Excerpt from Matthew 27: 57- 59

"When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock."

Reflection by Donna Schaper

You have stood there in the snow and the rain. You have watched your friend's casket lower into brown dirt. You have watched your friend let her husband or wife or partner go to dirt or ash. You have made it through the long winter. You deserve the daffodils.  You are reminded by each of these that the time will come for your clean linen cloth.

When it comes to the death and burial of Jesus, we have the opposite of these intimacies.  We sing that we "were there" but in fact, we were not. We are there by song and by scripture. But we were not there. Joseph of Arimathea was. And he did what we would have done, had we been there. He attended – like the women – to the ordinary and the practical. I often say that when the women in my congregations hear of a death, the first thing they do is get their casserole dishes out.  (Some men do also.) "Hot dish" is one way to respond to death.

Many grieving people speak of how their refrigerators overflowed as their hearts emptied.

From the Easter alleluias to the Advent lights and back again, the greatest intuition of the church is to see Jesus, first dead and then alive.  Of course we get our casseroles out for that.

Prayer

O God, prepare us to die and to live, to live and to die.  Amen.

About the Author Donna Schaper is Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church, New York, New York.

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