The Risk

John 19:38-42

March 30, 2018 (Good Friday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

In my twenty-five years in active ministry, I have officiated or participated in 167 funerals and attended a whole lot of others. Every occasion is unique and memorable and moving, a celebration of life and, especially for one who was a Christian, a celebration of life yet to come. I find myself sad when people tell me that they don’t want to have a funeral; they don’t want people crying over them, but that’s exactly what we, as human beings, need to do. We need some sort of closure. Funerals, after all, aren’t for the dead; they are for the living, to give us a time and space to mourn, to grieve, to remember, and then to go eat fried chicken and potato salad. But seriously—I know people attend (or don’t attend) funerals for all sorts of different reasons, and some come with more hope than others, but in our culture we have successfully distanced ourselves from death so far that we rarely truly see it up close. We’re afraid of it or upset by it. Modern funerals have become nice, sanitized affairs containing very little encounter with of the reality of death.

That’s what makes this day, Good Friday, so hard for some people: it’s all about death, and one death in particular. This day is too brutal for some to even think about. How in the world can a day so focused on such a brutal and excruciating death could be called “Good” Friday? How can a day that centers around a brutal execution and a quick funeral be considered one of the high points of our faith? If that’s what it’s all about, what kind of people does that make us?

In just a few moments, we’re going to read through the story of Jesus’ passion—but before we do that, I want to focus on Jesus’ funeral. Did you realize Jesus had a funeral? It was quick and not well attended, just two men and a few women. His disciples didn’t even bother to attend. But a funeral for someone executed on a cross would have been unexpected anyway; most such criminals weren’t even buried. Instead, their bodies would normally have been thrown into a mass grave. But due to the bravery and risk-taking of two men, Jesus’ body would receive a burial, albeit a quick one, and he would be honored to the best of their ability.

The two men, John tells us, are Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, both (apparently) belonging to the party of the Pharisees. Earlier, the religious leaders (who came mostly from the party of the Sadducees) had gone to Pilate and asked him to move the deaths of the three men on the crosses along. It was Passover, after all, a high holiday, and they did not want to ruin the festivities by having dying men hanging on crosses overlooking Jerusalem. So, again not to upset the religious leaders, Pilate orders that the legs of the men be broken. That way, they would not be able to push up on the nails and breathe; they would die by suffocation much faster. Jesus, John tells us, was already dead when the soldiers came to carry out their grim task, so they didn’t break his legs, but they did on the other two and it wasn’t long before all three were dead.

Then, just when Pilate thinks the whole matter is (finally) over, these two Pharisees come to see him about Jesus. We tend to think of the Pharisees in negative terms, and to be fair, that’s the way they are mostly portrayed in the Gospels. But as I’ve said before, Jesus probably agreed with the Pharisees more than he did with anyone else—in principle. He had told his followers to listen to what they taught, it was good. But he also told his followers not to live the way the Pharisees lived because, for most of them, their life didn’t match their teaching (cf. Matthew 23:3). Some of the Pharisees, though, had put their faith in Jesus; yet they had to do this secretly or else they would be thrown out of the community—and that was a bigger deal for them than it is for us. To be excluded from the community meant you lost everything—status, friends, family, social interaction, everything. To be identified with Jesus was a dangerous and risky business. That’s why, as John told us earlier in the Gospel, Nicodemus had come to see Jesus under the cover of darkness (cf. John 3). Joseph of Arimathea we haven’t heard from before, but these two men are the only ones who have the courage to come and claim the body of Jesus, to argue before Pilate on Jesus’ behalf, to ask that he be allowed to be buried and not disposed of. No one else—none of his disciples—have that courage. It’s too risky. It’s too dangerous. You might be ostracized, you might even lose your life. (You didn’t, after all, want to make Pilate mad by pushing him too far.) But Joseph and Nicodemus decide it’s time that they take a stand for this rabbi they have followed in secret. The risk is worth it, and has to be taken (cf. Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 201).

So what do we know about these two men? What would cause them to place it all on the line for the sake of a disgraced carpenter-turned-rabbi who was killed as a criminal? Honestly, we don’t know a lot about either one of them. We can assume they were men of some means, probably fairly wealthy (certainly compared to Jesus and the disciples). The tomb that Joseph owned is described as being unused, which was unusual because tombs in that time were carved into the rock and then used and re-used over and over again by a particular family, sometimes an extended family. It took a lot of work to make a tomb, so they were repeatedly used for generations. To have a tomb that had never been used meant that Joseph had paid someone to carve a new cave for himself. (Matthew tells us it is Joseph’s own tomb that they use; 27:60.) That was only done by wealthy people, and this tomb would then be one fit for a king. New, just for one person. The same thing had happened at the beginning of the week, when Jesus rode a donkey into town that had never been ridden. Nothing but the best, even for this king who came to die (cf. Card 202; Wright, John for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 138). The fact that the tomb was nearby was providential, as Jewish custom, still to this day, insists that a body be buried in a very short time following death. It would have had to be somewhere close.

Another clue we have about Joseph and Nicodemus is the amount of spices that are brought for Jesus’ burial. Spices and perfumes were necessary to cut down on the smell of the body’s decomposition if the family has to come and open the tomb to bury another body within the first year. But Jesus’ burial was done faster than normal because the Passover was approaching and the people wanted to be able to celebrate the festival. So Joseph and Nicodemus provide the initial spices—about seventy-five pounds of spices, or to provide some perspective, ten times the amount Mary used to anoint Jesus at the dinner party in Bethany (cf. Wright 137). It’s an extravagance, an amount (again) fit for a king (cf. Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 2, pg. 263). Not only does it show us that these men had means, but that they had a deep, deep love for Jesus.

However, it was a love that (they felt) had to be hidden, kept quiet. John says Joseph, specifically, was a secret disciple “because he feared the Jewish leaders” (19:38). These were not only wealthy men; there were important politically and socially as well. We know from Luke’s Gospel that Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin, and John has already told us that Nicodemus was as well. The Sanhedrin was the ruling council of Jerusalem, sort of the City Council or, maybe more properly, a legal and religious council. They didn’t have any sort of jurisdiction over actual city affairs, but they were in charge of all matters that dealt with their law. The Sanhedrin was the same group that Jesus was brought before after his arrest, the “kangaroo court” that helped get Jesus to this place. We know that meeting of the Sanhedrin was arranged quickly at night, and so I wonder if Joseph and Nicodemus were even there. Maybe their love for Jesus was more well-known than they thought and they were not invited to or informed of the meeting. Or perhaps they absented themselves from the gathering because it was, in fact, an illegal gathering, happening as it did at night. Or it’s equally possible that they were there and kept silent throughout the whole proceedings. We don’t know, but we do know that something changed when they saw Jesus hanging on the cross, something so radical that they put their lives, their livelihoods, their reputations and their jobs on the line to take care of this one they had come to love and believe in. Sometimes it takes something awful to push someone out of hiding and into the light. Sometimes it takes dangerous times to help those who are afraid to take a risk.

Friends, we live in a time when it may be tempting to be a secret disciple, to be like Joseph and Nicodemus and hide in the shadows. The world outside these walls is not necessarily “Christian-friendly” anymore. There are times when it feels dangerous to publicly proclaim to follow Jesus; there have been and sometimes are consequences to standing up for what you believe. In other places in the world, the risk might even be the loss of your life, but here it can come out in the form of the loss of a job, or the loss of friends, or ridicule. I still remember a time when I was in high school—yes, a long time ago—where a group I was in was making fun of Christians and what they believe, and to my great shame, I walked away and said nothing. I didn’t want to be one they were mocking, even though I already was. It seemed somehow easier to be a secret disciple. Have there been times when you thought that? Maybe there are still situations in your life where it just seems easier to hide, to be quiet, to not speak about your faith.

And then I, like Joseph and Nicodemus no doubt did, think about what Jesus did for me. He wasn’t killed in a quiet, hidden, secret place. Jesus was crucified in a public place; all crucifixions were performed in prominent places, usually along main roads, to serve as a deterrent to future crime. It was a display meant to say, “This is what happens to those who get on the wrong side of Rome!” Jesus’ beating, ridicule, humiliation and death were very public events, done for Joseph and Nicodemus, for you and for me, for every disciple then and now who felt it would just be easier to be quiet about their faith. Something happened in the heart of Joseph and Nicodemus on that day, something that moved them out of the shadows and into the light, something that made them brave enough to take a risk and put their faith and their love for Jesus on display. Their story causes me to ask: what will it take for me to do the same thing? What will it take for you to do the same thing? What are willing to risk for the sake of the one who loved us enough to die for you and for me and for the whole world?

Tonight, we’re going to read through the story of Jesus’ passion, a story that has been told and retold for two thousand years. We call it his “passion” because it is, ultimately, a love story. What Jesus does on that cross is a demonstration of the deep and reckless love of God for his people—there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do to bring you back. He would even give his life for you, and in fact, he did. That, too, was a risk, because Jesus knew from the beginning, from his first breath in this world through the last step onto Mount Calvary, that some would reject his love, his gift. He knew not everyone would receive him, and fewer still would be willing to be bold about it. But for you, for me, for the whole world, Jesus was still willing to take the risk, and as he died, as he cried out, “It is finished,” he knew that the risk was worth the pain (cf. 19:30). And that’s why, one day, all of creation will sing, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Revelation 5:12). Worthy is the lamb—worthy is the Son of God. Amen, thanks be to God!