Station of the Resurrection #1: Burial
The tradition of observing “Stations of the Cross,” especially this time of year, has been around for centuries. It is essentially visually guided reflection on the final moments of Jesus’ life as he headed towards the Cross. You walk from one place to another, considering Scriptures, prayers, paintings, and sculptures that focus on the suffering of Christ.
No disrespect at all meant to the tradition, but what about Stations of the Resurrection? Shouldn’t the resurrection be part of our Easter experience as well? Isn’t it equally worthy of reflection? This specific tradition aside, many of us who understand the Cross have a hard time answering the question, “Why does the resurrection matter?”
With this in mind, over the next few weeks, I’ll send a few “Stations of the Resurrection” to help you answer that question - why does it matter? Each station will focus on one of the personal encounters of the disciples with their resurrected Lord, with the hope that we, too, encounter him this Easter.
Matthew 27:57-61
“When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.”
We should never forget that before the resurrection occurred, the cross is everything but victorious. Good Friday is the worst. Jesus’ corpse is being passed around, from the Roman guards to Joseph of Arimathea to Nicodemus to, finally, the tomb, and with each exchange of hands, reality sets in. He’s dead.
His disciples had entered into Jerusalem just five days before with their heads held high as their Master was praised with palm branches as the new King. They were happy for him, for one another, and for their people. ‘Can you believe it? We’ve made it!’ ‘About time he revealed himself!’ ‘The King, the kingdom, it’s finally here!’ They had sacrificed so much, prepared so eagerly, waited so long for that very Day.
But the Day of the Lord turns out to be a dark night of the soul for his followers. Those heads once held high now wag with shame because of their association with their humiliated Master. Those who strutted alongside the Son of David now flee and hide in the shady corners of the City of David. What the disciples thought was a dream come true is a nightmare in disguise, their Lord lying in a tomb rather than sitting on a throne.
And now, in this passage, we find “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary there, sitting opposite the tomb.” All they can do is sit and watch. Scripture does not try to explain the emotions of these women as they sit opposite the tomb, making them easy to miss. But we should not let our foreknowledge of Sunday make us forget to pause here and consider the devastation of Friday. Rather, to prepare us for Sunday, let’s take a seat next to Mary Magdalene, join her and the other Mary in their graveside vigil. We must watch with them in grief and rage on Friday evening before rejoicing on Sunday morning. We must sit with them in the shock of Friday’s failure so that we can skip and leap with them in Sunday’s surprise.
Sit with the two Marys as Joseph and Nicodemus haul in the dead body that no longer houses their Lord. Watch with them for some sign of life as they embalm the body in the fresh-hewn tomb. Sit with them as they roll the stone in front of the exit, one final giant nail in the coffin.
‘What happened?’ you would have thought. ‘Where did things go wrong? I know he was the One. But how can the One be dead? How could evil prevail? Sin win? God be defeated by the Devil? I’m missing something.’
As the stone sealed the deal, the denial would have faded into doubt. ‘Why didn’t God protect his Holy One from corruption? Unless…Jesus wasn’t the Holy One after all. Maybe he wasn’t the Son. Maybe he was just a good guy that we mistook for a King. Maybe all this religion stuff really is just a bunch of bologna after all.’
Doubts of this nature surely pass through some, if not all, of the disciples’ minds. The overwhelming mood of the disciples before the news of the resurrection is one of complete shock. They can’t remember a thing Jesus said about coming back from the dead. They are completely blindsided by the crucifixion, as if he had never said anything about it at all.
But if we are to truly understand the disciples’ loss, we need a bit more humanity in all of this. Yes, they had believed Jesus was the Messiah. Yes, they had put their hope in the kingdom he had promised. Yes, they had put their trust in him as the Son of God. And those things are certainly part of their grief and confusion. But forget about all of that for a moment. Just for a minute, don’t be so religious and theological. More than anything, these two women grieve not simply for political or religious reasons, but because the person they have come to love more than anything in all the world is gone.
The disciples love Jesus, and so this is not just a loss for Israel, but a loss of the most personal kind. They left everything and followed him not because they were especially spiritual, but because they loved him. And now their grief is all the deeper because of their love. Sure, the disciples’ aspirations for power and visions of grandeur are now crashing down among them. But the disciples do not weep for those, but for him. Mother Mary for her firstborn child, Mary Magdalene for the kindest man she’s ever known, Peter, James and John for their best friend. Just as the bystanders said about Jesus’ tears at Lazarus tomb, it is now our turn to point to the tears of his disciples and say, “See how they loved him!”
We have all felt it in some measure, that void that is left when a loved one dies. The thought, “But you were just here.” The sight or touch of the body that silently cries out, “Gone, gone, gone!” The regrets of all the unasked questions, unsaid thanks, and unshared hearts. Gone.
But there is often that disbelief, that strange, forgetful hope when we lose a loved one, that we will find them still sitting in their favorite recliner when we return home. We find ourselves looking out the window, expecting them to pull up in the driveway for a visit. We check the price on a shirt at the store we think will fit them just right. But then, of course, we realize such hope is in vain – we’ve forgotten that our beloved is no longer there. The recliner is empty, the driveway silent, and we are left holding a shirt that we need to return. And when we come to our senses, we are worse off for our forgetful moment of hope, losing our beloved all over again.
I wonder if the disciples experience the same strange “foolish” hope the couple of days after Jesus dies. When they hear someone arguing with a Pharisee about the Sabbath, does Peter elbow his way through the crowd to see if it’s him? Do Mary and Martha forget he’s gone and set the table with an extra seat for him? Does Mother Mary see his favorite fruit on sale at the market and buy an extra bushel? And then do they, too, have that moment when they realize all over again that he is gone?
The difference, of course, is in the disciples’ case the hope wouldn’t have been so foolish nor the disbelief so strange. Because in just another couple of days their Beloved will, indeed, be just around the corner. He will actually stop by and sit down with his friends for a meal. His mother won’t have to return the fruit because her Son, who was supposed to be dead in a tomb, will be alive and well.
