His body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. --Deuteronomy 21:23
It was Preparation Day, the day of preparing for the Sabbath--and not just any Sabbath, but also the beginning of Passover. Any self respecting Jewish woman would be home cleaning her house and preparing food for the Seder. There was a ton of work to do. Yet four women stood at the foot of the cross, waiting to see what would happen to Jesus. Why the Sanhedrin would have chosen this day, of all days, to deliver Jesus up to the Romans to be crucified, no one knew. They must have been out of their minds.
From noon until three Jesus hung on the cross, in apparent agony. Shortly thereafter, He breathed His last. The women made a plan. Since sundown was the official end of the day and the beginning of the Sabbath, they had to work fast. They apparently divided up into two groups: Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of Joses and James the Younger would stay there and see what became of the body. Mary the mother of Jesus and Salome would go and buy spices to prepare the body for burial.
Who would get the body down from the cross for them? How would they carry Jesus, and where would they lay Him? The Biblical command was that the burial take place as soon as possible after passing, and it was strictly forbidden to leave the deceased unburied overnight unless it was for his honor (that is, to perform a proper washing and purification, obtain shrouds, arrange for a burial plot, etc.) Maybe John, the disciple to whom Jesus had given charge of His mother, might be able to help--the other disciples were scattered to the wind. Their plan was not complete, but at least they had the beginning of one.
Then something unexpected happened, as we read in Mark 15:42-47:
And when evening had come, since it was the Day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that He should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether He was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that He was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking Him down, wrapped Him in the linen shroud and laid Him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where He was laid.
According to Jewish law, a Jew is to be buried as he was born--complete with all his limbs and organs. The human body is considered as sacred in death as it was in life as it contained a Godly soul. Moreover, many Jews believe in a bodily resurrection, and their feeling is that the body must be complete in preparation for the new life in heaven.
John's gospel says that when Pilate was asked to ensure that the men crucified that day would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, he sent soldiers to break their legs to hasten their death. Crucifixions generally took 36-48 hours, but some held on for up to a week. The soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves on either side of Jesus, so that they could not push themselves up with their feet to get a good breath. With broken legs, they would suffocate.
When they came to Jesus, He was already dead. To be sure, they stuck a spear in His side, the tip of which was the breadth of a man's hand--this would be a fatal wound by itself. When they determined He was already dead, they did not break His legs. To the faithful, this coincides with the Jewish command about the preparation of the Passover Lamb. Numbers 9:12 commands, "They shall leave none of it until morning, nor break one of its bones. According to all the ordinances of the Passover they shall keep it." The same care was taken with Jesus' body that was taken with the Passover lamb.
So the centurion reported to Pilate that Jesus had already expired, and Pilate granted the corpse to Joseph. The Greek verb translated here"granted" is only used one other time in the New Testament. 2 Peter 1:3-4 says, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." Pilate did not require a bribe or a monetary gift of any kind from Joseph, but rather granted him the body of Christ freely. In the same way, God freely gives us all that we need to live the Christian life.
A traditional Jewish burial includes three things: a Tahara, or a washing and purification of the body; a Shomer, which is a Jewish person to stay with the body until burial; and Tachrichem, which are traditional shrouds along with a Chevra kaddisha, the act of ensuring that the body is prepared for burial and is protected from desecration, willful or not. It would appear that Joseph and Nicodemus (who according to John's gospel brought spices to prepare the body, along with the fine linen shroud that Joseph had purchased) took care of all that, at great cost to themselves. Not only did they buy these things with their own money, but by coming in contact with a dead body, they knew they were going to be ceremonially unclean for 7 days. Therefore they could not take part in the Passover celebration.
Apparently when Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of Joses saw that these men had taken Jesus' body to a tomb, they left before observing the ritual cleansing and the preparations for burial that Joseph and Nicodemus had done. They met Mary the mother of Jesus and Salome, and reported what they had seen. These women planned to observe the Sabbath and then take care of the washing and purification on Sunday, the first day of the week. We will read about their plans being foiled next time.
If these men and these women, who apparently did not know each other because their efforts were not combined and their plans conflicted--if they took such pains to prepare the body of Jesus during the Day of Preparation, we must ask ourselves: what preparations do we take to meet Jesus face-to-face? What do we do to prepare for a time of worship? What's the plan?
