In the care given to Jesus’ body after death, we glimpse how God comes close to us in the every death.
Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Sunday of the Passion, year B
Texts: Mark 11:1-11; Mark 14:1-15:47
God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
By now the palm branches should be feeling strange in your hands.
Were we just celebrating? It seems like a long time ago – like a dream. How did we get here? How did we get from Jesus, vital and assured, riding into Jerusalem to the sound of cheers and singing, all the way to the dull thud of the stone being rolled in place, enclosing the corpse of God?
I can’t stop thinking about that. Because of the beautiful and tender conversations we’ve been having in Adult Forum for the last few weeks, I can’t stop thinking about the corpse of Jesus – and about how preciously it was cared for. I keep thinking about the unnamed woman with alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and how she did what she could, she broke it and poured it out to anoint Jesus’ body for its burial.
And I keep thinking about “Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was himself waiting expectantly for the reign of God,” and how he “went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.”
He asked for the body of God.
God’s body, which was completely–and unfathomably–helpless. God’s body which, as we heard in Mark’s brutal account, had been beaten and bound and spat upon and mocked and flogged and struck and derided and nailed to a cross until it was just limp flesh, without breath or warmth or life. Just a broken body.
But Joseph went to Pilate “boldly” and asked for it —perhaps out of that stubbornly hopeful expectation that it still wasn’t too late for the reign of God. Or perhaps because he just couldn’t bear to see that broken body hanging there. He had to care for it. To tend it. To wrap it in linen and lay it to rest in a safe place. To respond to the love of God–shown at its most extreme—with his own love in return.
And imaging those moments of tenderness and care for the remains of a loved one revealed a new depth of this story for me.
We say so often that the story of the cross is the story of Christ coming close, meeting us in our very deaths. But our deaths–those are still abstract for us – we don’t know what experiencing death is like yet. But the story of the cross is also the story of Christ meeting us in the deaths we have experienced, the deaths of those we love. When we tend their bodies, when we anoint them with costly ointments, when we attempt to memorize their faces, when we sing them to their rest. When we wash and arrange and bury their bodies – Jesus is there.
Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body.
Christ is there in the body that has died in peace, surrounded by loved ones, and Christ is there in the ones that have died alone in fear or pain. And Christ is there in every single body strung up or blown apart by violence and cruelty and hatred. And Christ is there in the bodies of those taken too soon. Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body. And every single body is a site of sacred love come close.
God came to us in a body and God still comes to us in bodies.
We bear the life of Christ to one another and we hold the death of Christ in one another as well. In the care and kindness we show one another in life and death and in the memories and wisdom that are passed down from our loved ones. One of those souls whose beloved memory we keep in our congregation is Susan Cherwien, whose words in so many hymns and writings still soothe and challenge us. And her words about death have been echoing in my mind as well. She once remarked that the soul does not inhabit the body, the body inhabits the soul.
And in Christ, we are not souls inhabiting separate bodies, but bodies inhabiting one soul – the very soul of God.
The soul that holds us all in astounding love – that comes near and meets us where we are – that loves through life and death.
In a few minutes we will celebrate the Eucharist. We’ll see the bread and cup, Christ’s body and blood for us, wrapped tenderly with linen. We will hear Christ’s words, spoken once more, “Take; this is my body” – the body that lived and died. The body that cared for others and was also tenderly cared for. That came close and still comes close to us in every death and holds for us the promise of the resurrection and restoration of all creation. The body that showed us the love of God at its most extreme.
Today, like the unnamed woman, we respond to love with love. And we join Joseph of Arimathea, as we come boldly and ask for the body of Christ and we wait expectantly for the reign of God.
In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
