Burial – Being a Pilgrim

“Afterward Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus (because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate for permission to take down Jesus’ body. When Pilate gave permission, Joseph came and took the body away. With him came Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night. He brought about seventy-five pounds of perfumed ointment made from myrrh and aloes. Following Jewish burial custom, they wrapped Jesus’ body with the spices in long sheets of linen cloth. The place of crucifixion was near a garden, where there was a new tomb, never used before. And so, because it was the day of preparation for the Jewish Passover and since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.”
John 19:38-42 NLT

The details are gruesome. Three men crucified on adjacent crosses, with Jesus in the middle, but the Jewish leaders had a problem. They didn’t want the spectre of an ongoing crucifixion, with tortured men hanging naked on their crosses, to continue overnight and spoil the Sabbath, their holy day. We read in John 19:31-33, “It was the day of preparation, and the Jewish leaders didn’t want the bodies hanging there the next day, which was the Sabbath (and a very special Sabbath, because it was Passover week). So they asked Pilate to hasten their deaths by ordering that their legs be broken. Then their bodies could be taken down. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus. But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so they didn’t break his legs”. A crucified man with broken legs would have been unable to breathe for long and would soon die of suffocation. This was the lot of the two thieves, but Jesus was already dead. The weight of the sins of the world had seen to that, and His mission to save the world was complete. We remember His final cry, recorded in John 19:30, “When Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished!” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit”.

Joseph and Nicodemus, two Jewish leaders, performed a hasty burial of Jesus’ body, with His internment being in Joseph’s own brand new grave (Matthew 27:60), followed by a “great stone” being rolled across the entrance. And there Jesus lay, His body at rest. However, if we turn to 1 Peter 3:18, we read, “Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit”. Jesus died physically, but His Spirit continued to live. This is extremely good news for us pilgrims, because the same thing will happen to us. When our “earthly tent”, as Paul called it, our bodies, come to the end of their lives, our spirits will live on. Where will that be? We receive a glimpse of what will happen from the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in which the poor beggar, Lazarus, ends up in a place of comfort, while the Rich Man ends up in a place of torment. We remember too that Jesus said to the repentant thief on the adjacent cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise”. So, through faith, we will indeed find ourselves in a better place after we die.

But Jesus’ Spirit was busy during that Easter Saturday, because we read, “So he went and preached to the spirits in prison— those who disobeyed God long ago when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat. …” (1 Peter 3:19-20a). What that was about has kept many theologians and Biblical scholars awake at night, but the important thing was that, after His body was placed in the grave, Jesus was still ministering through His message of Good News by His Spirit. Death will not mean a time when we can put our spiritual feet up and relax, either. Jesus will have work for us to do, I’m sure.

Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb, but thank God, the story didn’t end there. A visit to the tomb will not find the remains of a few bones. But more on that tomorrow.

Dear Lord Jesus. The crucifixion came to an end, and loving hands took your body down and laid it in a grave. We pause this Easter Saturday and reflect on the reality that nothing could keep Your body in the grave. No authorities or powers. Nothing that the devil could contrive. And with intense anticipation, we watch the stone to see who would roll it away and what would happen next. Amen.

In spite of the conspiracy theories that claimed Jesus never died on the cross and that He just “swooned”, Jesus definitely died that fateful day. The Roman soldier, used to seeing death, confirmed it with his spear, and the two Jewish leaders (secret disciples of Jesus), took Jesus’ body down from the cross and prepared His body for burial, tightly wrapping it in sheets of linen interspersed with a large quantity of spices. That they were fooled into thinking Jesus was dead when He was still alive, is so unlikely that such an event can be discounted as being totally untrue. There are all sorts of legends around Joseph but little about him can be found in the Bible. He may have been a relative of Jesus and, because Jesus’ father, Joseph, was no longer around, he may have taken on the responsibility of dealing with Jesus’ body, hence Pilate’s willingness to allow him to do so. Nicodemus we know more about, as we can read in John 3. After preparing the body, the two men laid Jesus in a new tomb, that Matthew recorded had been prepared for Joseph. But Nicodemus and Joseph were in a bit of a hurry because the start of the Passover celebrations were imminent. The proximity of the tomb to the place of execution helped them greatly.

This factual account of what happened to Jesus’ body forms another facet of the Good Friday events. They were just normal details of the process of dealing with the dead. Nothing really worthy of note at all. But John included them, facts for which we’re grateful. To just have been told that Jesus died and was buried, although true, would not have provided the authenticity that has helped people come to faith in Jesus ever since.

What do we pilgrims think of the arrest, trial, whipping, crucifixion and then burial of Jesus? It of course has formed the bedrock of our faith, that Jesus went through all of that and in the process took on the punishment we so richly deserved for our sins. It was a time when Heaven and earth collided, when sins performed in the body on earth, were forgiven in Heaven, implementing God’s plan for the salvation of the world. But, as we will find out, it didn’t just end with a body in a tomb. Jesus’ body rested there for a while as His Spirit spent time elsewhere. But we pilgrims look at the story before us with horror, that God would allow His Son to suffer what He did, but also with gratitude that His love for us was so great that Jesus’ death was a price worth paying.

Dear Father God. We pray prayers of gratitude this morning. We worship You with wonder in our hearts. We once again confess our sins, knowing that You will forgive us and wipe the record clean. Thank You Lord. Amen.