But now the thought of Jesus being buried in a dishonoured grave spurred them into open action, and they decided to bury him themselves.  Joseph actually owned a new and empty tomb in a garden close to the place of the crucifixion and so he was the obvious one to approach Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus.  While, therefore, Nicodemus went to buy the linen grave cloth and spices required, Joseph plucked up his courage (Mark 15:43) and secured an audience with Pilate.  The latter was quite willing to grant his request and, after making sure that Jesus was really dead and that this was not a plan to rescue a still living prisoner, he gave his formal consent.

Joseph and Nicodemus took down the body of Jesus from the Cross and wound it round with the linen cloth and spices.  Then they laid it on the recessed ledge within the inner chamber of Joseph’s rock-hewn, cave-like tomb, and finally closed the low and narrow entrance by rolling a large stone, like a great millstone, across it.

It must have needed more than ordinary courage for Joseph and Nicodemus to come out into the open in this way as friends and disciples of Jesus.  Their action would rightly be seen as a public rejection of the Sanhedrin’s verdict condemning Jesus and a dramatic assertion of his complete innocence.   At the next Council meeting they would be treated as outcasts but having already committed themselves irrevocably to the defence of Jesus, they would be well able to take all the contempt and hostility that came their way.  Indeed, they would understand the force of Our Lord’s affirmation, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man” (our italics) (NRSV, Luke 6:22) (also Matthew 5:11).