The Folded Napkin in the Empty Tomb
by Jared Martin | 29 March 2024 |
Every year at Easter a story is shared by Christians all over the world. You have probably seen it on your Instagram, Facebook, or X feeds. It’s about Jesus and a folded napkin, and it goes like this:
Why Did Jesus Fold the Napkin?
Why did Jesus fold the linen burial cloth after His resurrection? I never noticed this…. The Gospel of John (20:7) tells us that the napkin, which was placed over the face of Jesus, was not just thrown aside like the grave clothes.
The Bible takes an entire verse to tell us that the napkin was neatly folded, and was placed at the head of that stony coffin. Early Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, ‘They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and I don’t know where they have put him!’ Peter and the other disciple ran to the tomb to see. The other disciple outran Peter and got there first. He stopped and looked in and saw the linen cloth lying there, but he didn’t go in. 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.
Was that important? Absolutely! Is it really significant? Yes! In order to understand the significance of the folded napkin, you have to understand a little bit about Hebrew tradition of that day. The folded napkin had to do with the Master and Servant, and every Jewish boy knew this tradition. When the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure that it was exactly the way the master wanted it. The table was furnished perfectly, and then the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, and the servant would not dare touch that table until the master was finished. When the master was done eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers and his mouth, clean his beard, and wad up that napkin and toss it onto the table. The servant would then know to clear the table. For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, “I’m finished.” But if the master got up from the table, and folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not dare touch the table, because…
The folded napkin meant, “I’m coming back!”
It is a lovely story—it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy. But is it true?
I first heard this story fifteen years ago when my church pastor used it for a communion service. He told us about Jewish dinner customs, which we all thought was thoroughly boring and irrelevant, until he suddenly linked it with the resurrection of Jesus. We all sat there amazed, thinking, “Why has no one told us this before?!” Now that I am a pastor, I have thought many times about preaching this story in my own church. I even get church members making requests for it at Easter.
So this week, as I sat down to write my Easter sermon, I thought I should get to the bottom of it once and for all.
To begin, I googled the story and I found it on millions of web pages, blogs, and social media posts. The text in each one was pretty much identical.
Adventist sources
Next, I looked up John 20:7 in my trusty Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary. It said that a napkin (Greek: soudarion) was “a cloth for wiping perspiration” and
The fact that these graveclothes were there and neatly laid away proves that this was not a case of grave robbery. Thieves would not have gone to the trouble of removing the wrappings.
Interesting, but no mention of Jewish dinner parties.
As a good Adventist, the next book I consulted was The Desire of Ages (p. 789) by Ellen White. She stated:
The disciples hurried to the tomb, and found it as Mary had said. They saw the shroud and the napkin, but they did not find their Lord. Yet even here was testimony that He had risen. The graveclothes were not thrown heedlessly aside, but carefully folded, each in a place by itself….
It was Christ Himself who had placed those graveclothes with such care. When the mighty angel came down to the tomb, he was joined by another, who with his company had been keeping guard over the Lord’s body. As the angel from heaven rolled away the stone, the other entered the tomb, and unbound the wrappings from the body of Jesus. But it was the Saviour’s hand that folded each, and laid it in its place. In His sight who guides alike the star and the atom, there is nothing unimportant. Order and perfection are seen in all His work.
Still no mention of Jewish masters and servants and dinner traditions.
Manners and customs
The next book I turned to was Manners and Customs of the Bible by James Freeman. It contains thousands of cool little facts about the Bible stories that have been lost to modern readers. However, all it says about John 20:7 is
A “napkin” is also mentioned in connection with the burial of Lazarus. It was bound about his face. One was also used at the burial of Jesus. This was a handkerchief which was employed to tie up the chin of a corpse [so it would not fall open while they were transporting it and preparing it for burial].
Next, I turned to my Logos Bible software and looked up every document and Bible commentary it linked with John 20:7. There was nothing to support the story that everyone is sharing on Instagram.
Finally, I logged into the Avondale University library (where I am a student) and began searching for peer-reviewed journal articles about Jesus and the napkin. Searches for “Jesus” and “napkin” only yielded two results. The first article, by William E. Reiser in the Heythrop Journal, highlighted the similarities and differences between Lazarus’ and Jesus’ resurrections:
Jesus is Lord of his own Resurrection… We find that Jesus does not need another to remove his bindings; he takes off his own napkin. And to underline the deliberateness, the freedom, and the power which he has from his Father, Jesus folds and arranges the linens himself. Lazarus did not rise to glory; thus the napkin over his face is a sign that he still stands related to death. Jesus rises to glory, and so the putting off of his napkin is a sign that death has a claim on him no more.[1]
The prophetic context
The second, by Basil Osbourne, was published nine months later in the same journal in reply to Reiser’s essay. It warned against attributing meaning to the napkin in order to give it theological significance[2] (and to get more likes on Facebook!).
Instead, “we must try to ascertain just what message the presence or absence of a burial napkin would have conveyed in first-century Judaism.” The author writes:
Jewish symbolism is based upon the language of the Old Testament, and the fact that the napkin is twice used in a resurrection context suggests that its significance should be sought in the traditional Jewish exegesis of a well-known passage from Isaiah in which a funeral “covering” or “veil” is associated with the final elimination of death in the world to come:
And He [God] will swallow up on this mountain [Mount Zion],
the face of the covering that covers all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations;
He will swallow up death forever (Isaiah 25:7-8).
Within this prophetic context, the story in John 20 makes more sense. On Easter morning, Mary gets to Jesus’ tomb first and sees that it is empty. She rushes and tells Peter and John that Jesus’ body is gone. They come running to the empty tomb as fast as they can. John gets there first, peers inside, and sees the linen wrappings lying there.
When Peter arrives, he goes straight inside the tomb. He, too, sees the linen wrappings, as well as the folded napkin that had covered Jesus’ face. John follows Peter into the tomb, sees the folded napkin, and “believes” (John 20:8). He believes that Jesus has risen from the dead, and that through his resurrection the prophecy of Isaiah 25 has been fulfilled: God has swallowed up death forever! Jesus has taken Satan’s greatest weapon–death–snapped it in half and thrown it aside. As a result, the greatest promise has become the greatest guarantee:
God loves the world so much that he came and died for us, that everyone who believes in him will not die forever but live forever with him (John 3:16).
This is what the folded napkin teaches us. Maybe we should post that on Instagram instead!
- William E. Reiser, “The Case of the Tidy Tomb: The Place of the Napkins of John 11:44 and 20:7,” Heythrop Journal, Volume 14, Issue 1 (January 1973), 47-57. ↑
- Basil Osbourne, “A Folded Napkin in an Empty Tomb: John 11:44 and 20:7. Again,” Heythrop Journal, Volume 14, Issue 4 (October 1973), 437-440. ↑
Jared Martin is the Senior Pastor of Coastlife Seventh-day Adventist Church in Queensland, Australia. He is currently studying a Master of Arts (Biblical and Theological Studies) at Avondale University. In his spare time, he loves working out at the gym and taking his kids to the beach.