HOLY SATURDAY: Lenten reflections from Mark’s Gospel (40)

“She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed…what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”…

Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council…went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus… When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph… taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb…” (Mark 14.8-9; 15.43-46) 

     Who cares about a dead king?  As Mark will tell us, not those whom we might have expected…  As the corpse of the Messiah hangs from the cross, Mark provides the names of three women and mentions “many others” who had followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem and who were watching events transpire from a distance (15.40-41).  This is the first time in the narrative that we meet these women.  Upon Peter’s departure, weeping, from the courtyard of the High Priest’s residence while Jesus was on trial before the Sanhedrin (14.72), the apostles have vanished from the narrative (never to return).  Jesus has been abandoned, so it would seem, by everyone who either cared about him or had the ability to do anything for him.  If no one had intervened – in the worst-case scenario – Jesus’ body would have been left on the cross to be devoured by animals, and in the best case, would have been tossed into a common grave.  Happily, someone does intervene; surprisingly, it is a member of the Sanhedrin, one Joseph of Arimathea, who – Mark tell us – was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God (15.42-43).  Since the beginning of the Sabbath was fast approaching, he rushes “boldly” into the governor’s headquarters and requests the body of Jesus.

     At this point in Mark’s story, Jesus’ body becomes the focus of attention.  This theme actually began two days before Passover, as Jesus was dining in the home of one “Simon the leper” in Bethany (14.3).  An anonymous woman had broken open an alabaster jar of “very costly” ointment of nard and had proceeded to pour it onto Jesus’ head.  This gesture evokes the anointing of kings in ancient Israel (cf. 1 Sam. 16.13; 2 Kings 9.6) and confirms, once again, Jesus’ identity as the Messiah.  The cost of the ointment suggests that this is a woman of some means (14.5), and due to the tendency of Jesus to encounter women and children only when he is inside a house, it seems likely that she is a member of the household of Simon (cf. 10.10, 13).  Crucially, when some of the dinner guests accuse the woman of “wasting” costly ointment which might have been sold in order to make a donation to the poor, Jesus defends the woman’s gesture, saying that “she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial” (14.8).  Not for the last time in this final phase of the narrative, a woman has shown concern for Jesus’ “practical needs” (cf. 15.41).  The women who appear in Mark’s narrative play the role of a foil to the male disciples, who are blind to much of Jesus’ teaching.

     Following his anointing by the woman of Bethany, the next reference to Jesus’ body is made by Jesus himself at the Last Supper: “This is my body”, he says as he breaks a loaf of bread and distributes it to the apostles (14.22).  Those to whom Jesus had given “his body” abandoned his body, once broken on the cross, to the crows.  Thankfully, Joseph of Arimathea was granted Jesus’ body, once Pilate had received confirmation of Jesus’ death from the centurion, yet another unexpected source of sympathy for the dead Jesus (15.44-45; cf. 15.39).  Joseph arranges for Jesus’ body to be removed from the cross, and then proceeds to wrap it in a linen cloth albeit without anointing it – presumably, because of the necessity to complete the burial before the start of the Sabbath.  Joseph laid Jesus’ body in a rock-hewn tomb and rolled a stone against the door.  Mark tells us that the two Marys – Magdalene and the mother of Joses – saw where Jesus’ body was laid (15.46-47).  Ironically, a member of the Council who had condemned Jesus to death is the only person, at this juncture, to care for his body.

     On the morning after the Sabbath, very early on the first day of the week, the issue becomes one of completing the enshrouding process by anointing Jesus’ body with the appropriate spices.  The three previously named women (cf. 15.40) come to the tomb with the spices they have purchased, wondering all the way who will roll away the stone from the entrance (16.1-3).  They fully intend to continue to provide the care they have been accustomed to providing for Jesus since they began to follow him in Galilee (cf. 15.41).  Upon arriving at the tomb, they discover that the stone has already been removed.  The women enter the tomb and find, not Jesus’ body, but rather “a young man”, sitting and dressed in a white robe (16.4-5).  The young man reassures them and tells them that Jesus has been raised from the dead.  He then instructs them to go tell “his disciples and Peter” that the risen Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee and that they will see him there (16.7; cf. 14.28).  So, Mark tells us, the women “fled” from the tomb, because they were “terrified, amazed and afraid” – and, fittingly perhaps as an ending to this strange story, “they said nothing to anyone” (16.8).  After all the times that Jesus had failed to obtain people’s silence after a miracle, now – after the deed of power to outdo all deeds of power – the frightened witnesses of the empty tomb are reduced to silence.  The Son has risen (before the sun: 6.2) as he said he would (cf. 8.31, etc.) and will wait for his disciples in Galilee, where the story began.  What will happen once they are reunited?  What remains to be done in the kingdom of God?  Once again, as he draws his story to a “close”, Mark reminds us that the unlikely king from Nazareth reigns over a kingdom of unlikely subjects… whose deeds “will be told in remembrance of them wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world” (cf. 14.9).