Mark 15.42-end: The Burial of Jesus

⁴² And when even was now come, because it was the Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, ⁴³ there came Joseph of Arimathaea, a councillor of honorable estate, who also himself was looking for the kingdom of God; and he boldly went in unto Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. ⁴⁴ And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. ⁴⁵ And when he learned it of the centurion, he granted the corpse to Joseph. ⁴⁶ And he bought a linen cloth, and taking him down, wound him in the linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of a rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. ⁴⁷ And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid.

Into the middle of the tragedy walks ‘a councillor of honorable estate’. NIV has ‘a prominent member of the council’ which is less quaint, but I love the way in which a character who comes across like someone from Toytown, or Middle England anyway, now becomes God’s agent in helping history make the most amazing of all leaps from the death of the Cross to the life of Resurrection – from the gruesomeness of Pilate marvelling that Christ was dead so soon (after ‘only’ six hours on the cross) to the marvel which will follow. But for now, the stone is rolled shut against our vision and our understanding, and with the women we wait.

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