Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the Council, one of the leaders from the Sannhedrin who had just been part of the group that had sent Jesus before Pilate, the move that ultimately sent Jesus to his death. From what we can tell, it doesn’t seem that Joseph spoke up for Christ before Jesus had died. Maybe he didn’t realize that it would go this far. Maybe he wasn’t sure what he believed. Possibly he was intimidated into not speaking up. We don’t really know.

But Joseph now knew that Jesus was dead. An innocent man had been nailed to the cross and left to die. Jesus’s blood was on their hands, and Joseph knew it. He knew that they, the Jewish leaders, had done this and he couldn’t let the disgrace continue.

It was a dangerous time, though. The Jews had been fine with killing an innocent man, and the Romans were indifferent about whether any Jew lived or died. They simply wanted peace. They primarily wanted to maintain their empire and maintain the civil status quo. No one person, or even group of people, innocent or otherwise, would stand in the way of accomplishing these goals.

Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.

Mark 15:43

It took great courage for Joseph to go to Pilate to ask for Jesus’s body. He could have been called out as one of Jesus’s followers. He could have been identified as one to be counted amongst the enemy. After Jesus’s death, his followers could be next, hunted down and killed.

This was, in fact, the very question that the Sannhedrin considered just a few weeks later. They had arrested the apostles, who by this time had received the Holy Spirit and had gone public with the start of the church in Jerusalem, and they wanted to kill them.

Then subsequently with the arrest of Stephen, they went through with it. They killed him and a persecution broke out against the believers.

So Joseph would have known the danger that he was in. He would have understood the climate within which he was acting. He knew that it would be a great risk to be known as the one who was caring for the body of Christ.

Yet he went. He took great courage. He went boldly to Pilate. He was waiting for the coming of the kingdom of God. He thought that Jesus may have been the one to restore the kingdom to Israel, but those hopes now had been shattered. Yet still they had killed an innocent man.

Will we act with such boldness? With such courage? Even in the face of danger? Or even if not danger, in the face of embarrassment? Or at the potential loss of status? Or money? Not because we are identified with our church or potentially a particular political statement, but because we are identified with Jesus. Is Jesus worth so much to us that we would give up those other things? May it be that we would go boldly, that we would live with courage because of our identification with Christ.