Matthew 27:57-60

As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away.

It is over. The stone was put into place.  The radical, constantly irritating, zealot was dead.  He is out of the way and for most out of mind.  Joseph of Arimathea did what he could to lend some sense of decency for Jesus’ body. He had become a disciple, a follower, a keeper of the flame.  Now the flame dimmed with the last sound of a stone moving into a cut groove of his own well prepared tomb.  The earth had swallowed up Joseph’s hopes, his devotion, his high expectations.  It was now done. Yet in that moment of stillness all the earth awaited the quiet victory of the stone moving once again. We wait, we darken our homes, our own flames dim.  But Sunday is coming.