So many tombs for the One Tomb of Christ
As we stand, sit or kneel in quiet veneration in our homes on this Great and Holy Friday, we look to tonight when we sing the hymns of the Epitaphios – even if that is by online streaming of church services. When we do, we will be in Saturday, the holiest Saturday of the year, the holy Sabbath of the Lord, when he lay in the tomb, so that He who is Life could bring Life to all who are in the tombs of death, or the living tombs of illness or depression, or the unending tomb of poverty and exclusion. So many tombs in our lives, so many tombs in these days of coronavirus, so many living in fear of what might happen to themselves and their loved ones. And by His death and burial, Jesus entered all the tombs of our existence and opened a new Tomb, a life-giving tomb that brings Life, Hope and Joy where there is hopelessness, despair and sadness. He entered human history as a Stranger, unrecognized by anyone but a handful of people who were given grace to see what no human eye can see. Here are some verses from our Orthodox tradition that imagine Joseph of Arimathea asking for the body of Christ the ‘Stranger’. Is he still a ‘stranger’ to any of us?
Joseph went to Pilate, pleaded with him and cried out: Give me that Stranger who since his youth has wandered as a stranger. Give me that Stranger upon whom I look with wonder, seeing him a guest of death. Give me that Stranger whom envious men estrange from the world. Give me that Stranger that I may bury him in a tomb, who being a stranger has no place whereon to lay his head. Give me that Stranger to whom his mother cried out as she saw him dead: "My Son, my senses are wounded and my heart is burned as I see you dead! Yet, trusting in your resurrection, I magnify you!" In such words did the honorable Joseph plead with Pilate. He took the Savior's body and, with fear, wrapped it in linen with spices. And he placed you in a tomb, O you who grant everlasting life and great mercy to us all.
