"Proof"
Year Delivered or Published: 2007
Author: Stefan Jagoe
Author's Faith: Christianity
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: April 3, 2007
Topic: Spirituality
Citation: John 20:6-8
My girlfriend’s mother is getting up in years as they say. She’s nearing 70 and still repairs the roofs on her rental properties and mows five yards a week in the summer months. Yeah, I know - wow. She’s also just as strong of will as she is of body – “I know what I know” is her mantra. Whenever a long held” truth” of hers is challenged – she brushes it aside with a turn of the head and a folding of the arms and declares, “I know what I know.”
I’m sure you’ve heard all the buzz in the news about the tomb found in Jerusalem containing ossuaries inscribed with the names “Jesus” and “Mary” and “son of Jesus”. Many eyes are taking a closer look despite nearly unanimous agreement among scholars that declaring this grave to be that of Jesus of Nazareth is roughly akin to finding tombstones that read “here lies Bob, his wife Sue, and their son” and claiming to be able to make a positive identification of Bob, Sue, and the son of Bob.
So what of The Resurrection? Is there proof positive that this Jesus character actually rose from the dead? Most historians will acknowledge that he did in fact exist, but is there any truth to this rising from the grave saga?
Since the beginning of Christianity, relics have abounded. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, allegedly found the hiding places of the three crosses used in the crucifixion. There are too many Holy Grails to count, and if Indiana Jones can’t keep up with the Ark of the Covenant no one can. A few years ago I got the opportunity to see the art collection of the Vatican at the St. Louis Art Museum – the first time it had been on display outside of Vatican City. Among the works was a replica of a relic known as the Veronica Cloth. It is a beige colored linen cloth with a highly detailed, not-to-scale image of a man with bearded face – said to be the face of Jesus, somehow supernaturally transferred to the original cloth when a woman named Veronica wiped his face as he carried his cross past her along streets of Jerusalem on the way to his execution. The original, if it ever existed, has long since vanished. No proof here.
This week, the desktop wallpaper on the computer in my office is rather creepy looking. It’s a faint, blurry, eerie image of the face of a man. Let me tell you about it.
In the Chapel of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, hanging behind iron bars, bullet resistant glass and inside a fireproof case and is a linen cloth measuring 14.3 feet in length and about 3 ½ feet wide. When folded in two 7.15 feet halves, the cloth bears the faint life sized image of a man on each half – one half shows the front of the man, the other his backside. There are no brush strokes or pigments on the cloth, characteristic of a painting; the image penetrates only the very top fibers of the cloth – also uncharacteristic of the behavior of paint on cloth; and perhaps most unusual is the fact that the image on the cloth was never seen in complete detail until 1898 when the new field of photography was beginning to take off – a man by the name of Secondo Pia took a picture of it – and it was suddenly seen in a way it had never been seen before, since it first surfaced about 900 years ago. You see, the image on the cloth is actually a reverse image – a photographic negative – when viewed with the naked eye, it looks like a blurry image of a human figure – but when photographed astonishing detail becomes visible: the facial features, shaded areas on the body consistent with bleeding, (most experts agree that there is actually blood present on the cloth) and disfigurements of various body parts consistent with injury and swelling. While no one who has studied it can definitively say what caused the image, many agree that somehow the image was burned or scorched onto the cloth, though the means is not known. In other words, everyone can say what it ain’t; no one can say what it is. Did I mention that the cloth has survived not one but three fires of mysterious origin? Now this one will definitely make you go hmmmm…..frankly, after reading many books on the famed Shroud of Turin and doing some research on my own, I have connected the dots and will go out on a limb here – you ready? Here goes: I believe that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus, and the image was transferred at the precise moment of his reanimation in some way yet to be discovered – some even believe that it was not unlike the process that caused “shadowing” of human images to form on walls and other solid objects during the explosion of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. In the Shroud of Turin, I believe we have the face of Jesus, and on the Shroud of Turin, the DNA sequence of all DNA sequences.
6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;
John 20: 6-8
But don’t take my word for it.
And it’s like this - for me, the Shroud of Turin isn’t “proof”, but validation of my “proof”. I’ll explain.
Perhaps the greatest evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ cannot be put into a box, entered in a computer, displayed on a wall, or examined under a microscope – perhaps the greatest evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is found in the strange behavior of a handful of men hiding near Jerusalem in 33 AD.
It was a Sunday afternoon – Jesus had just been executed by the Romans that Friday – and his disciples now were living in limbo – confused, saddened, and terrified that they would be the next to die. The leader of this “movement” had been silenced, and it would only make sense to destroy his lieutenants, then the “movement” would surely die. In the Gospel of John, it says that the disciples had gathered together that day but made sure to lock the doors in the house – fearing arrest.
But what happens next is puzzling. Why would ordinary men – and women – with no great education or political connections – suddenly step out onto burned bridges and begin to preach openly and without hesitation or reservation, all of the things Jesus had taught them, and further, that he had been raised from the dead? Why would men who just days before had locked themselves in a house plotting their next move and probably writing their wills, now suddenly defy the authorities and flirt with arrest at best, and with their own executions at worst? Why would they stand up before temple rulers and Roman authorities and talk all this nonsense about Jesus coming back from the dead?
Because they knew something.
Because they had seen something.
Because they had touched someone who was once dead, but now alive, and to say it boosted their confidence is a great understatement – it gave them wings, and it gave them a reckless sense of mission that would change the world forever, and cause people like you and I to ponder these things some 2,000 years later.
And while I’m going out on limbs, I’ll step out on this one too –
The peace that I have experienced in my life when all around me is chaos –
The synchronicity and serendipity that have dictated the path of my life from one event to another –
The love that I find myself overwhelmed with, sometimes even for people I don’t really like –
All that couldn’t have come from a legend of a “movement” centered around a man who said a few wise things and then got whacked.
There’s an old hymn we used to sing in my previous life as a Baptist with this line:
“You ask me how I know he lives; he lives within my heart.”
Or as Donna’s mom would say, I know what I know.
There’s your proof.
If you’ll check your own life experience, I’ll bet you’ll find proof, too.
Happy Easter.
Peaceout.
