The Body of Jesus
The Body of Jesus
Good Friday
044-00646 John 19:38-42
I. From Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World”.
“In the end,” said Mustapha Mond, “the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia …The discoveries of Pfitzner and Kawaguchi were at last made use of. An intensive propaganda against viviparous reproduction… Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years’ War); by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 15O.There were some things called the pyramids, for example. And a man called Shakespeare. You’ve never heard of them of course. Such are the advantages of a really scientific education. The introduction of Our Ford’s first T-Model …Chosen as the opening date of the new era. There was a thing, as I’ve said before, called Christianity. The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption …So essential when there was under-production; but in an age of machines and the fixation of nitrogen–positively a crime against society. All crosses had their tops cut and became T’s. There was also a thing called God. We have the World State now. And Ford’s Day celebrations, and Community Sings, and Solidarity Services. There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol. There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality. But they used to take morphia and cocaine. Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized in A.P. 178. Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug. Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant. Glum, Marx, glum.” The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. “What you need is a gramme of soma. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology. Stability was practically assured. Work, play–at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking– thinking!”
A. A Brave New World was one of the earliest books I read when I had reached an age that I discovered reading was as good if not better than television.
1. I am not sure why, but it is also a book which I have read many times and return to often.
2. So it did not slip by me when I began studying the Greek language in college that the word Huxley uses to name the drug designed to anesthetize people from the drudgery of industrialized life is “soma.”.
3. Soma is a Greek word, its earliest meanings referring to a body and in particular, a dead body or a corpse.
4. Now that is a great simplification of the word for in all languages words have continually developing meanings in both literal and symbolic ways.
B. One of these developments was when Jesus used the word in the context of the Lord’s Supper.
1. By this time in history, the word soma often referred to the whole body or the whole person.
2. But only in the context of the Greek understanding of body, soul, and spirit. Still quite often the word in the Greek was used for a body destined for death or one without a life of its own, such as a slave, or one in which the soul or breath of the person had left the body.
a) The use of soma in translation of the Old Testament is very rare. Another word is used for the idea of flesh.
b) The stoics made great use of the distinction between body and soul often leading to a disdain of the body while focusing on the higher soul.
3. Jesus uses this word for himself: This is my soma…eat from it. – This is my body which is offered up to die for you – it is as good as dead already.
a) What Jesus was doing was taking a common understanding of body farther than it would be normally done.
b) Yes, his body was to be offered to die on the cross, but if only his body died, there would be no adequate sacrifice, for the whole person had to die to appease the justice of God.
c) Paul takes this use of soma even farther developing a theology of the church as the soma of Christ. And he does not mean that the body is absent the person of Christ.
C. Jesus presented a concept that was much more Jewish than Greek.
1. And on the day he died, it is clear that at least two people understood.
2. For Joseph and Nicodemus removed the soma of Jesus from the cross.
3. They brought spices and linens and prepared the body for burial as was the custom of the Jews.
4. They laid the body of Jesus in a new, unused tomb.
a) Let me point out that there are three significant issues here in what Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea did.
(1) First, these men were both highly powerful and wealthy men.
(a) Nicodemus was a Pharisee who secretly followed Jesus.
(b) Joseph was of the Sanhedrin and though Luke tells us he did not approve of the crucifixion plan, he folloewd Jesus secretly.
(c) These two men, working together, used their wealth and influence to provide an honorable and almost kingly burial for the body of Jesus.
(i) Even before the resurrection, the death of Jesus effected the courage of these two men who could loose everything they had.
(ii) The went to Pilate and asked for the body.
(iii) They bought 100 roman pounds of expensive burial spices.
(iv) They prepared the body and laid it in Joseph’s new tomb.
(d) On the day Jesus died, they took great care of the body of Jesus for the body was more than an empty shell.
(e) And they did so at great cost to themselves. You might say that Joseph and Nicodemus also died that day.
(2) The burial procedure was according to Jewish custom.
(a) This is important because there were many other customs availalbe for use.
(b) Many corpses were burned. Others were cast off for wild animals to eat. Others were buried to rot in fields designated for such use.
(c) The Egyptians were famous for removing the brain and some internal organs and embalming the body.
(d) But the Jews kept the body whole, especially the bodies of important people.
(e) Remember Joseph who removed Jacob’s body from Egypt to return it to be buried with his ancestors at home? This was at Jacob’s dying request.
(f) The Jewish custom refers to both tradition and law. And the burial of Jesus conformed to both.
(g) But most importantly, the Jewish custom of burial still assured one that death had actually occured.
(i) Pilate made sure that Jesus was dead.
(ii) Nicodemus, Joseph, and whoever else was with them made sure that Jesus was dead.
(iii) It would have been a serious thing to wrap and bury one who was not dead!.
(a) Imagine being wrapped with linen strips of cloth with 75 pounds of thick goo spread in between and satruated through.
(b) By the time it was done, a man of 150 pounds could weigh 225 or more!.
(3) The burial of Jesus is not only the climax of his humiliation, it is also the beginning of his exaltation.
(a) The expense of this quick burial was tremendous.
(b) Though Roman pounds are less than our pounds, the two men still had to come up with a termendous amount of burial spices, probably about 75 pounds.
(c) There was also the expense of the linens.
(d) And importantly, there was the tomb.
(i) It was a new tomb – no one had been laid there so it was still pure and undefiled.
(ii) It was hewn out of rock.
(c) No mere cave.
(d) It required the work of craftsmen and only the very wealthy had such tombs.
(e) Listen to John Calvin: When Christ had endured extreme ignominy on the cross, God determined that his burial should be honorable, that it might serve as a preparation for the glory of his resurrection. The money expended on it by Nicodemus and Joseph is very great, and may be thought by some to be superfluous; but we ought to consider the design of God, who even led them, by his Spirit, to render this honor to his own Son, that, by the sweet savor of his grave he might take away our dread of the cross.
II. So what of the body of Jesus?.
A. What is so important about a dead body? And why make such an issue about this?.
B. John 12:23-25 “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
C. Jesus’ body was buried as proof that he died.
1. Proof that he died is proof that he lived.
2. But more importantly, Jesus did not simply die. He died and was buried so that he might be raised again.
3. Throughout the Jewish and Greek world, a soma that was dead could conceivably be raised again.
a) Flesh that is destroyed could not be raised.
b) A corpse that was destroyed could not be raised.
D. Furthermore, that Jesus died and was buried in the flesh is the beginning of the call to all of his disciples to follow him where he has gone.
1. … by the sweet savor of his grave he might take away our dread of the cross.
2. Many people died the night Jesus died:
a) Two criminals died on either side of him, one to eternal condemnation, the other to follow Christ to paradise.
b) Judas hanged himself in a desperate act of hopelessness.
c) Peter died inside after denying Christ three times.
d) The women at the cross, and John died in the suffering of watching a beloved one crucified.
e) But Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea died to themselves and their old life to discover a new life of discipleship that was no longer secret.
(1) They gave up their lives so they might live.
(2) Even before the resurrection of Christ, the power of the dead body of Christ had an effect.
III. Tonight we have followed Jesus our Lord.
A. He washed our feet and fed us.
B. He prayed with us and for us.
C. He died on our behalf and his body was laid in a tomb.
D. How far have we gone with him on this journey.
1. As we contemplate the body of Jesus in the grave, what about your soma?.
2. Will you lay it down with him?.
3. Or will you allow it to become a narcotic distracting you from the realities of life?.