What do you do when there’s nothing you really can do?  I often ask myself that question when I am with people at vulnerable times in their lives.  What do you do when a close friend reveals that she has terminal cancer?  What do you do when the young couple you’ve gotten to know at church loses the baby that they have been joyfully anticipating for months?  What do you do when your next door neighbor loses his job and has to sell his house because he can’t make payments anymore?  What do you do when there’s nothing you really can do?

I wonder whether Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus asked this same question when they heard about, or actually witnessed, the death of Jesus.  These men were not regular disciples of Jesus.  In the gospel of John, we hear that Joseph was a “secret” disciple of Jesus and Nicodemus is identified as the one “who had at first come to Jesus by night.”  But even as somewhat reluctant disciples, these men felt that they had to do something.  And so they did.

“Nicodemus…also came [along with Joseph of Arimathea], bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.  They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. …because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”

Joseph and Nicodemus were utterly convinced that Jesus was dead.  They knew they could do nothing to bring him back to life.  They knew that what had transpired was completely unjust.  Even if they had not come to a complete understanding of who Jesus was, they knew that he was from God, and that he was innocent.  But they couldn’t do anything about any of that.  Not now.  So, faced with the question of “what do you do when there really is nothing you can do,” they decide to give him an honorable burial.  Spices are purchased and linen cloths procured.  They wrap the body properly and place Jesus’ body in the tomb.

When faced with nothing else to do, Joseph and Nicodemus fall back on ritual.  They knew what it meant to prepare a body properly for burial.  They knew how to prepare the grave.  They did what they could to honor this man who had changed their lives.  And then they gave it to God.  Through their bold ritual actions, they witnessed to their new-found faith in Jesus. 

I believe that the actions of Joseph and Nicodemus tell us as much about these reluctant disciples as it does about Jesus.  They didn’t have all the answers.  They didn’t even know what questions to ask!  They sure didn’t have any solutions.  But they had become followers of the Way of Love.  And they did what they could do.  They prepared Jesus’ body for burial and then buried him.  It was a ritual act of profound love.

The same is true for us as well, isn’t it?  If you’re like me, you don’t have many answers or solutions.  There’s not much we can do about the death of Jesus or about the myriad injustices and acts of violence that still plague humanity.  It can all seem so totally overwhelming.  So, as followers of Jesus, we do what we can do to be agents of love in the world.  And then, when there’s nothing more we really can do, we give it to God.  

We’ve been ritually doing that all week long in our services of Holy Week.  We have been ritually laying our lives and the life of the world upon the altar of Christ saying, “here it is, God, there’s nothing more we can do.”  And we’ll do it again today as we commemorate Jesus’ death on Good Friday.  And we’ll do it on Saturday night and, then again, on Sunday morning too as we ritually witness to our faith that through the power of Christ, even death itself dies.  So, what do you do when there’s nothing you really can do?  You give it to God and trust in the power of God’s love.

~Father Art