The Burial of Jesus.
Good Friday Fragments.
"_And after this Joseph of Arimathoea, being a disciple of Jesus, but
secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away
the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and
took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the
first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes,
about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and
wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is
to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden;
and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.
There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day;
for the sepulchre was nigh at hand_."--John xix. 38-42.
Death has many voices. This death and burial speak aloud in tones of
triumph. It as a death that made an end of death, and a burial that buried
the grave. And yet it was also a very humble and painful and sad affair.
We must not forget the humiliation and poverty and shame written on every
circumstance any more than the victory, if we would learn by it all that
God designed to teach.
I
"_He tasted Death_."
To many, even among those who have been freed from guilty fear, mortality
itself still has terrors. By Divine grace they can lift up their hearts in
sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection, and yet they shrink with
painful apprehension at the thought of the change which alone can make
that resurrection possible. There is probably no instinct of the whole
human family more frequently in evidence than this repulsion for the
grave. Death is such an uncouth and hideous thing.
Nothing but bones
The sad effect of sadder groans;
Its mouth is open, but it cannot sing.
All its outward circumstances help to repel us--the shroud, the coffin,
the grave, the silent shadows, the still more silent worms, the final
nothingness. The mental conditions, too, generally common to the last acts
of life, tend to intensify the feeling: the separation from much that we
love, the sense of unfinished work, the appreciation of grief which death
most usually brings to others: the reality of disappointed hopes, the
feeling that heart and flesh fail, and that we can do no more--all these
tend to make it in very truth the great valley of the dark shadow.
To many, even among the chosen spirits of the household of faith,
approaching death also starts the great "_Why_?" of unbelief. For, in
truth, the death of some is a mystery. It is better that we should say so,
and that they should say so, rather than that we should profess to be able
to account for what, as is only too evident, we do not understand. In
confronting death this mystery is often the great bitterness in the cup.
To die when so young! To die when so much needed! To die so soon after
really beginning to live! To die in the presence of so great a task! Oh,
why should it be? How much of gloom and shadow has come down on hearts and
households I have known, from the persistency of that "Why?" intensifying
every repulsion for the hideous visitor, adding to every other the
greatest of all his terrors--_doubt_.
Now, in the presence of such doubts--or perhaps I ought rather to call
them questionings and shrinkings--has not this vision of the dead body of
our Lord something in it to charm away our fears? Does it not say to us:
"I have passed on before; I that speak in righteousness, Mighty to save. I
have trodden the winepress alone. At My girdle hang the keys of life and
death; I, even I, was dead; yes, really, cruelly dead; but I am alive for
evermore"?
_He tasted death_. The king of terrors was out to meet Him. The long
shadows of the gloomy valley really closed Him round, and He crossed over
the chilly stream just as you and I must cross it--all alone. Nothing was
wanting which could invest the scene, the hour, the circumstances with
horror and repulsion. There was pain, bodily pain; there was mental
anguish; there was the howling mob, the horrid contempt for Him as for a
malefactor; the lost disciples and shattered hopes; the reviling thief;
the mystery of the Father's clouded face; the final sinking down; the
letting go of life; the last physical struggle--when He gave up the ghost
and died.
Yes. He passed this same way before you. He wore a shroud. He lay in a
grave. The last resting-place is henceforth for us fragrant with
immortality. The very horrors, and shadows, and mysteries of the
death-chamber have become signs that death is vanquished. The tomb is but
the porch of a temple in which we shall surely stand, the doorway to the
place of an abiding rest. "In My Father's house are many mansions: if it
were not so, I would have told you."
Living or dying--but especially when dying--we have a right to cry with
Stephen, the first to witness for Christ in this horror of death, "Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit." To Him we commit all. He passed this way before
with a worn and bruised body, in weakness and contempt, with dyed garments
and red in His apparel, and on Him we dare to cast ourselves--on Him and
Him alone. On His merits, on His blood, on His body, dead and buried for
us. He will be with us even to the end--_He has passed this way before
us_.