Friday
Friday
The Burial of Jesus
Joseph of Arimathea … took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock.
Mark 15:43, 46
According to Jewish law, the body of an executed criminal might not be left hanging all night; it had to be buried before the sun went down (Deut. 21:22–23). This is where Joseph of Arimathea enters the story.
Joseph was what we would call a senator, a senior member of the Sanhedrin, and he had become a secret believer in Jesus. Taking his courage in both hands, he asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, for crucified criminals would normally be thrown into a common grave or left to the dogs and the vultures. Pilate was surprised to hear that Jesus was already dead, but the centurion on duty assured him that it was so. Consequently, Joseph and (according to John) Nicodemus buried the body of Jesus, laying it on a stone slab in Joseph’s tomb while the women watched.
The first reason why the burial of Jesus became part of the gospel is that his burial attested the reality of his death (1 Cor. 15:3–4). Jesus did not merely swoon or appear to die. The women did not go to the wrong tomb. No grave robbers could have interfered with the body. No, if the body disappeared and the tomb was empty, it was because it had been resurrected, that is, simultaneously raised and changed. There could be no alternative explanation.
Secondly, the burial is part of the gospel because it indicates the bodily nature of the resurrection. The person who was raised and seen is none other than the person who died and was buried. So the resurrection was neither a hallucination nor a resuscitation but an objective supernatural event by which the process of decomposition was arrested and the dead body of Jesus was both raised and changed.
For further reading: Mark 15:42–47