Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. John19:38-39
There's a lovely anecdote around the burial of Jesus that I love:
"Upon hearing that Joseph of Arimathea had made his garden tomb available for Jesus' burial a friend was heard to remark: 'Hey Joseph, that was a lovely tomb you had, you must be sorry to lose it.' To which Joseph replied: 'Oh it's ok, my friend only needed it for the weekend!' "
There are a couple of things that we note about the burial of Jesus.
1. He really had died. He didn't swoon into a coma. He died. There is a great sense of finality that is almost humourously depicted in the 30kg of spices Nicodemus brings for embalming (to picture 30kgs imagine 30x1L bottles of water). He clearly expected Jesus to be in tomb for a long time.
2. Jesus is buried according to Jewish custom - not breaking any ceremonial laws. The gospels tell us that they had to hasten to get it done before the Sabbath. Even in His death Jesus is without sin-guilt.
3. The hardest part of any funeral is when the coffin is lowered in the ground or when the hearse departs for the crematorium. As much as our theology tells us that these are earthly remains and that they will be made new, there is a visceral reaction to separation. Even in this, Jesus' maintains His connection to our human experience. Standing at Lazarus' tomb moved Him to tears and His heart went out to the Widow of Nain who was burying her only son. Now Jesus enters into this same passage so that He can break the power and hold that death has over us. I believe that the burial of Jesus and the detail that the New Testament gives us about it is a convincing pointer to the fact that resurrection is physical and not merely spiritual (as some people unfortunately claim)
Jesus' burial is for me a great comfort - He is the pioneer who leads us all into the new frontier of resurrection.
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Theo Groeneveld theo @ emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at emmdev[dot]blogspot[dot]com/
