A reflection for Good Friday, 15th April 2022
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
Caravaggio, La Deposizione di Cristo, 1602-3
John 19.31-42
Bodies are something of an inconvenience,
both in life and in death.
In life they are, at their best, wonderful.
The problem is that keeping them at their best
requires quite a lot of hard work, and quite a lot of luck.
Either neglect or illness can suddenly rob us
of that which we’ve taken for granted,
and the experiences of the last two years of pandemic
has brought home to us just how frail our bodies can be.
We can exercise, eat healthily, and have all our jabs,
but I’m afraid there are no guarantees
that our bodies won’t let us down,
cause us pain, or just go and die on us.
And in death, bodies are even more inconvenient,
certainly to those who are ‘left behind’ to deal with them.
In our society we have a whole system in place to deal with dead bodies,
usually involving so-called ‘private ambulances’,
chapels of rest, and cemeteries and crematoria.
Because we know that a dead body,
left to its own devices for a few days,
will start to spread death and disease
to those who are already healthy.
Dead bodies can also tell a story.
Any sudden death must be investigated for evidence of foul play,
as every episode of every TV detective drama ever has demonstrated.
But also, as we are now hearing from Ukraine,
they can provide evidence of war crimes.
Forgive my rather depressing, earthy, bodily, introduction.
But we are, after all, at Good Friday,
and our reading for today tells the story
of the disposal of the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.
The ancient Roman practice
was to leave the bodies of crucifixion victims on their crosses,
to be gradually decayed and eaten by carrion.
But the Jewish practice was to bury people before sundown,
to give them the dignity of a ritual burial.
This is why the legs
of the two criminals crucified alongside Jesus are broken,
to hasten their deaths and allow for burial.
Jesus, however, is already dead.
But that doesn’t save his body
from the barbaric act of being speared by a soldier.
And up to this point in the story of that first terrible Good Friday,
everything has seemed normal.
People are executed, people die, people are buried.
But the spear in the side of Jesus,
surely intended as a final indignity to mark the end of his life,
has an unexpected outcome.
Blood and water flow from the side of Jesus.
Too much speculation has gone into finding a medical cause for this,
and I think that to do this is to rather miss the point.
None of what’s about to happen can be explained medically.
Rather, we already know from John’s gospel
that both blood and water have symbolic meaning
as indicators of new life.
Earlier (6.53-56), Jesus has spoken about the importance
of eating his body and drinking his blood to receive eternal life;
and also of the gift of living water (4.10; 7.37-38)
as a gift of life to all who receive it.
The blood and water that flow from the wound
in the side of the dead body of Jesus
are, if we’re paying attention, the first indications
that something unusual is going on
in this otherwise unremarkable execution.
Even at the moment of Jesus’ death,
the signs of new life are already starting to show.
The light of the world is glimmering
through the cracks in the shroud of death.
There is a direct link here, in John’s symbology,
to the Christian rituals of communion and baptism.
In communion, we receive the bread and wine
as symbols of Jesus’ death,
and yet we also proclaim them to be a sign
of God’s undertaking for the life of the world.
In baptism, the person being baptised goes down into the ground,
like a body being laid in a grave,
before rising to new life in Christ
symbolically washed clean of the power of sin over their life.
These rituals of blood and water are life-giving,
because the one who gave his life on the cross
continues to give his life to us.
But for now, in the story of that first Good Friday,
the clue of the blood and water is overlooked.
Instead, the people around the cross
busy themselves with the horrifically mundane task
of dealing with the body of their dead friend.
Two of his lesser-known disciples,
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus,
take his body, anoint it with expensive perfume,
and lay it in a newly cut tomb.
We’ve met Nicodemus before in John’s gospel,
and to make sure we don’t overlook him,
we’re specifically reminded by the author
that he was the disciple ‘who had at first come to Jesus at night’.
He was, we know from earlier in the gospel, a Pharisee,
a leader of the Jews (3.1) who had come to Jesus in secret
and discussed with Jesus what it meant to be born again from above.
Nicodemus didn’t realise it back then,
but Jesus’ language of being ‘born again’
was another of the gospel’s clues
that death doesn’t get the final word on life.
Life keeps erupting into situations of death.
And here on the day of crucifixion
we meet Nicodemus again,
coming out of the shadows,
to minister to Jesus at his moment of death;
bringing with him all the expectations of new life
that are carried in Jesus’ words to him back in chapter 3:
the promise that ‘God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life.’ (Jn. 3:16)
And Joseph of Arimathea is present too,
another seldom mentioned disciple,
who appears in each gospel only once,
and always doing the same thing:
he asks Pilate for the body of Jesus,
and lays it in a freshly cut tomb.
The other gospels give us a bit more information about him,
but here in John he is a secret disciple, a hidden follower,
in fear of the Jewish leaders.
Unlike Nicodemus who encountered Jesus at night
and then stepped into the light,
Joseph continues to walk his discipleship along hidden pathways.
But there’s something interesting about Joseph of Arimathea.
He might be a bit-part character in the gospels,
but within the Christian tradition he emerges
as person of great significance.
He is present in almost every classical depiction
of the burial of Jesus, whether painting or sculpture.
He gives his name to the group known as the Nicodemites,
who hid their faith to avoid persecution through the Reformation.
Somewhat astonishingly he becomes an integral part
of the founding mythology of England,
in the stories of King Arthur and the Holy Grail.
He becomes Jesus’ uncle,
taking the young Jesus to visit Glastonbury.
He features in William Blake’s subversive poetry,
and is in the background to the opening premise
of the hymn Jerusalem -
‘And did those feet, in ancient times,
walk upon England’s mountain green?.
Goodness, what an afterlife he has had!
So much so that my friend John Lyons wrote a whole book about him.
So what are we to make of Joseph and Nicodemus,
taking Jesus’ body and burying it in a tomb?
Well, I think they invite us to see ourselves in this narrative.
None of us really know what to do in the face of death.
It is, after all, the ultimate mystery.
Some of us avoid it, some of us deny it,
some of us pluck up the courage and face it.
Some of us are confronted with it against our will.
And I think the actions of Nicodemus and Joseph
invite us to reflect, today, before the cross of Christ,
on our own reaction to the distressing reality that is death.
But as we do so, John’s gospel offers us a glimmer of hope.
The blood and the water, the promise of life,
the hope that death is not, in fact, the end.
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