A number of women were also present at the place of crucifixion, watching from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and looked after him. Among them were Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
When evening fell, a wealthy man from Arimathaea, Joseph by name, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus, approached Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave orders that he should have it. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen sheet, and laid it in his own unused tomb, which he had cut out of the rock. He then rolled a large stone against the entrance, and went away. Mary of Magdala was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave.
Next day, the morning after the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees came in a body to Pilate. ‘Your Excellency,’ they said, ‘we recall how that impostor said while he was still alive, “I am to be raised again after three days.” We request you to give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise his disciples may come and steal the body, and then tell the people that he has been raised from the dead; and the final deception will be worse than the first.’ ‘You may have a guard,’ said Pilate; ‘go and make the grave as secure as you can.’ So they went and made it secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.
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And so our Holy Week journey draws to its close. We hear little about the women who helped and supported Jesus through his ministry, but here we learn that, though the disciples have (presumably) holed up somewhere, the women are there to witness the death of Jesus, watching from a distance as he is crucified. It would have been safer for them, perhaps, than for the disciples, who might well have been recognised - but even so, it must have taken great courage, and it will have been agonising. Their presence is a moving testimony to their love for him and their belief in him.
Little is known about Joseph of Arimathea. Even the identity and location of Arimathea as a town or city is unknown. But all four Gospels agree that it was Joseph (in John’s Gospel, accompanied by Nicodemus) who arranged for the burial of Jesus. A criminal’s body had to be buried the same day, according to Jewish Law, but it would have been impossible for any of the family or close companions of Jesus to have claimed his body - as Galileans, they might have been at risk themselves, and in any case none of them would have had a place for burial in or near Jerusalem.
So Joseph, a man of means and perhaps a member of the Jewish council, took the body, and placed it in a tomb, carved out of the rock face, which had been prepared for his own eventual use. There would have been a stone bed within the tomb, upon which the body was laid, bound in its grave clothes. Matthew tells us that the Jewish leaders were afraid that the body of Jesus might be taken by his own disciples, so that they could claim he had risen from the dead, and so the great stone which would have been rolled across the mouth of the cave-tomb was, on Pilate’s orders, sealed and guarded.
Those words might suggest that there were those who, after Easter Day, were claiming exactly that: that it was Jesus’ own disciples that had perpetrated a hoax, and that there had been no resurrection. To that, I can only reply that, firstly, the accounts of the confusion and disbelief of the disciples when the tomb was found to be empty absolutely rings true, and secondly, almost all these men died as martyrs rather than give up their faith in Jesus - hardly the attitude of heart and mind you’d expect from hoaxers.
No, I can feel sure that they, and the women who saw where the body was laid, and Joseph of Arimathea himself, were all united in believing that this was the end of the road. They had believed in this man, they had been amazed at the things they had seen him do, enthralled by the things he had said, and it was hard to accept that it was all over. But it was, and all they could do, faced with this enormous truth, was to do their best to ensure he was looked after, treated well in death and buried safely, and then try to pick up the traces of their old lives.
Throughout the whole of this strangest of Holy Weeks, the impact of Covid-19 on our world, our nation and communities, and ourselves and families and friends, has never been far from our thoughts. One writer has described this time as like “the longest of all Easter Eves”. Pray for all who are watching and waiting today, for all who are fearful, for all who are ill, and for the many who are working or volunteering, often at great risk and cost to themselves, to provide care and support and hope through this strange and scary time.
“We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,
because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world”
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