It is one detail and it has held him since he was thirty-one.
It is not the tomb and it is not the appearances and it is not the fact that a movement started. It is four words in the twentieth chapter of John, about a piece of cloth.
The strips of linen are lying there. And the cloth that had been round the head is not with them, but folded up by itself in a separate place.
He has read that verse perhaps six hundred times. He can tell you which shelf the book is on in his own house.
And what gets him about it, every single time, is that it is so ordinary and so pointless. Nobody inventing a resurrection narrative includes a note about the laundry arrangements. There is no theology in it. There is nothing to preach off it, though he has watched three people try and it was thin every time.
It is just what somebody saw when they went in and looked around.
And in nineteen years he has never once said out loud, from the front or anywhere else, the second half of what he thinks about it.
Which is that it proves nothing whatsoever.
He has said the first half plenty. He has offered it, gently, to about a dozen people in hard weeks, and twice it has landed properly. And every one of those times he has felt a very small dishonesty go through him, because he handed them a detail with an implication attached that he does not himself think the detail carries.
Too odd to be invented, too small to be a proof
Let me put down the small dishonesty first, because it is the only thing in this that is actually wrong, and it is smaller than nineteen years have made it.
You have handed a dozen people a real thing with a slightly larger frame around it than you believe, and you noticed every time, and noticing is why it has stayed with you. That is a conscience working properly rather than a man deceiving anybody, because what is written never attached a conclusion to it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept nudging you about the frame.
But the frame can come off, and what is underneath it survives without it, and you have not tested that in nineteen years.
Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as permission: the detail is allowed to be exactly what it is. That is not my kind reading of nineteen years, it is what stands written in John's twentieth chapter, and the same Holy Spirit who preserved it has been on that shelf in your house the whole time.
Read it, and notice how little the writer does with it.
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 20:6-7
That is it.
He does not tell you what it means. He does not draw a conclusion. There is no and by this we know, and there is no line telling the reader how to feel about a folded cloth.
Somebody went in, looked around, and reported the arrangement of the room.
So this is yours right now rather than pending a way to make it carry more: the detail was never presented as an argument, because the written word records it and declines to interpret it, and the Spirit of God is the one who saw to it that the pointless-looking line survived without a conclusion attached.
And here is what to do with the two halves you have been holding separately for nineteen years, which is to hand them over together.
This is too odd for somebody to have invented and too small to prove anything. Both clauses. One sentence.
That sentence is entirely honest, it is what you actually think, and it is the version that will survive the person you gave it to going home and looking things up.
So say both halves next time.
You have twelve people who have had the first half from you, and there will be a thirteenth within about six weeks, because there always is, and there will be a hard week and a kitchen table and this will come up. What is written will still be there in its plain form, and the Holy Spirit does not need it framed.
Say: there is one detail in there that has held me for nineteen years, and I want to tell you what it is and also what it is not.
You can do that now rather than after you have found a stronger version, because Scripture records the arrangement of a room and refuses to interpret it, and the Holy Spirit has never once needed a small true thing enlarged before He could use it.
And expect the second half to do more than the first.
Because everybody who has ever been handed a comforting detail in a hard week knows, somewhere, that it is being handed to them with a job to do. That is why so many of them do not take it.
A man who says and this proves nothing in the same breath has just told them he is not managing them. And that, in a kitchen at eleven at night, is worth more than the detail.
Nineteen years of a small dishonesty ends the first time you say the whole of what you think.
Declare this over yourself
Then say these out loud. Know what they stand on: this authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King and not as a man adding a frame. Every line rests on what is already written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it, never the sound of your own voice. You speak under His will, never over it, and however He answers, the outcome is His.
- Requirement that it be an argument, you are lifted off it. Scripture records the cloth lying in its place, separate from the linen, and offers no conclusion at all, and nobody has ever needed to add one.
- Fear that a small true thing is not enough to hand somebody in a hard week, get out, in the name of Jesus. Everybody handed a comforting detail knows it has been given a job to do, and that is exactly why so many of them do not take it.
- Jesus, You left a room described and undecided and never once told the reader what to feel about a folded cloth. I am saying both halves to the thirteenth person, and the nineteen years of a small dishonesty end there.
John 20:6-7
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
