Luke 23:44-56
Romans 12:9-18
“Overlooked Stories: Joseph of Arimathea”
Preached Sunday, August 24, 2025
This morning in our Overlooked Stories sermon series, we are finally turning our attention to the New Testament and to Joseph of Arimathea. As we start this sermon, I’d invite you to enter a “Good Friday” state of mind. Good Friday is the Friday before Easter where we remember and recount the crucifixion and death of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The evening before we observed Maundy or Holy Thursday and that service ends with the stripping of the altar - in this church, that service happens in our chapel. And every item is carried out - the Bible, the candles, the cross, the paraments upon the pulpit and altar…It is a quiet and subdued moment to watch our finery, our decorations, or items of great symbolic meaning and comfort to be carried out of the sanctuary…and we are left with a stark, bare altar.
And so when worshippers come to Good Friday service, there is a subdued atmosphere. We know that the Biblical story we will hear that evening will touch our hearts. It may dampen our eyes. We come, stripped bare like the altar, open and vulnerable, to the story of violence against the forces of Love. And yet we come open - ready to hear how even this can be Good News, how even in the darkest moments, even in the very midst of death, there is Love.
And so. This morning is a normal Sunday morning. The altar is beautiful, the cross and Bible upon it, the candles are lit, the paraments hang from the pulpit and lectern. And we came this morning to hear the Gospel - but maybe haven’t prepared ourselves to hear the hard words of our reading from Luke this morning, of Jesus hanging on a cross.
And so, I invite us, in this moment, to pivot. To imagine our altar stripped bare and the lights dimmed. And then reflect that openness in our own souls and minds - to enter into the Good Friday mindset, to reflect on all the power and emotions of that day.
For that is where Joseph of Arimathea enters the story. On that dark, violent day.
Joseph is a member of the Sanhedrin - the council that condemned Jesus, handed him over to the Romans, to be crucified by the State. In the Scriptures, Joseph doesn’t appear at all until after the death of Jesus. And yet, we can use our Biblical imaginations to wonder what role Joseph played up until this point. In the Gospel of John, Joseph, with Nicodemus, the secret follower of Jesus who came to Jesus at night - asking him how one is born again - buried Jesus’s body together. This makes us wonder - was Joseph a secret follower of Jesus too? How open was he in his following of Jesus? Was he curious?
The TV show The Chosen, which is a dramatization of the Gospels, showed the events of Palm Sunday this last season. Yossif, a rabbi, disguised himself as a member of the crowd, to experience the crowds and Jesus himself. And he is obviously moved by the man who is Jesus. As the Sandhedrin gathers to plot against Jesus, Yossif speaks up for Jesus - saying, “don’t you see the good this man is doing?”
This is, of course, Biblical imagination. I wonder if Joseph had encountered Jesus before that bloody day on the cross. I wonder if Joseph spoke up on Jesus’s behalf before his peers. I wonder if, perhaps Joseph wanted to, but as the conversation turned to plotting and talks of violence, was he afraid to stand up for a man such as Jesus? Maybe one that captivated him and he respected - but a rebel rouser none the less. Maybe he kept silent, fearing for his own reputation and even his physical safety.
We don’t know.
What we do know, is that as Jesus hung on the cross, so many of his followers abandoned him. I don’t want to say all of his followers abandoned him, because the women were there, watching, staying with Jesus. But the men, perhaps except John, depending on which Gospel you are reading, they fled. They fled, they lied, they rejected Jesus by their words and actions - forsaking him in his darkest moments, for fear of their own safety, for fear of their own lives. And so, Jesus is left. Broken and bloodied, dead on the cross, with no one there to care for his body, his corpse.
Here is what we do know about Joseph of Arimethea. Whether he had spoken publicly about Jesus or not before. Whether he had publicly aligned himself with Jesus before. He did so now. At perhaps the most dangerous time to do so. He knew that all that was threats and talks about violence against Jesus and his followers - it was no longer just a threat or a possibility, it was very real and very threatening.
And yet, and yet. It is now, here, at the end of this terrifying and horrific violence, that Joseph goes to Pilate, and asks for the body of Jesus. He publicly aligns himself with this man who was just rejected by the Sanhedrin, labeled as an enemy of the Empire, tortured and killed. Why? Why now? I wonder back to his role on the council, on the Sanhedrin. Is he wishing he had spoken up then but didn’t? Is he mad that he did speak up and wasn’t listened to? Is he horrified that this violence, this murder, this state execution…was done in his name? Is he seeking redemption, forgiveness? Was he so moved by Jesus on the cross, that even now, when all hope seems lost, he can’t help but go and be the one to care for his body?
Not only was this act a dangerous one, making himself vulnerable by aligning himself with a man who was just executed…it was also gruesome and messy work.
Our Scripture says, “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.” “It” is the body of Jesus. The body of Jesus that had been lashed. That had thorns pressed into his head. That had nails in his hands and feet. That had asphyxiated on the cross as it hung. That had a spear pierced his side.
Joseph is the one who takes his body down from the cross.
This is not an act that can be done without getting dirty. The reality of dealing with a fresh corpse is always messy, it is always gruesome. In our day and age, we normally have medical staff who deal with this reality, sparing us from the physical realities of dead bodies. But that was not the case with the body of Jesus. To take Jesus off the cross and carry him to the tomb, to clean and wrap his body…
Joseph did not leave this experience unmarred - emotionally, spiritually, or physically. He had to get close to the reality of Jesus’s deceased body. We sing about being washed in the blood of Jesus - far removed from the horror that is actually having the blood of another human being covering you. Joseph was covered in blood. On his clothes, on his hands, the smell of it in his nostrils. And how heavy is a dead body? Joseph carried that body, his muscles aching, his body straining. There is nothing romantic in this imagery - it was hard, manual, messy labor. I wonder if Joseph had dreams about that day...reliving the horror of it, as he cared for this man’s body, a man who either through Joseph’s inaction or through him not being listened to - was condemned to death.
This was a dangerous and messy act that Joseph did - for Jesus. And there is really only one explanation as to why he would put himself at risk and enter into the full physicality of caring for the body of Jesus - Love. Love for this man and the message he preached. Love for doing what is right. Love of God, love of neighbor, love even of enemy - for perhaps Jesus and Joseph may have been described as enemies at some point. But Joseph was changed by Jesus, by the death of Jesus - even before the resurrection - which Joseph did not know was going to come - Joseph was changed…and so he cared for the corpse, when all others abandoned Jesus, Joseph was the one who stepped into the messy post-Crucifixion reality and cared for the body of the Christ.
We are to be like Joseph.
For many of us here, we are thankfully spared from encountering gruesome and violent death in the way that Joseph did. It seems like such an extreme example as we think of what we are called to do as Christians. We know that what we do to the least of these, we do to Jesus. And thankfully, blessedly, for our lived realities, the least of these do not regularly include the corpses of those who have violent deaths.
Unfortunately, that is not the case for many in our world. As I typed this sermon I got emotional, thinking about those who have had to encounter the messy reality of caring for the bodies of those they love, even carrying them, as Joseph carried Jesus. I thought of those people, those bodies and those who cared for them in life and death - especially those who died at the hands of violence. I thought of Mamie Till, who chose to display her broken son’s body, the body of Emmett Till, following his violent death at the hands of white supremacists. I thought of mothers in war zones - of Ukrainian mothers mourning over their children, victims of bombings, carried out in the fear campaign of Putin who continues to attack civilians and children. I thought of those in Gaza, dealing with the bodies of those who are dying of starvation. I thought of all the injustices and violences in our world that lead to death… and my heart broke. It is breaking anew now.
How we treat these bodies - is how we would treat the broken and bloodied body of Christ. And how we treat these people while they yet draw breath - this is how we would treat Christ himself.
Again - these examples, thankfully, seem extreme and far removed from us. And yet it all boils down to what Paul says in Romans - as Christians we are to be people who rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
When we weep with those who weep, we become the God who weeps with us, to one another. When we weep with those who weep, we enter sometimes the darkest, loneliest, and most forsaken parts of someone’s life - and we remind them: you are not alone. I am here. God is here. Love is here.
Even on that darkest and most forsaken day of Good Friday - Joseph of Arimathea was proof that God was still working in the world. That Love was still working in the world. Love that pushes us to the messy realities of caring for one another. Love that makes us weep with those who weep. Love that makes us align ourselves with Jesus - and with the least, least, and forgotten - as Jesus was that day - even at our own risk.
(Deep Breath)
Friends, thank you for taking this open and vulnerable journey with me, reflecting on Good Friday through the eyes and experience of Joseph of Arimathea. As we leave this place today, may we hold on to this vulnerable openness, allowing our hearts and souls to be open to all we meet in this world, rejoicing with those who rejoice - and yes, weeping with those who weep.
May it be so, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment