Fear
“Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” (John 19:38-42)
Much of Jesus’s burial follows the social norms of the time. According to Roman protocol during the rule of Caesar Augustus, the body of a crucified person would have been given to the family or friends who requested it. This request for a body was generally only refused if the person had committed a treasonous act—such as an assassination attempt on a Roman official or leading an armed rebellion. The bodies of people convicted of these kinds of high crimes would be left hanging on their crosses as a deterrent for others. The fact that Pilate releases Jesus’s body to Joseph of Arimathea is a hint that Pilate, although agreeing to executing Jesus for the charge of treason, did not actually consider Him to be a political threat.
And Pilate would have seen nothing unusual about Joseph of Arimathea coming to ask for Jesus’s body. In a case such as this, when a Jew had been condemned by the Sanhedrin and turned over to the Roman officials to carry out the death sentence, it was the responsibility of the Sanhedrin to dispose of the body. What is unusual, however, is that Jesus’s body is placed into a brand new tomb inside a nearby garden. Sanhedrin law dictated that criminals’ bodies were to be buried in specially designated ‘wretched places.’ So that even in death, they couldn’t defile the bodies of others with their evil.
Which leads to a question. Why was Jesus’s body sealed inside a tomb carved from rock?
Was it because the Sanhedrin wanted to make sure that His body wouldn’t mysteriously go missing? Afraid that the disciples would steal the body and then claim that Jesus has risen from the dead.
Or was it because Joseph and Nicodemus were no longer being held back by their fear? Maybe they were two of the religious leaders described in John 12:42, who had begun to believe in Jesus but were afraid to openly acknowledge their faith because the Pharisees could put them out of the synagogue. If Joseph and Nicodemus were in this group, perhaps their experience of Jesus’s death has made them bold.
Perfect love has driven out their fear.
