A Borrowed Tomb

Gently they lowered the battered, bloodied and broken body of Jesus from the cross into the drape of a linen sheet, and in loving arms they carried him together down the road toward a nearby burial garden. There a new tomb had recently been carved into the Jerusalem hillside, and in the antechamber, the two men and their servants began their preparations.

Joseph of Arimathea was said to have been either the uncle or brother of Mary the Mother of Christ. He was a member of the High Council of Israel, a righteous man seeking the kingdom of God, and a secret follower of Jesus Christ. There are traditions concerning his lifelong attachment to Jesus, a relationship not detailed in the Gospels. But he was the one who asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, and by taking the body into his own tomb, he was acknowledging Jesus as a member of his family. Nicodemus was a cousin of some degree to Joseph of Arimathea, also a councilor, and also a disciple of Christ. He had come to the tomb with one hundred pounds of embalming spices, and together these two undertook the task of burying their slain Lord.

Too many traditions have clouded the reality of that day. But it was still mid-afternoon on Wednesday. Though preparations were underway for the Passover meal that night, it was also late spring and several hours of daylight remained. This was not a hurried and sloppy job. This was a carefully executed and sacred rite. Tenderly they washed the blood, the grime and the gore from the body of Christ. They took from his head the cruel crown of thorns. Then tearing the linen sheet into strips, they packed the body in a layer of spice and began to bind it with its burial cloths. From his feet to his throat, Jesus was tightly wrapped in layers of linen and burial spices, and then a napkin was fixed around his face as a shroud. Then they lifted the properly prepared body from the floor of the antechamber and carried him deeper into the tomb where burial benches had been prepared for its anticipated arrivals.

With the body of Jesus laid to rest, Joseph and Nicodemus exited the tomb, and a large stone was rolled into place over the entrance. From a distance, the women who had followed them from the cross witnessed everything, and then they all hurried away to their respective homes and places of lodging to celebrate a feast that now had lesser meaning to them. Their Passover lamb was not the one sacrificed for their ancestors in Egypt fourteen centuries earlier, nor offered that day as a memorial of their Exodus. They had a new Passover Lamb, and while his body rested in hope in a borrowed tomb, Christ Himself was harrowing hell, taking captivity captive, and liberating the souls of the righteous dead with whom He would shortly be resurrected in triumph from death, hell and the grave!

Thank God that the stone didn't seal the story!