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The Folded Napkin - March 23, 2008

The Folded Napkin

John 20:1-18

Easter

March 23, 2008

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

You know, as I get older I find myself not trusting my memory all the time.  When somebody asks me where I was two days ago, it TAKES me about two days to remember.  And then I have no confidence that I got it right.  People will refer to something I said in a sermon and I'll reply, "I DID?  I really said THAT?"

THIS day is really going to throw me for a loop.  Some day someone is going to refer to the first Easter that the kids carried in butterfly balloons and I am going to say, "No, that could not have been Easter because I remember that when we did that there were mountains of snow outside.  MOUNTAINS I tell you!"

When I think about the woman going to the tomb that first Easter morning, I have never pictured them slogging through snow.  But it DOES snow in Jerusalem.  On January 30th they were blanketed by six inches!  It can snow there into April! 

Well, the reason WE'VE got so much snow on Easter is because Easter is so blasted early this year.  Everyone has been saying that they have kind of been taken off guard because Easter snuck up so fast.  Or maybe it just seems that way?  Well, guess what, Easter has never been this early since 1913, just months after the sinking of the Titanic.  there is only one person in this congregation who is even old enough to remember that one - Erna Luedke who is 102 was only seven years old that year.  She might not have been old enough to remember that the weather was pretty dramatic that day as well as all across the Midwest.  It was the most disastrous event in Ohio's history with floods killing hundreds.  Nebraska's deadliest twister, the Easter Tornado, hit Omaha and killed 104 people, totally destroying St. Paul's German Lutheran church right in the middle of an afternoon wedding.  that's what happens when Easter is this early!

But you can relax a bit - it won't happen again until the year 2228, 220 years from now.  None of us will live to see Easter this early again - but the kids who carried in the butterfly balloons?  Their great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren may see it.   They may see it, that is, if Easter is still important to them.  "However," Jesus asked, "when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?"  Luke 18:8

Two hundred and twenty eight years from now may seem like a long time to you.  In fact, it may seem totally irrelevant since you yourself will be dead and gone.  But not if you believe Jesus, or better yet, if you believe IN Jesus.  At the animal level, our primitive mortal minds tell us that of course we will be LONG dead and gone by then.  But according to Jesus we will have been changed in the twinkling of an eye and the clothing of our mortal flesh will have been exchanged for immortal life...in one place or the other....if you catch my drift.

And THAT fact is true because of a napkin.  Wait a minute - what did he say?!  Yep, you heard me right the first time.  The fact that you WILL be alive two hundred and twenty years from now will be because of a napkin.  This is how the Gospel of John describes what happened on the first Easter morning.

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.  So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"  So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.  Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.  Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb.  He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head.  The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen."  John 20:1-7

There it is..."the cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen."  THAT is the folded napkin.  THAT folded napkin is the calling card of the promise that you WILL not be dead the next time Easter falls on March 23rd.

What is the big deal about the folded napkin?  The folded napkin had to do with a tradition about the master and the servant.  Jesus was Jewish and every Jewish boy knew this tradition.  When the master left the table after the meal, he would wipe his hands and mouth and wad up the napkin and toss it on the table.  The servant, waiting just out of sight would take this as the sign that the master was done and the table could be cleared.  But if the master folded the napkin and laid it beside the plate, then the servant would not dare touch the table because...the folded napkin meant, "I'm coming back".

When Jesus rose from the dead in that cave tomb, the linen strips with which they had wrapped the corpse - those linen strips were laying all over the place.  but the napkin that had been used to cover His face, that napkin was neatly folded.  I have always wondered why that napkin was folded, especially when nothing else was.  And why did the Gospel of John go out of its way to make the point that the napkin was off by itself and that it was folded?  This was a calling card:  "I'm not finished.  I'm coming back."

THIS was when death was turned from a period into a comma.  From that point on, death no longer finishes anyone:  it simply moves you on to your final eternal life.  That is what people thinking of suicide misunderstand:  death is NOT the end; death does not finish anything except the opportunity to glorify God.  Death is what brings us face to face with Jesus for His decision about where we will spend the eternity of life.  THIS fact of never-ending life is what puts everything about THIS existence into perspective:  that nothing in this realm will be the last word...except what Jesus did for us on Easter morning.

The folded napkin is Jesus' promise:  "In My Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am."  John 14:2-3  Again, "I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am."

Easter is about what Jesus did on the first Easter two thousand years ago and what you will be doing on Easter two hundred and twenty years from now.  Because Christ IS risen!  He is risen indeed!