The Burial of Jesus

Standing off in the distance, the same women who had watched Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus’s body down from the cross also watched as His body was “laid in a tomb cut out of the rock,” with a stone rolled against the entrance (Mark 15:46). Their Savior, Lord, and friend was now dead and buried. 

Can you imagine how they felt? If I had been there to witness the stone being rolled over the entrance—sealing His body inside—I wonder if my waning hope for a Savior King would’ve been sealed inside, too. The darkness and overwhelming sadness of the event must have made Jesus’s trusted followers feel utterly hopeless. 

Many of us know what it feels like to believe God has left us. We know what it’s like to doubt. We’ve had our own dark seasons—seasons where we’ve felt susceptible to the attacks of the evil one, lacking all peace. 

I have walked through seasons of depression and extreme anxiety and have had the same thoughts as the writer of Lamentations: “My future is lost, as well as my hope from the LORD” (3:18). And in those moments, there doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel or an end to the suffering. 

For followers of Jesus in that day, it was difficult to see the light at the end of their tunnel. We can now rest on this side of the resurrection, but it’s important to sit in the space where those first Christ followers once found themselves. Sometimes, we need to lean into our questions, doubts, and brokenness with open hands, expectantly waiting for God’s next move. Because even when it seems all is lost, dead and buried and grieved, God is still doing something.

While the disciples hid in their homes, God was busy defeating sin and death. While Mary Magdalene looked at the closed tomb, God was reconciling everything to Himself through Jesus’s blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:20). While Jesus’s followers sat with doubt, fear, sadness, and loss, God was faithful to keep His promise to save His people. 

In our dark seasons, when we feel hopeless, God is still moving and working things out for our good. There is hope in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. “Death no longer rules over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all time; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:9–11). Jesus is still our one, good hope. May we stay expectant of God’s deliverance.