A Sermon
by Rev. Merlin T. Batt
Intentional Interim Pastor
St. Matthew’s United Church of Christ
Maiden, North Carolina
Presented At
Community Ash Wednesday Service
St. James Lutheran Church
Newton, North Carolina
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The pastors of the churches in Maiden and Newton which are participating in this year’s series of Community Lenten Services have set for themselves a challenging assignment: to preach the Gospel by focusing upon imaginary characters in the story of Jesus’ Passion. In a moment I will tell you about the man who dug the tomb in which Jesus’ body was laid. On the coming Sunday evenings in Lent you will hear sermons about the man who made the whip, about the person who made the crown of thorns, about a bystander in the crowd, about the person who fashioned the wooden beams of the Cross, about a maid serving in the high priest’s courtyard, and about a child looking at the Cross of Christ.
These characters are imaginary only in the sense that they are not mentioned in the Gospels’ telling of the story. They existed, but we don’t know their names or anything else about them. We don’t know their relations, if any, to characters who do appear in the story. We don’t know their reactions to the events of Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion, and burial, nor anything about the impact these things had upon their lives. But these characters existed, and they were involved in the drama. So our task as preachers this Lent is to love God with our imaginations and invite you thereby to enter with us into the drama of Jesus’ Passion.
My texts for this first sermon in the series are two – the first from the opening words of Genesis, chapter 2: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.” And a second from the 23rd chapter of Luke’s Gospel: “Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid.”
Let us pray:
Our Father in heaven, you commanded us to love you with all our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. Speak your Word through these words spoken in the name of your Son. However inadequate and halting they are, use them to draw us more deeply into the mystery of His Passion, that we might become more fully His disciples, loving you with our whole being and loving our neighbors as ourselves. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
It was mid-afternoon of a Friday when there was a knock on the door of Yochanan’s house, a cramped, humble dwelling common among craftsmen and laborers, tucked away along one of the narrow, serpentine streets of Jerusalem. It was an urgent knocking, not the casual sound of a neighbor stopping by to conduct business or pass the time of day as neighbors do, but the sound of important matters, maybe even of danger. Yochanan’s wife, Miriam, was busy in the adjoining room preparing their home for the Sabbath celebration beginning at sundown.
Yochanan went to the door and opened it tentatively, and there stood Yosef. One look at him and Yochanan knew it wasn’t merely a friendly visit or even a matter of business that brought the wealthy Sanhedrin member to his door. Yochanan said, “Why, come in Yosef. What brings you here so close to the beginning of the Sabbath?”
“Yochanan, I need your help, and quickly.”
“Of course I will help you, Yosef. What is the matter?” asked Yochanan.
“It’s Yeshua, the prophet from Nazareth. He’s been arrested, tried, and now crucified by the Romans. I don’t have time to tell you the details, Yochanan, but come with me. I need you to help me remove his body from the cross and take it to the tomb you dug for me. I’ve asked some others to help, and they will meet us there. Come quickly, Yochanan!”
At that, the two men rushed from the house with Yosef in the lead, walking swiftly, sometimes even running toward Golgotha, the place of execution. They were under the pressure of time. The law of Moses required that, if a man were punished by death and his body hanged on a tree, the body was to be removed and buried the same day. And what’s more, the Sabbath was soon to begin at sundown when no work could be done. They must act quickly and efficiently to remove the body of Yeshua and lay it in a tomb before sundown. The afternoon shadows lengthened as the two men rushed through the narrow, twisting city streets.
They were an unlikely pair – Yosef, the respected, aristocratic, wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews in Jerusalem, and Yochanan, the craftsman, jack of all trades, doing whatever he had to do to survive the oppressive rule of Rome and provide for his family amidst the ruined economy of the Holy City. Yochanan even cut tombs for the dead out of the rocky hillsides surrounding the city. It was hard, but steady work. “Death took no holidays,” as Yochanan liked to say. And what’s more, the insurrection against the Romans only added to a tomb digger’s workload, not to mention his income.
What bound these two men together was not only the need of a wealthy man for helpers and of a poor man for work, and not only that they both came from the same small village of Ramathaim in the central hill country of Judea (a village the Greek-speaking Jews called Arimathea), but Yosef and Yochanan were both drawn to the prophet from Nazareth. They had heard the reports of him from Galilee. They had even heard him speak in the Temple courtyard. And they found themselves eagerly longing for what he said was beginning to happen in his words and deeds – the kingdom of God was drawing near, God was coming to rule over His people, yes, even over the world. You see, Yosef and Yochanan both were secret supporters of Yeshua, but for different reasons they kept their beliefs and their hopes and dreams to themselves. For Yosef, it was politically unwise to declare his support for the disruptive Galilean. For Yochanan, it was foolish, economically speaking, to cast his lot with the radical prophet from Nazareth.
The two men arrived at Golgotha to find a grisly scene. Yeshua was dead, his limp and motionless body, bruised and bleeding, hung pitifully from the cross. A few women gathered nearby wailed in grief. Some Roman soldiers clumped together to one side talked about things unrelated to the terrible scene. Yochanan and Yosef stood silently looking at the figure on the Cross. They were heartbroken, not only for the crucified man, but also for themselves and for all who had put their hope in him, yet another failed messiah. Once again hope had been dashed against the mountain of vested interests and Roman power.
As if waking suddenly from a dream, Yosef turned and said to Yochanan, “Come, now, let us do our work.”
Yosef walked to the Roman soldiers and showed evidence of the governor’s permission to remove Yeshua’s body. Just then two other men arrived. One of them Yochanan recognized as a member of the Sanhedrin, a colleague of Yosef’s, Nakdimon by name. Of course, we know him as Nicodemus. The second man was unknown to Yochanan.
The grisly, repugnant task required the strength and agility of all four men. With difficulty they removed the nails holding his wrists and ankles to the wood, then gently and slowly lowered Yeshua’s dead body to the ground, almost as if to cause him no further pain. And there they wrapped the lifeless body in a large cloth that Yosef had brought for the purpose. There was no time for ceremony or prayers or proper preparing of the corpse. In the swiftly fading light of late afternoon the men carried Yeshua’s body to the nearby tomb. Yochanan led the way, after all, he had spent many a day digging the tomb from the soft limestone.
Some months before the shocking events of this day, Yosef had paid his fellow Arimathean, Yochanan, to carve a tomb from the rocky hillside. It was not to be the tomb of an aristocratic family like that of Yosef, but an extra tomb. Yosef, you see, was a righteous man. He knew that the law prohibited the burying of criminals in family tombs. He also knew that leaving the dead unburied defiled the land; it was against the command of God according to the Torah, so Yosef performed an act of piety: he used his own funds to have a tomb dug to bury those who could not otherwise be laid to rest properly in these tumultuous and dangerous times in Jerusalem.
The four men carrying Yeshua’s body arrived at Yosef’s newly dug tomb. Yochanan, who dug the tomb, led the way into the semi-darkness; he didn’t have to see to know the contour of the tomb. Clumsily the four men carrying the body stooped to enter the four foot high tomb opening. Then they stood up straight, their backs aching from the weight and the bending. They, then, proceeded to lay the body on one of the four niches carved into the rock for just this purpose. The tomb had only been completed within the past several weeks. This was its first use.
There were some muttered prayers and barely audible words mixed with tears as the men stooped to leave the tomb. Yochanan had carved a large round stone as part of his work. He and the others now rolled it into place in front of the tomb opening. As they turned to leave the garden area, Yochanan noticed a few women standing nearby watching as the men sealed the tomb against animals and grave robbers. He knew the women would return when Sabbath was over to prepare Yeshua’s body for burial.
They would put spices and fragrant ointments in the wrappings of the linen cloth surrounding the corpse. It was an act not meant to preserve the body as in Egypt. Nor was it even a religious ritual. The women’s work was a practical measure. Soon other corpses would be brought to that same tomb to be laid out on the carved niches. The spices and ointments were necessary to mask the odor of decaying flesh as family members and friends entered the tomb either to bring in a body or, a year or so later, to return and collect the dried bones and put them in a small bone-box (or ossuary).
No words were exchanged as the four men made their way back into the city. Nakdimon and the other man walked away together in one direction. Yosef headed toward the Upper City where the wealthy lived. Yochanan quickly went toward his home where his wife Miriam would soon light the Sabbath candles and begin the much needed day of rest.
The Sabbath provided Yochanan with time to think about the events of Friday. Sadness and disappointment filled his waking moments and even disturbed his sleep. He could not shake the awful feeling that he, Yochanan, shared in the guilt surrounding Yeshua’s death. It was the tomb that he dug in which they had laid Yeshua’s broken body. Somehow he felt himself personally responsible, for Yeshua was “crucified, dead, and buried” in the tomb dug by Yochanan. The words played in his mind over and over again. He couldn’t stop thinking them – “crucified, dead, and buried in the tomb dug by Yochanan.”
It was some few days later that there came again an urgent knocking on Yochanan’s door. It was Yosef again. With barely a greeting, he entered the room and began to speak in urgent, but hushed tones, “Yochanan, Yeshua is alive! The tomb you dug is empty; only the linen cloth in which we wrapped his body remains. The women we saw near the tomb entrance on Friday returned with their spices and ointments last Sunday morning, and they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. And, what’s more, He has been seen alive. He’s alive, Yochanan. God has raised Yeshua the Messiah from the dead!
After Yosef hurried away, Yochanan sat alone, stunned by the news, his mind reeling. Soon a familiar passage from the Torah forced itself into his consciousness, and he found himself saying the words aloud, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done and he rested on the seventh day…”
He couldn’t help but think about Yeshua’s body lying in the tomb which he, Yochanan, had dug. It was the seventh day, the Sabbath, and there Yeshua had rested after he finished the work which he had done. “Could it be?” he wondered aloud. “Could it be that these ancient words of Torah were fulfilled in what happened to Yeshua the Messiah resting in the tomb Yochanan has dug?”
He no longer felt guilty. He now felt honored to have dug the tomb in which the God rested after he finished the work he had done. And now with Yeshua’s rising from the dead on “the eighth day,” God’s new creation had begun!
Millions upon millions would come to believe “in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried (in the tomb Yochanan had dug); he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.”
