Day 64 - Issue 24
John 19:38 NLT
'Afterward Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus (because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate for permission to take down Jesus’ body. When Pilate gave permission, Joseph came and took the body away.'
Jesus dies and there follows a deep silence. The jeering crowd drift away, leaving behind only those most closely affected by events. When Katey died, the two weeks before her funeral felt grief-stricken yet busy. Organising the funeral, receiving phone calls, cards and flowers, managing grief, time passed easily. Nothing prepared me for the long silence that followed the funeral itself. A day filled with extreme emotion and myriad voices and hugs gave way to many days of loneliness and confusion. The reality of grief is as much physical as it is emotional and psychological. I was exhausted and felt my isolation and aloneness, my fragility, acutely.
Jesus’ body is entrusted to his friends and it is treated with great dignity and respect. Prepared for burial, these are the final tender acts of love his friends could make. Their disappointment in shattered dreams did not lead to either criticism or abandonment; they knew and loved the person regardless of promises apparently never to be realised.
Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Council, who had refused to condemn Jesus, a man seeking the kingdom, risked his reputation and even his life in asking Pilate for Jesus’ body. John says he was accompanied by Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, a most unlikely supporter of Jesus. Grief introduces each of us to people we never knew were our friends.
All the enthusiasm in the world provides little indication of Christian commitment. When the chips are down is when the true followers of Jesus emerge from the shadows. As Jesus said, it is the fruit of our actions and behaviours that reveal those who walk close to God (see Matthew 7:16). Here it isn’t Jesus’ disciples but apparent strangers who tend to the demands of Jewish custom as they tenderly prepare his body for burial.
QUESTION: How would a stranger discover what things you believe and value by the way you live?
PRAYER: Lord God, may all those grieving and mourning know the peace and comfort that only your presence can give.
