Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man who was also a disciple, goes to Pilate and asks for the body of Jesus (verses 57-58). Jesus has just been executed as a man who claimed to be a king, and asking for his body is a public act of loyalty. Nothing is left for Joseph to gain. Jesus cannot promote him, defend him, or thank him. He wraps the body in clean linen, lays it in his own new tomb cut in the rock, and rolls a great stone to the entrance. Isaiah had said that the servant would be with a rich man in his death (Isaiah 53:9). Joseph did the costly, decent thing at the moment it cost the most. The burial also keeps the law that a hanged man's body not remain overnight (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), and evening has come.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are sitting opposite the tomb (verse 61). They watch where he is laid, and they will return to the same tomb at dawn knowing exactly where he lay (Matthew 28:1).
The next day the chief priests and the Pharisees go to Pilate and say 63"we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, 'After three days I will rise.'" They took his words seriously enough to plan around them. Nothing in the accounts that follow suggests the disciples were planning around them at all. Grief and fear seem to have pushed the promise out of their minds. The men who wanted Jesus dead were treating his prediction as a possibility worth guarding against.
They ask that the tomb be made secure so that the disciples cannot steal the body and tell the people he has risen, and 64"the last fraud will be worse than the first." Pilate answers 65"You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can." They go and make the tomb secure 66"by sealing the stone and setting a guard." Every precaution their world offered is stacked on one tomb.
The precautions have an effect they did not intend. In the next chapter no one on either side of the dispute claims that the body stayed in the tomb. The only argument is over what happened to it. A tomb that has been sealed and guarded removes the ordinary explanations for an empty tomb and leaves the one nobody wanted to accept.
Joseph acted out of love, at real cost, and expected nothing in return. The priests acted out of fear, closing every door they could find. Neither intended to serve the other's purpose. A rich man's tomb and a governor's guard now stand together as witnesses that the death was real and the tomb was secured, so that an empty tomb could only mean one thing.
Ask what costly, decent thing you have been too afraid to do for Christ. Do it while nothing visible is in it for you.
Prayer
Father, give us Joseph's courage to act on love when there is nothing visible in it for us. Forgive us the times fear has made us slower to take you at your word than your own enemies once were. Thank you that every safeguard human power could arrange against the resurrection could not hold. Make us people who remember your promises. In Jesus' name, amen.