What the Gospel Writers Knew About ‘Show Don’t Tell’

You wouldn’t think the Gospels could teach us much about subtlety and hidden meaning in our creative writing, would you?

They each tell the story of Jesus’ ministry in an apparently straightforward way, laying out what happened from their own clear perspectives.

Yet, I found out just how subtle, and therefore how rich and extra-satisfying they are as biographies, when I went looking for what Jesus did on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which was on October 4^th, 2014.

I found… nothing.

At least, on the face of it.

By delving a little deeper, however, I got to what I was looking for. In the process, I discovered that John’s light touch, in particular, is one we writers should take inspiration from.

Firstly, I should explain why it seemed so very strange to me that no mention is made of Jesus and Yom Kippur in the Gospels.

1. Jesus loved to link to the Jewish festivals. At Sukkot, the Festival of Tabernacles, which falls just four days after Yom Kippur, He invited all who were thirsty to come to Him, just as the High Priest was lavishing an excessive amount of living water on the Great Altar at the Temple. (Israel today still frets over its shortage of water.)

Jesus’ death is linked to the Festival of Passover, when the blood of the Pascal Lamb, daubed on the houses of the Israelites, saved them from the Angel of Death. At this time, too, Jews remember how Moses led the Israelite slaves to freedom in the Promised Land. The Last Supper is a Jewish Seder Passover Meal. Seder means ‘order’ because the Exodus story is told in an ordered way, at this time.

Jesus’ ascension at the Festival of Pentecost links Him to the day Moses descended from the mountain with God’s Law, written on tablets of stone. Jesus went up to send down the Holy Spirit, who inscribes God’s Law of Love on our hearts.

2. Yom Kippur is the biggest festival in the Jewish calendar. It’s a twenty-five hour fast, during which no food or water is taken. At this time, Jews ask for forgiveness for their sins and to be written in the Book of Life for a good year.

Cities are silent in present-day Israel on Yom Kippur. No store opens. No traffic circulates. The main Tel Aviv-to-Haifa highway, six lanes that are usually full of trucks and cars, is totally empty.

3. Since Jesus came to fulfill, not abolish, the Law, He had to have kept this biggie. In Leviticus, we are commanded to afflict our souls. Even though He had no sin and didn’t need to ask to be written in the Book of Life, since He knew what lay ahead, He would have honored that command.

As I considered these links between Jesus and the Festivals, I began to realize that the Gospel writers don’t labor them. They don’t set down all I just have, to show you how Jesus deepened the meaning of the Jewish festivals and His own ministry, through these connections.

Nowhere in the Gospels do we find copy like: ‘By dying for us at Passover, Jesus showed Himself to be the Pascal Lamb who saved us to eternal life, and also a great prophet like Moses, when He led us from the slavery of Jewish Law into God’s New Kingdom that was promised to us in the Scriptures.’

On the contrary, the Gospels demonstrate superbly the old writers’ adage that I constantly hammer home to the students who come to me to learn how to share their testimonies with power and confidence —

SHOW, DON’T TELL.

So, what do the Gospel writers communicate, between the lines, about Jesus and Yom Kippur?

We can get an idea from Leviticus 16, of how Yom Kippur in Jerusalem went down in Jesus’ time. This tells us that Moses’ High Priest, Aaron, dressed in sacred linen garments and, having sacrificed a bull for his own sins, he took two goats. One was sacrificed to atone for the people’s sins. The other had the sins of the people placed upon it and was released into the wilderness, carrying away their sin.

After making atonement alone for himself, his household and the whole community of Israel, , behind the sacred curtain in the Most High Place of the Tabernacle, Aaron removed the linen clothing he had put on, bathed and emerged, dressed in his normal clothes.

We know that Jesus gave up his life for our sins. He also carried them away, once and for all. On the cross, He fulfilled the functions of both the goats to atone for us. In that way, He linked Yom Kippur to Passover and became all things to us.

But where is the clue that leads us to that ah-ha moment when the penny drops, the one every writer with a twist in their plot shoots for?

It’s in the linen.

In John 20, Mary Magdalene comes running to Peter with shock news: the stone has been rolled away from Jesus’ tomb and the tomb is empty. Peter and John go running up to it. At the entrance, John, who arrives first, bends over, catching his breath, no doubt, and looks at the strips of linen, lying inside. Peter goes past him, into the tomb, and he, too, sees the strips of linen, lying there. John adds that the burial cloth that was about Jesus’ head, was folded separately, apart from the linen.

This passage is a beautiful example of active writing.

It contains three gentle mentions of linen, the sacred fabric associated with the High Priest at Yom Kippur.

John is telling us, oh so subtly, that the tomb has become the Most Holy Place.

QUESTION: How do you think the “Show, don’t tell” aspect of writing better serves the reader than merely: Tell?

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