When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was himself a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over. Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it [in] clean linen and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb and departed. But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained sitting there, facing the tomb (see Matthew 27:57-61).
Does it not sometimes seem to us that all hope is gone, that the only likely solution was just revealed to be a failure? We may experience this in response to the death of a loved one, but also at the death of a dream or an aspiration that now seems unattainable. How do we respond when the crushing weight on a disinterested reality presses in upon us with the news that we were naïve and overly optimistic, that not only did this one thing end this way, but so too will all things? In response to the death of Jesus a few responses were possible.
1) Some felt vindicated by the death of Jesus, free to follow their vain pursuits for a while longer.
2) Some felt crushing despair, not able to recognize in Jesus anything but the death of the hopes and dreams they had placed in him.
3) Some still maintained a connection to Jesus by the tenuous but real bonds of love.
Option three was the only way to explain Joseph of Arimathea. The sadness that he must have felt did not prevent him from "courageously" going to Pilate to receive the body of Jesus (see Mark 15:43). He continued to treasure his body even when to others it had lost its value or perhaps revealed that it never had any to begin with. He still treated that body as worthy of respect and veneration as he wrapped it in linen cloth and laid it in a tomb in which no one had yet been buried. It is as though Joseph still had some sort of muddled sense that all was not yet said and done with this body, that the love and tenderness he demonstrated was not lost. He lived a sermon in the rightness of the concern for the bodies of the dead that Christians have always demonstrated.
So too did Nicodemus continue to love Jesus, bringing the mixture "of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds" (see John 19:39). So too did the women who "prepared spices and perfumed oils" (see Luke 23:56). So too, perhaps especially, did Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who "remained sitting there, facing the tomb" (see Matthew 27:61). From the perspective of the world all of this must certainly have seemed to be overkill, the pathetic result of dwelling in feelings of despair. But that worldly analysis missed a deeper faith. It was not a faith that necessarily gave them the joy of the resurrection before Easter, but one that gave them some consolation, some sense that this care for the dead was not in vain. The response of these individuals showed a Christian grief that was, surprisingly, a deeper grief than that of the world, because of the way these individuals felt moved to fully enter and embody that grief. And it was precisely in this that it was also a more hopeful grief than anything the world could know.
What is the tomb which we stand in face? What people have left us, what dreams departed? Does our faith not whisper that the stone rolled to close the tomb is not the last word? We, unlike Joseph or the women, can fully articulate this hope. All who lived in Christ will rise. Nothing done in him is ever wasted. Even on Holy Saturday we know that the apparent silence and lack of life is really just Jesus working behind the scenes at a different and deeper level, preparing the way for Easter.
So he went and preached to the spirits in prison (see First Peter 3:19).
…
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.”
(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) (see Ephesians 4:8-9).
Grief for the Christian is not wrong, but it no longer has the final word. In our own grief we can remember that Jesus himself is working behind the scenes and preparing the way for the third day. We can sit facing the tomb, not as hopeless, but as expectant.
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