When you die, where do you want to be buried? In Brunswick, New Jersey, in the 1790s, Mary Ellis fell in love with a sea captain. As he was leaving on a voyage, he left his favorite horse with her and promised to return to her as soon as he could.
Every day, Mary awaited his return at the same spot where he gave her his horse. Years passed, and in 1813, Mary purchased a plot of land by the Raritan River to continue her perpetual watch. Finally, in 1828, she died. She had never been reunited with her sea captain. She was buried on that plot of land along with some of her relatives.
Mary’s family plot sat undisturbed in a beautiful woodland setting for decades, with the burial plot surrounded by exquisite wrought iron fencing. But communities grow and develop. The woods and farmland that once housed her family were ripped up and paved over, changing ownership many times. Today, nearly 200 years later, in a setting she could never have imagined, Mary’s grave sits seven feet above the surrounding parking lot of the Loews Theater complex.
Death is a subject many people try to ignore. They don’t want to face their mortality. As followers of Jesus, you and I may have some fears about the process of dying. But we don’t fear death because we know, ultimately, resurrection will follow.
In Mark 15:42-47, we have the record of Jesus’ burial. While the amount of text devoted to the subject is minimal, the fact that He was buried is essential to God’s plan for our salvation.
The Apostle Paul highlights this in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…”
Let us turn now to the reading of the text, Mark 15:42-47, describing the burial of Jesus. Here is the Word of God.
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of the Scripture. The title of my teaching is “The Burial of Jesus.”
In these verses, there are several WITNESSES to the burial of Jesus, which leave no doubt that they buried His body.
The First Witness (to the burial of Jesus) is,
The Character of Joseph
This portion of Mark’s narrative opens with the introduction of Joseph of Arimathea. Aside from what the Scriptures tell us, we know nothing about this man. However, what the Scriptures reveal is significant.
Mark tells us he was a prominent and honorable member of the council, the Sanhedrin, who was waiting for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Luke used the same verb to describe Simeon and Anna’s anticipation of the Kingdom. The adjective, honorable, means that he was dignified in external appearance and deportment. Based on his actions in this text, we can be sure that his honorable appearance originated from his honorable character.
Luke tells us Joseph was good and just; he had not consented to either the decision or action of the Council in condemning and crucifying Jesus. He realized the gross injustice that was being perpetrated on Jesus. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews. Today, the site of the village is unknown, but we can assume that it was in Judea.
Furthermore, Matthew and John both refer to him as a disciple of Jesus, although John mentions that his discipleship was secret because he feared the Jews. Matthew also highlights the fact that Joseph was rich. That is an important detail we mustn’t miss because it fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53:9. “And they made His grave with the wicked— but with the rich at His death, [though] He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.”
As the first witness to the burial of Jesus, I noted Joseph’s courage. You may wonder where I see that character trait. I see it first in the fact that he was willing to “buck the system,” as we say. Powerful religious groups have ways of enforcing the status quo, yet he was willing to stand alone, or almost alone, against the united power of the Sanhedrin.
In addition, he boldly and courageously went to Pilate, asking permission to take the body of Jesus down from the cross. The adjective, boldly, contains the idea of extreme conduct, daring to do something risky. He was under no obligation to do this. By identifying himself with Jesus, he could have become a target of the Roman governor. He took a bold stand when the rest of Jesus’ disciples had fled in terror and confusion.
He had no idea how Pilate would respond to his request. We also know from history that Pilate was not an easy man to deal with. He could have been coarsely indifferent to the decencies of burial for a crucified criminal and been contemptuous of Joseph. And why would he risk offending the members of the Sanhedrin by showing sympathy to the man they had just crucified?
Am I willing to be like Joseph? Am I willing to risk my position, my reputation, perhaps even my very life to be identified with Jesus? Am I willing to endure the scorn of my peers and the loss of a prestigious position? Am I willing to intercede with the government officials where I live to seek justice and honor for my persecuted brothers and sisters in other countries?
Joseph was willing to risk a lot just to see that the body of Jesus was treated with respect and given a proper burial. Here, the narrative interrupts Joseph’s courageous actions to introduce the next witness.
The Next Witness (to the burial of Jesus) is,
The Confirmation of the Centurion
Joseph’s request surprised Pilate. He found it hard to believe that Jesus was already dead. We’re not surprised; we know Jesus gave His life voluntarily; no one took it from Him. So, he summoned the centurion who oversaw the crucifixion, the one who had testified, “Truly, this was the Son of God.” Mark is the only Gospel writer to record this incident; however, he omits the request of the Jewish leaders to break the legs of the condemned men to hasten their deaths.
Here is that account from John 19:31-37. “Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, “Not one of His bones shall be broken.” And again, another Scripture says, “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.”
The confirmation of Jesus’ death by the centurion was critical to the fulfillment of the role played by Pilate, representing the official government of Rome. It is one of the many confirmations of Jesus’ death that make the historical record unassailable. He didn’t faint, He didn’t swoon, He didn’t somehow fake His death. He was pronounced dead by the highest-ranking soldier on-site of the crucifixion and by Pilate, the Roman governor. John added his affirmation.
Once Pilate was satisfied that Jesus was truly dead, he freely permitted Joseph to take the corpse of Jesus. His permission was most likely not granted out of generosity. I suspect he only wanted to be free from this inconvenient and troublesome affair.
Again, the narrative returns to the witness of Joseph.
Joseph’s interest in seeing Jesus’ body properly buried is also evidence of his character. Usually, when Roman prisoners were crucified, their bodies were disposed of in one of two ways. One way was to leave the dead victim on the cross for a significant time until the body began to decay and decompose as a warning to anyone else who was thinking of being involved in insurrection, for example. It was a rather ghastly and grim thing to do.
The second way was to remove the body from the cross immediately and throw it into a garbage dump. Even when the bodies of those left on the cross were finally removed, they were deposited in the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, the Jewish name for which is Gehenna. Joseph’s love and respect for Jesus motivated him to make sure neither of those possibilities would be the fate of Jesus’ body.
Immediately, after receiving permission from Pilate to retrieve Jesus’ body from the cross, Joseph purchased a quantity of fresh, new linen cloth. Next, he needed to remove the body of Jesus from the cross. John’s account implies that he was assisted by Nicodemus, another secret follower of Jesus, who had already secured a large quantity of spices for embalming Jesus’ body.
Joseph made sure the body of Jesus was handled with the dignity and respect given to someone of His position. He and Nicodemus had to work quickly, because from the time Jesus died until sunset was only about three hours. Yet somehow, Nicodemus managed to secure a hundred pounds of spices for Jesus’ burial.
Had it been purchased beforehand in anticipation of the event? Possibly. And think of the cost! Mary’s earlier anointing of Jesus was with a pound of spikenard, worth a year’s wages. Joseph and Nicodemus prepared Jesus’ body for burial with a hundred times as much!!
The body was then taken by the two men, bathed perhaps, and wrapped in the linen shroud between the folds of which the spices were freely crumbled, and finally bound with strips of cloth after the Jewish manner of burying.
After Jesus’ body was prepared for burial as adequately as it could be, given the haste with which it had to be done because of the approaching Sabbath, it was laid in a new tomb, hewn out of the rock. Luke and John note that this tomb had never been used before. Why is that important? Psalm 16:10 declares, “For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”
If the tomb in which Jesus was buried had been used before, it would have been corrupted. The customary form of burial among the Jews was not placing the bodies of people in coffins and burying them in the ground. For the most part, Jewish burial consisted of being placed in caves hollowed out from the rock. They put shelves in those caves, those family tombs, and the bodies were placed on the shelves. Those dead bodies made the area ritually unclean.
Once the body decomposed, the bones were gathered and placed in an ossuary, usually a stone box that could be stored elsewhere. That allowed the burial site to be used repeatedly. It is what you do when space is at a premium, as it is in Israel.
I wonder, does the respect Joseph showed for the body of Jesus hold a lesson for us today? Increasingly in our culture, cremation has become the option of choice for many people, and that is also true in the church. As far as I know, there is no specific command in the Scriptures forbidding cremation. Likewise, there is no specific command to bury dead bodies in the earth.
However, the practice of cremation does not come to us through the teaching of Scripture; it comes to us from the pagans. Part of the reason for that pagan practice was that the pagans viewed the physical bodies of human beings as inherently wicked. As a result, there was nothing wrong with throwing the bodies on the funeral pyre and letting them be disintegrated by fire.
Jews and Christians do not view the body in that way. We believe that in creation, God created man’s body and soul and pronounced His benediction not only on the soul but also on the body, saying, “That is good.” As Christians, we look forward to the final day and the resurrection of the body.
So, the body of Jesus was handled with care and compassion, and then a large stone was rolled across the opening of the tomb. We have these two witnesses to the burial of Jesus: the character of Joseph and the confirmation of the centurion.
The Final Witness (to the burial of Jesus) is,
The Careful Observation of the Women
Mark closes this part of the narrative by writing, “And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses observed where He was laid.” This takes us back to verses 40-41, where these women, and others, were observing all that was taking place.
As Joseph and Nicodemus worked hastily in the waning light of day to prepare Jesus’ body for burial, these women carefully observed. It would scarcely have been following Jewish manners if these women had mingled more closely with the two men and their attendants. From where they stood, they could only have had a dim view of what passed within the tomb, and this may explain how, on their return, they ‘prepared spices and ointments’ for the fuller honors which they hoped to pay the dead after the Sabbath was past.
In his Expository Thoughts on Mark, J. C. Ryle writes of these godly women. “It is interesting to remark throughout the New Testament how often we find the grace of God glorified in women and how much benefit God has been pleased to confer through them on the church and the world. It seems meant to teach us that women have an important place in the church of Christ, one that ought to be assigned to them and one they ought to fulfil.” The women were the last to leave the cross and the first to the empty tomb!
Today, Jesus is no longer in the tomb, HE IS ALIVE! Hallelujah! We live out the reality of Romans 6:3-4. “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
If we, like these witnesses, are convinced “…that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…” Then, we will be His witnesses as we walk in newness of life!
