Meditation: Fourteenth Station of the Cross – Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb

In a world that does not know God, there are many incongruities. There are many things that do not fit, things that jar, that clash and contradict. Indeed, in a world that rejects God, there is a fundamental incongruity. There is a fundamental sense in which things do not fit, in which things clash and contradict.

We look at the world around us and sense that the world is not as it ought to be. We sense that life is not as it ought to be. If we are honest, we sense that our lives are not what they ought to be.

We see all of this in this fourteenth station of the cross. We see that things do not fit, that things jar, that things clash and contradict. We see a fundamental, terrible incongruity – a fundamental clash and contradiction.

At first reading of this station, this fundamental incongruity may not be apparent. There is a niceness about the description of Jesus being laid in the tomb. There is a kind of simple yet formal elegance in the portrayal.

Jesus has died. A rich man – Joseph of Arimathea – petitions Pilate to let him take the body of Jesus for burial. Pilate consents. Joseph takes the body of Jesus, wraps it in a clean linen cloth, and lays the body in a tomb. It is a new tomb, carved out of rock in preparation for the death and burial of Joseph himself. Joseph, however, graciously gives up his burial place so that it may be used to hold the body of Jesus. The details in this written account convey a simple but reverent elegance in the removal of Jesus’ body from the cross and the placement of his body in this rock tomb.

Yet, as we consider deeply the scene confronting Joseph, the scene we are now contemplating, we realize the realities were anything but nice or elegant. The body of Jesus was tortured, mangled, bloody. How very difficult and messy it must have been to get his body down from the cross, to pick his body up and place it on this large piece of cloth, to wrap his body in this cloth, to transport his body to the rock tomb, to pick up his body again to lay it in the tomb, and to roll a large stone to seal the tomb.

The linen cloth would no longer have been clean and lovely. It would have been stained with dirt, sweat, and blood from the body of Jesus. The hands and faces and clothes of Joseph and others who took the body of Jesus down from the cross, placed it on the cloth, wrapped the cloth around it, and picked up the shrouded body of Jesus would have been dirtied and bloodied by the effort. Those who took the body of Jesus to lay it in the tomb would have been emotionally distraught and physically exhausted. Then they would have had to walk away from the gravesite of Jesus, from the tomb holding the brutalized remains of the one in whom they had invested so much faith, hope, and love.

There is nothing nice in this scene, in this action. There is no elegance in laying Jesus in the tomb. There are only incongruities and contradictions – a clean linen cloth terribly stained with dirt, sweat, and blood from extreme cruelties; a rich man’s newly carved tomb used to shut away the humiliated and broken remains of a man condemned by religious and political authorities. There are only fundamental incongruity, fundamental jarring, fundamental contradiction. This ought not to have happened. Life ought not to be this way. People should not be killed. People should not die horribly. Clean linen cloth should not be used to wrap mangled bodies. Rock should not be carved for dark, bleak tombs. People should not lose and grieve for dear friends and family. The Son of God should not be rejected and killed. Life ought not to be this way.

Yet it was, and it is. Will it always be this way? From our human perspective, it seems so; it seems life will always be this way. Ah, but here we come to the true mystery of Jesus being laid in the tomb, the deep mystery that assumes and then overturns the reality of our world and our lives, that changes once and for all our human perspective – the divine mystery that by dying Jesus took the place of Joseph of Arimathea in death, that by being laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea Jesus took the place of each of us in our death.