disciples’ feet, who carefully sorted out his bed each morning, is still the same in character now that he is risen.”
Strangely the first thing the risen Jesus did was to carefully tidy his grave clothes and fold the cloth that covered his head. It’s what he does.
This Easter let him tidy up your life!
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