Joseph of Arimathea summoned up the courage to seek an audience with Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus. He behaved prudently, so that his request would be granted. He didn’t use arrogant language that would only have enfuriated Pilate, who would then have denied his petition. Joseph didn’t say to him: “Give me the body of Jesus, who has just caused the sun to be obscured, split rocks asunder, made the earth quake, opened tombs, and tore the veil of the Temple in two.” He said nothing of the sort to Pilate. What, then, did he say? His petition was humble and utterly meek:
“O Judge, I have come to you with a very small petition. Give me the dead man to bury, the body of the one you condemned, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the pauper, Jesus who was homeless, Jesus who was hung on a cross, naked, worthless, Jesus the son of a carpenter, who had no roof over his head, a stranger unknown and despised and hung on a cross for everyone to see.
“Give me this stranger. What good is his body to you? Give me this stranger; he came here from far away into our world to save us strangers. Give me this stranger whose homeland we strangers do not know. Give me this stranger whose father we strangers do not know. Give me this stranger who lived as a foreigner in a foreign land. Give me this stranger from Nazareth who had nowhere to lay his head. Give me this stranger who, like a homeless stranger at an inn, was laid in a manger. Give me this stranger who had to flee from that manger away from Herod. Give me this stranger who, while still in swaddling clothes, lived as a foreigner in Egypt without city or town or home or family.
“Give me, O ruler, this one who was naked on the cross, so that I may cover him who covered the nakedness of my nature. Give me this one who is at once both dead and God, so that I may bury him who buried my sin in the Jordan. I beg you, give me this one who was wronged by everyone, sold by a friend, denied by a disciple, harassed by his relations, slapped by a slave. I ask for this dead man who was condemned by those he freed from slavery, who was wounded by those he cured, deserted by his disciples, separated from his mother. O ruler, I implore you to give me this dead man who was hung upon a cross, homeless and bereft, with no father on earth, no friend, no disciple, no relative, no one to bury him. Yet he is the Only-Begotten of the only God; he is God in the world—he and no other.”
