12.05 | Where We Join the Story
Mark 15:42-16:20
‘Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.’
Mark 15:43
In 2007, I spent a long weekend with a retired bishop in Cape Town. Bishop Eric was in his seventies, and was a man of exceptional physical vitality and spiritual depth. He and his wife hosted me beautifully, graciously showing me around, taking me up Table mountain (Bishop Eric could climb at an awesome speed), and soaking our time together in quiet prayer. Bishop Eric, as a white church leader, had trod a countercultural path, joining the battle against the evils of Apartheid.
One of the things that really marked me from my time with Bishop Eric was how he had navigated his ministry very specifically from where he joined into South Africa’s story. Like all of us, he didn’t choose the time or place where he was born, and his choices didn’t make his life easy. However, he very much viewed his vocation as something discovered within the circumstances in which he found himself. His role was to intersect the story of his country with the Story of God.
There’s a guy we meet today in our reading who appears in all four Gospel accounts, and yet always and only at this moment:
Joseph of Arimathea.
We don’t read anything of him either before or after this. He enters the story in the hours after Jesus has died, and then disappears from the biblical records.
And yet, here’s what’s so striking about him.
He joins the story at the darkness moment. At this point, everyone has abandoned Jesus, except for these few faithful women, and Joseph. He joins the story at the point where all he has is the body of Jesus.
And yet, he deals with this moment so faithfully. With nothing but the body of his rabbi, he does all that he can do. He gives Jesus a proper burial. Not thrown into a roughly cut grave like a criminal, but rather honoured, carefully bound in grave clothes, in a grave of dignity and wealth.
Sometimes it is like this for us. We don’t choose when we enter the story. We didn’t choose this moment of history, or these circumstances into which we were born, or all the people and lives that we interact with. We didn’t choose our physicality (donuts/exercise aside), our skin colour, our gender or our family. We simply entered the story here and now.
Do not be discouraged by what you begin with. Joseph began with a body and a tomb. That was all he had.
Because we, like Joseph, we are simply invited to faithfulness with our moment. To join the story where we are, holding it with simple faithfulness.
And yet,
in the purposes and plans of God,
Joseph’s faithfulness in this moment of utter darkness, joining the story at the close of Good Friday — when all he knew of his role was as the man who secretly buried a wonderful rabbi — had set the stage for something beyond his wildest imaginings.
He had chosen the venue for the resurrection. He had provided the place that would define the trajectory for humankind into all eternity. He had provided the canvas upon which God would paint the most glorious picture of life that explodes from the tomb. His faithfulness to his moment meant that he will always and forever be known as the man who gave God the tomb that ends all tombs, unto the beginning of the New Age of God’s unending reign.
Where do you join this story today?
Be faithful, my friends. Because sometimes it looks like we’ve so little in our hands. But the faithful acts of today, in the hands of our God, are what lead to the justice and resurrection life of God’s inbreaking tomorrow.
Reflect:
Where do I join the story of history today?
What does faithfulness with my life look like today?
Pray:
Father,
It’s easy to wish for different.
To wish for different times and places;
To wish for different circumstances;
To wish that you had placed into my hands something easier and bigger and more spectacular.
And yet,
Right here,
Teach me to see differently:
Not to fixate upon what I do not have,
But to faithfully steward what I do.
And here,
Father,
May my faithfulness in walking this path,
Provide a place for your resurrection life to invert every story of pain and limitation,
In the footsteps of my risen King.
In His Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Samuel 3-5 | Psalm 62
Beautiful!