Saturday, March 28, 2015

Matthew 27:59-60

So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.

Salvation had come

Care and sorrow … I am not sure which most moves me. Joseph tenderly wraps Jesus broken body, covering the oozing wounds, a final act of love for someone he barely knew—a man who had awakened a hope in his heart he did not understand.

He seals the body in a tomb, behind a great rock, with even deeper sadness. The flame of hope Jesus sparked now gone, extinguished, his word, all he was, soon to be forgotten. Buried hope.

Care and sorrow. They are not two emotions but the expression of a single truth. The love that filled Jesus awakens an answering love in those willing to hear and feel what was in him. Make that who was in him.

This is the way it works. The Love who fills Jesus awakens the Love that is God’s presence in the lives of those who listen and hear.

Maybe Joseph was moved by the dignity of Jesus presence, undeterred from his mission by the powers that would crush him. Maybe his hope was stirred by Jesus vision of another kind of world, a kingdom ruled not by love of power but by the power of love.

Maybe Joseph didn't have a clue what moved him to care for Jesus and grieve his destruction.

What is clear is the love Jesus awakened in his depths. And with that love, salvation had come to him, even as he tenderly wrapped that broken body and anointed those terrible wounds.

Joseph could not have known his buried hopes were about to be born.

Pr. David L. Miller