We read yesterday, at the end of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John, how Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices (a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds) in linen cloths, following the Jewish burial custom. They then laid the body of Jesus in a new tomb in which no one had yet been buried. The tomb was in a garden close to the place where Jesus had been crucified.My thoughts go back to the three wise men who visited the child Jesus at Bethlehem over thirty years previously, and their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. When we celebrated the Epiphany three months ago we sang:
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
breathes a life of gathering gloom;
sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
sealed in the stone-cold tomb.
But our representation of the burial of Jesus is not all doom and gloom! Yes the five living characters look gloomy enough, but the body of Jesus hints towards the third morn! Note how all of his halo has not been snuffed out (a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.) Also, note the little seed which is starting to spring to new life, illuminated by the light of Christ! ('Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it produces much fruit.')
Something wonderful is about to happen. We shall be celebrating Harvest Festival tomorrow!
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