The Last Week of Jesus's LifeSýnishorn

Friday, April 3, 33 AD

[For a detailed account of Jesus’s crucifixion, please see Jared Brock’s YouVersion devotional The Crucifixion of Jesus: A 5-Day Meditation on Christ’s Ultimate Sacrifice.]

Jesus dies before sunset, and a question remains: Will Jesus’s body be yet another of the tens of thousands that will be thrown to the dogs and vultures? Who among the remaining disciples is willing and able to expose themselves as a follower of the would-be king of the Jews?

His name is Joseph. He is from the nearby Judean town of Arimathea. He’s a member of Annas’s synedrion, but he follows Jesus in secret because he is afraid of the temple elites. Setting aside these fears, he goes to the praetorium and asks permission to take custody of the body. Pilate is surprised to hear Jesus is already dead. After confirming with a centurion, Pilate assents to Joseph’s request.

Joseph purchases a linen shroud (Mark 15:46), then returns to Golgotha and does the difficult work of un-spiking the corpse from the cross. As he does so, another secret disciple approaches. Joseph’s courage has inspired his own, and it is the Galilean Nicodemus—and fellow member of the synedrion—who helps with the burial process. He brings with him seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloe, and together they wrap the body in the linen shroud with the spices according to Jewish burial custom.

It is nearly sunset and Shabbat is about to begin. They need to get the body in the ground quickly. There is a garden near Golgotha. It contains a rock-cut sepulcher—a communal tomb or burial vault. Once a body decomposes, the bones are moved to a stone ossuary box as a final resting place. (Caiaphas’s was discovered in 1990.) In other words, this is just a temporary resting place for Jesus.

Joseph and Nicodemus carry the wrapped body into the tomb. Joseph uses a large rock to plug the entrance, ensuring no birds or dogs will taste Galilean flesh this night.

Across the garden, Mary Magdalene and Aunt Mary mother of Little James have watched the whole thing. Not satisfied by the hasty preparations made by the men-folk, they return to wherever they are staying to prepare their own mix of spices and ointments for the body. The Law of Moses requires them to rest on the Sabbath, and no doubt they will spend every moment of it in mourning, but they will be back first thing Sunday morning.

Saturday, April 4, 33 AD

Despite all their protestations and posturing about their so-called care for the Sabbath, the Pharisees and the House of Annas now decide to break the great Passover Sabbath and get the Romans to do some work for them. “The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, ‘Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise.” Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, “He has risen from the dead,” and the last fraud will be worse than the first.’

Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.’ So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard” (Matthew 27:62–66).

Annas and his men—who don’t even believe in resurrection or the afterlife—have proven once and for all that they are not faithful Jews who obey God’s holy law, but are simply hypocrite imposters, usurpers of the high priest’s throne.