The burial of Jesus is often skipped over between the drama of the cross and the empty tomb. But the details matter more than most people realise. We look at why the burial account is historically significant and what it tells us about what came next.
01The Part of the Easter Story Nobody Talks About
Good Friday gets the attention. Easter Sunday gets the celebration. But Saturday, the day in between, the day of the burial, is the part of the story most people skip.
It's not hard to see why. There's no drama in a burial. No triumph, no crisis, no turning point. Just a body wrapped in linen, a borrowed tomb, and a stone rolled across the entrance. And yet Mark includes it in his Gospel. In a book that moves at speed and doesn't waste a single verse, he devotes an entire section to the burial of Jesus. Which raises an interesting question: why does it matter?
02The Man Who Stepped Forward
The burial account is found in Mark 15:42-47, and it centres on a figure who appears almost out of nowhere: Joseph of Arimathea.
Mark describes him as "a prominent member of the council who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God." This is a man of status. A member of the Sanhedrin, the very council that had just condemned Jesus. And yet he goes boldly to Pilate and asks for the body.
That took courage. Joseph was publicly aligning himself with a man who had just been executed as a criminal. In doing so, he risked his reputation, his position, and potentially his safety. Everything about his world would have told him to stay quiet and stay away. He did neither.
Pilate, for his part, was surprised to hear Jesus was already dead. Crucifixion was designed to be slow. People could linger for a day or more. So he confirmed it with the centurion before releasing the body.
Joseph bought linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph watched where he was laid.
It's a short account, almost clinical in its simplicity. But there's something profound in the details.
03What Burial Stories Tell Us
The talk took a creative approach to understanding this passage by looking at burial narratives in film and literature. Three patterns emerged.
First, there's the ceremonial burial, all pomp and procession. Think royal funerals or the scene in The Lord of the Rings where King Theoden buries his son with full military honours and the whole town in attendance. These burials are about dignity, legacy, and public grief.
Second, there's the graveside gathering, where disparate characters come together around a coffin. The Godfather, James Bond films, the Bourne movies. These scenes use burial as a plot device to bring people together or move the story forward.
Third, there's the faked death, where burial is the setup for a surprise return. Nick Fury in the Marvel films. Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series. "But we buried you" becomes the dramatic moment that changes everything.
Jesus's burial doesn't fit neatly into any of these. There was no procession through the streets. No crowd of mourners. No public ceremony. It was done at dusk, in a rush, just before the Sabbath started, because Jewish law prohibited touching a dead body on the Sabbath.
And yet elements of all three patterns are present. There is a kind of dignity in Joseph's care, even in the haste. The two Marys are there as witnesses. And of course, the burial is the setup for what happens next.
04The Significance of Being Buried
Why does it matter that Jesus was buried? Couldn't Mark have jumped straight from the cross to the empty tomb?
Burial serves a specific narrative and theological purpose. It confirms that Jesus was genuinely dead. This isn't a swoon theory, where Jesus merely fainted and was revived in the cool of the tomb. Pilate confirmed the death. A centurion verified it. A prominent public figure handled the body.
Burial also represents finality. In every culture, burying someone is the act that says: this is over. The stone across the tomb was both practical and symbolic. It sealed the end of the story, or so everyone thought.
"There's something about burial that's kind of final. That was closure. That was the end."
And that's precisely the point. For the resurrection to mean anything, the death had to be real and the burial had to be conclusive. You can't have a comeback if there was never a definitive ending.
05Joseph's Quiet Act of Faith
Joseph of Arimathea is one of the most underappreciated figures in the Easter story. He wasn't one of the twelve disciples. He wasn't part of Jesus's inner circle. He was an establishment figure who had been quietly "waiting for the kingdom of God."
His moment of faith came not in a public declaration or a dramatic miracle but in a practical, unglamorous act of service. He asked for a body. He bought cloth. He wrapped it himself. He provided his own tomb.
In Jewish tradition, burial was a sacred duty. Leaving a body unburied was considered a curse. Joseph ensured that Jesus received proper burial, even when the circumstances made a traditional Jewish funeral procession impossible.
There's something worth noting about the timing. At the very moment when Jesus's closest followers had scattered, when Peter had denied him and the disciples were in hiding, this outsider from the council stepped forward. Faith showed up in the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time.
06The Saturday Feeling
There's a reason the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday resonates with people. Most of life is lived in Saturday. Not in the crisis, and not in the resolution, but in the waiting space between them.
Saturday is the day when the worst has happened and the best hasn't arrived yet. It's the day when hope feels naive and despair feels rational. It's the job loss before the new opportunity. The diagnosis before the treatment plan. The ending before whatever comes next.
The burial of Jesus sits in that space. The body is in the tomb. The stone is sealed. The women have noted where he was laid. And there is nothing to do but wait.
The story doesn't stay in Saturday. That's the crucial thing. But it doesn't skip Saturday either. It honours the waiting. It acknowledges that the space between death and resurrection is real and it matters.
07What This Means for the In-Between Seasons
If you're in a Saturday season right now, a season where something has ended and nothing new has begun, this passage has something to say to you.
The burial of Jesus tells us that God doesn't skip the hard middle part. He doesn't fast-forward through the grief, the confusion, or the silence. He enters it. And sometimes, the most faithful thing that can happen in that space is a quiet, practical act of care, like Joseph wrapping a body in linen and providing a resting place.
You might not be able to fix what's broken. You might not be able to see what's coming. But you can do the next right thing, even when it doesn't feel like enough.
08Something to Carry Into the Week
The burial of Jesus is proof that the story wasn't over even when everyone thought it was. The stone was sealed. The mourners had gone home. And yet.
So here's a question for whatever you're facing this week: what if the thing that feels most final, most sealed, most over, is actually just Saturday? And what if Sunday is closer than you think?
Topics in this talk
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my me uh my my mmm well good afternoon good sunday afternoon welcome to crowd church with uh your host matt edmondson now it is worth saying straight off the bat that yes sally is not here despite what it said in the credits unfortunately sally can't make it this afternoon uh but uh thoughts and our prayers go with such just a feeling a little bit under the weather um so she's resting so do pray for sal it's a shame she can't be here but that doesn't mean we don't have an action-packed afternoon for you oh yes on the church live stream uh i hope i hope you've not been kind of putting off the grand prix because spoiler alert i may be talking about the grand prix uh during the live stream today simply because of the fact it was amazing to watch oh yes it was anyway we won't we we might get into that a little bit but this is in fact not about the grand prix crowd is church so yeah welcome to sunday afternoon church uh we are a church for those that may not understand uh christianity who may want to find out more about christianity for those that might not see the meaning or the point of church and of course for people like me that have been around church well since noah was around basically uh yes we've been here for a while oh yes so wherever you're at it's great that you're with us it's great that you're watching oh sales there in the comments hey sal i'll try to keep matt in check from afar yeah good luck with that when you're not inside beside me yeah awesome uh hey matt how you doing hey nichola make sure you say hi though my lovely wife's in the comments as well it's great sharon hi good afternoon to you uh it's great that you're here welcome like i said crowd church do make sure you let us know where you're watching from if you're new to the live stream just comments the comments say hi see see how everyone's doing antoine priscilla you're in the house great to see you guys as well um always great to connect with new people in the comments yes it is so make sure you say hi uh it'd be great to meet you and as we go through the service the live stream you can put in your questions your comments into the feed we would love to hear from you uh any questions any thoughts that you have we would love to know about them oh yes we would now at this stage of the live stream it would be typical of me to ask sal um or rage if you were with us last week because rach came and led uh hosted sort of crowd with me last week um it's this that stage of the service where i say to somebody can you please point to the whatsapp number on the bottom of the screen so we put that on the bottom of the screen like that and apparently it's quite difficult too it's a lot easier of course when there's just one of you and the numbers right in the middle of the screen you can do that really easily anyway that's the whatsapp number let me get rid of those because we don't need those um you can reach us on that number uh by the whatsapp or you can go to the website www.crowd.church and you can send in any prayer requests that you have whether you have faith or not you know wherever you are in your christian journey it doesn't make any difference um it'll be great for you to send those prayer requests in we would love to pray for you because we are a praying church yes we are uh believe that god answers prayer so if you have anything send them through and we would love to pray for you to the whatsapp number below on the church website you can also go putting your name and email address if you start that sentence again you can put in your name and elam email okay i'm really starting to struggle now uh you can put in your name and email address and we would love to be in touch with we just basically send out an email once a week just a newsletter letting you know when the live streams start uh and obviously i now need to go practice how to talk okay so what have we got going on here uh sally's been what have you been practicing i'm put your teeth in matt yeah thanks for that um oi i do the questions uh actually matt just so you know uh i have a question from nicholas she's already texted in she's like way ahead of you pal so um i've got nicolas question coming up later again if you're new to the live stream basically what's going to happen is after the talk we've got the amazing dr will sopwith coming and joining us in just a few seconds um he's going to do the talk and after that we're going to have a time of sort of uh worship and reflection we have some music where we can sort of um either sing along with or just you know let the music sort of minister to us as they say sort of think about the words and reflect on them that's going to come up after the talk and then after that we have what we aptly call combinate i'm struggling what we aptly call conversation streets yes that's the right name now will is going to join me for conversation street which is where we're going to go through your comments we're going to go through your questions so as we go through the live stream make sure you put your comments and your questions in there so we can cover them in the conversation street and i will do what sally says and i will put my teeth back in uh to be honest you don't own the slot okay so uh matt and nicola have got some got some you know issues to work out that's all i'm gonna say just show good kind christian love you too that's all i'm asking anyway that's today's service so like i said we've got will coming up we've got some time for worship reflection then we are going to go into conversation street then we have ketchup this week josh has done catch-up so that's going to come up towards the end of the service and we are going to finish out probably somewhere between quarter to five and five o'clock somewhere around there the live stream will end so please stay with us and please engage if you haven't done so already make sure you like wherever you are watching the live stream and if you feel so inclined why not share it out and say oy i'm watching church wanna come watch church with me on this sunday afternoon maybe not add the word oi uh will's just sent me a message here that was a text message pinging that's will uh shall i join you after the talk yes absolutely well if you're watching this come you can fact that link i've sent you you can dial in any time and it'll just come through anyway now before i get into the talk let me tell you that uh we've had a few technical issues yes we have um so we spent several hours editing will's video by putting the scriptures on there like we're normally doing some pictures and all that sort of good stuff which is sort of all adds to it doesn't it helps you view it helps you engage well unfortunately for whatever reason the sound again was not coming through on the video this is why we were a bit late broadcasting um the sound just wasn't working so what i've had to do uh very quickly is scramble we are going to play will's original uncut unedited video okay which is it's a brilliant video let me tell you the talk is brilliant will's just is just a real casual kind of guy just draws you in it's you you'll enjoy the talk what's not going to happen is the scriptures won't come on the screen so um that is a shame unfortunately there's not a lot i can do about it at this shorter notice i don't know why it's decided not to work but his original video is i hope you're following this so far so i'm going to play wales talk if you have a bible you can follow on with the scriptures because we'll let you know where he's reading from we're going to be reading from mark's gospel which is this the gospel uh the book from the bible that we've been working our way through as a church um and we're getting to near towards the end so you can follow on mark chapter 15 uh of course if you're on the internet you can follow it along the web or just listen to we'll read it either way it works totally fine so without further ado let's get uh the talk going i'll be back after this but for now here's will hi my name is will i'm an epidemiologist and a public health scientist and currently working for public health england um on oh on the virus that's doing the rounds shutting down the world you know you might have heard of it and i'm here to talk in crowd church the first time today which is very exciting and the topic is the burial of jesus and in the easter sequence if you think about good friday death of jesus saturday burial of jesus sunday spoiler alert jesus rises from the dead or if you want to translate that into our current customs friday hot cross buns saturday spot gardening sunday chocolate eggs go figure and of the three events the burial is a little bit skated over a bit like the gardening on the bank holiday weekend in between good friday and easter it's not something that gets a lot of attention and to be honest it's not something that i've thought about a huge amount so what is it all about so let's read um it's the next in the series in mark's gospel you've been running through and the reading is mark 15 verse 42 to the end of the chapter this is what it says it was preparation day that is the day before the sabbath so as evening approached 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 pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead people crucified could live at least in the 24 hours um sometimes into the next so pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead and so summoning the centurion he asked him if jesus had already died and when he learned from the centurion that it was so he gave the body to joseph so joseph bought some linen cloth took down the body wrapped it in the linen and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb mary magdalene and mary the mother of joseph saw where he was laid so in jewish tradition um burials happened very quickly um once somebody died um there was a kind of a cultural horror remaining unburied um and lots of verses talk in terms of curses of remaining unburied and so and partly living in a hot climate it was practical people tend to get buried quite quickly but not necessarily this quickly as in this story and what would happen is that the body it wasn't in the coffin the body was wrapped in a fresh piece of linen cloth um it was laid face up to the sky on like a sort of stretcher a fire that was then carried normally there'd be a procession um you might have a professional mourner um a woman at the front sort of wailing and and singing the the praises of whoever had died and there'd be a crowd of people um it might be the village it might be the family and death was a big thing in jewish tradition and and according to jewish law if you if a funeral cortage cortege if a funeral procession passed you as a good jewish man certainly you were expected to get up from whatever you were doing um and follow it from i think at least 10 paces or something as a minimum to show respect for the dead so so death was a big deal and and there was there was ceremony and tradition around it and then the body would be taken to for those who are wealthy enough uh a cave that had been cut out of the rock and there would be uh stone uh shelves as part of that cave where you would lay a body and sometimes these tombs had several shelves and a whole family um would be buried in there over time um you could probably only afford one one cave for your family and then there's large rock to stop any scavengers to stop the smell i imagine would be rolled in front of the door so we have a description here of of that happening with with joseph and as i was thinking about this i was thinking well mark is a writer first and foremost um and the mark's gospel that you've been going through if you've been following these sessions it's first and foremost it's an eyewitness factual account of the life of jesus um but he's a writer and and writers have narrative you know they there are particular things they include or don't include um thinking about the narrative that they are bringing so what is it uh what's the narrative of jesus burial that makes it an important thing for mark to include it's quite a short chapter a short book mark it's a short gospel and in 33 years there'll be so many stories to write i imagine about jesus but he chooses these verses to focus on the burial of jesus so so what is the significance and i was thinking about other burial narratives and for me that means visual it means movies it means tv um out of a particular genre to be honest um so these are something i came up with you might be able to come up with others but three main burial narratives there's the one where there is this kind of pomp and ceremony think kind of royal funeral crowds lining the streets uh all the kind of stops pulled out and it and it's often um an exhibition of a particular culture of the person um the scene that springs to mind is is one from the second lord of the rings film where king fedon uh kind of wakes from his stupor and and he realizes his son's dead and there's a full funeral and he's dressed up in his uh his military gear and he's carried out on the stretcher to the tomb and the whole town is there all dressed up in their military to honor um the king's son and uh and his cousin um erwin is singing this um this kind of haunting lament by the tomb side and and the burial ground is covered with white flowers it's kind of a it's a very visual scene and and obviously very sad so there's the kind of the the visual impact sort of narrative of a burial it's kind of a key point in a story but then the other one another narrative the second narrative i was thinking about is the kind of graveside scene where someone's died and you've got a number of characters sometimes quite disparate characters gathered around the graveside and often it's you know as the coffins going in and and they throw throw dirt in and you know the kind of scene so the godfather springs to mind um and james bond seems to go to quite a lot of graveside sort of memorial things and to follow up on a lead or whatever and i think that was one of the bourne movies as well but anyway that it's a familiar kind of scene and then the third burial narrative that i thought of was that old classic the somebody faking their own death thing just to kind of keep the story going so so nick fury in all the marvel films i think he's died in three different films and no one really believes he's dead anymore um and who else oh and sherlock of course sherlock holmes um in the bbc you know threw himself off the roof to persuade everyone that he was dead persuaded moriarty and yeah he took some clever chemical that made him look dead for an hour or something um and then he came alive again and at the end of all those kind of fake death type narrative things um when the person suddenly reappears to to to characters and it's that phrase of like but we buried you there's something about burial that's kind of that was final that was closure that was the end so these are some narratives that i thought of um and it struck me that most burials actually sent around the people that are left fairly obviously i suppose the the person is dead in the coffin or underground um but the focus of the narrative is around the people that surround it so it's this kind of plot device to to move the story on with the people that gathered for example so so let's look at mark's narrative and it and it's really interesting because it doesn't really have any of these so it doesn't even have the the kind of pomp and tradition of of a classic jewish burial of the kind of being the body being carried through streets it's all done in a real rush it's done at dusk just before sabbath because they wanted to get everything out the way before sabbath because you couldn't touch a dead body on on the sabbath and yeah in one of the other gospels it says there wasn't even time to to pour spices on the body it was all very hurriedly done um so there's no parade there was no narrative set piece if you like um there was no one even around the tomb side where were his decide where were these friends that we've heard so much about in the gospel that the people that journeyed with him there's barely anyone there there's this guy joseph and and two women um so that there doesn't seem to be that narrative of gathering people around the graveside for the next bit of the story so what about then the fake death and lots of people have believed this um what about that actually jesus didn't really die he he resuscitated um and then so when it came to sunday and he appeared to everyone he'd not actually die so it wasn't actually a miracle of resurrection he was just kind of you know that that was the story that the disciples then put on it later on but if you're going to fake someone's death you'd probably want to do it with a few more people wouldn't you um so here's this very rushed kind of ceremony getting him to the tomb there's three people there two of them two the two women their testimony wouldn't even stand up in a court of law at that time because they were women um so if you're gonna fake someone's death so that then that the body can reappear alive you'd want to do it in a crowd and if you if you you know if you were thinking we're gonna stage manage this now look like he resurrected on sunday you would want you would want to make sure there was a crowd you'd maybe do that saturday morning when there's lots of people around in daylight um so as a ploy it's not not a great one if you're going to fake death but look at the people as well so you've got centurion um a professional executioner um this is the centurion that had witnessed the cross um that had seen jesus die and he's attested to jesus having been dead already now you would think he out of anyone would be someone that could recognize death he does it daily it's literally his job to say whether someone is dead or not and pilate the governor he's not going to allow a half a live person being taken down from a cross jesus has been sentenced to death the guy that's in charge of sentencing is not going to say oh yeah take the body down if there's any chance of him recovering because he's then a free man he's like no no the sentence was death so i think the weight of evidence of those two saying confirming that he was dead um is probably pretty sound that that this wasn't a fake um but then also if you were gonna fake a burial um i think you'd want to keep the account quite vague you'd say you know yeah there were some people there a couple of his disciples were there but mark names he's quite careful to name joseph not just any joseph joseph of arimathea who was a very prominent person member of the council respected pillar of the community and these two named women now if you were going to fake something you probably wouldn't then give some named eyewitnesses that people could go and check the account with so the whole kind of evidence around it being a fake uh fake burial um i think is pretty slim to be honest um so actually this was the end this was finished this was the end of jesus that is what mark is writing here this is closure closure on the life of jesus he died he was buried he definitely definitely died it's not a ploy it's not a plot device um this is actually an eyewitness account of a very unusually muted burial of a jewish man in a in quite a shameful situation and and this is very challenging um quite apart from the fact that then jesus rose again that physical impossibility of someone rising from the dead when they had died but it's also challenging because if we believe like last week there was it was being said that that jesus was 100 man but 100 god this is very shameful circumstances and actually this is a reason why many people don't believe jesus is was god because i said well how can god possibly go through the shame of this public execution this kind of hushed up burial um with no real witnesses um god wouldn't do that god wouldn't allow that to happen it's just too shameful and actually most muslim muslims would say that if you talk to them say well no jesus definitely wasn't god because because he died and he was buried and he he died and was buried under quite shameful circumstances so this passage is actually a real challenge um to us for those reasons so before we look at why it's there then before we look at the significance of of jesus being buried what was going on in those three days what was going on between uh good friday and easter sunday and i haven't really got time to to go into other scriptures about this but um but jesus dying you know the sacrifice of jesus dying was to take on all of our sin as god 100 god taking on our sin and descending to hell basically um and then breaking free because he was 100 god and because he was perfect didn't deserve that punishment didn't deserve the the verdict of death so then he broke out again so in this kind of intervening days um that that's it he was completely cut off from god he died physically cut off spiritually and then came and rose again and if it indulges me on another lord of the rings reference um the point in the two towers when um when it's clear that gandalf didn't actually die in the minds of moria in the first film and he's talking about what happened when i first saw this i thought that's it that is the pitch and i don't know whether talking thought thought that meant that or not um but you've got gandalf who's kind of hurtling down fighting this balrog demon into the depths of the earth and you're amazing seeing them kind of falling deeper and deeper and deeper and then they battle it out for a couple of days until finally the demon is killed and then you've got that moment when gandalf suddenly feels breath back in his body and back he comes and on the story goes and actually that's a that's a fantastic picture of what was going on jesus dying on the cross finally defeating satan through that battling and then coming back to life but okay so what's what's the significance what is um what is this closure about that mark is writing why is he so keen to to bring this closure to write about the well the first thing as i think we've alluded to already is that it shows if the body was dead it was attested to being dead it was buried then the appearance of jesus was a true resurrection it wasn't just a kind of resuscitation it wasn't a sort of vague well we saw jesus on the cross and then no one quite knows what happens and then suddenly he was back again there was a definite clear in mark's mind and he took the trouble to write it with those named eyewitnesses no the body was dead so the resurrection is real and and that's the that's the christian faith um so that's why it's important um and the reason that the reason that the death and the burial was so important is because in order for jesus death to mean anything and the resurrection to mean anything he had to take the payment of that sin that rebellion against god which is owed to us that jesus took on our behalf and to do that he had to die if you're going to make a payment so you get a car park fine or a mersey flow runcorn bridge fine for those of you local there's no point in writing out the check putting it in envelope even putting a stamp on it unless you post it you can't then say well i nearly made the payment i went through the process but it didn't quite get made and and so jesus couldn't go through all the shame of the cross be taken down put in a tomb unless he actually died if he didn't actually die the resurrection doesn't mean anything at all the payment has not been made for the sin that is owed for us it's still outstanding so the reason this is so important is because without the burial there is no resurrection and without the resurrection there is no forgiveness of sin which is the whole point about the story of jesus and um paul talks about this actually and and links it to baptism and and it's it's quite a good illustration of the thinking um in the early church and and in christian thought now and i'm going to read from the message version from romans 6 the first few verses if we've left the country where sin is sovereign sin is in charge how can we still live in our old house there or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good this is what happens in baptism when we went under the water we left the old country of sin behind and when we came up out of the water we entered into the new country of grace a new life in a new land that's what baptism into the life of jesus means when we are lowered into the water it's like the burial of jesus and when we're raised up out of the water it's like the resurrection of jesus each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace sovereign country it's just a beautiful description and this is why the burial was important because if we're to be free if we're truly to live in grace if we're truly to see the end of the sin that keeps on tripping us up the kind of darkness in our life where we know we're not right with god we we have that shame we have the the guilt of stuff we've done if that's not buried and the analogy he uses it's like going under the water for baptism is a symbol of that jesus being buried if that's not buried we can't come back with new life just like jesus did on easter sunday so that is why i think mark writes about jesus burial and please do think about um some questions some discussion on that it's been great to share with you great thanks will how did you find that will's first time with us here at crowd wasn't he great i just love his sort of conversational style like he's just sitting down with a cup of coffee just chatting to you jeremy no hype no no pretense just let's have a conversation about this and i love that and i i love the thinking there that will did and i think we was right at the start no one really thinks about the burial section do you mean we talk a lot about the death we talk a lot about the resurrection but we don't talk about the bit in between and actually it's really important as well outlined so we're going to get into that with will in just a few minutes time so any questions you've got or any of your own thoughts or comments you want to throw into conversation now is the time to do it get busy in the comments ladies and gentlemen and whilst we are busy doing that uh we're going to have a time of worship and reflection like i said before um and you remember right there at the end as will was talking he talked about the great what was that like the grace is coming out into this grace sovereign country um which i think is such a beautiful phrase a a country where grace is sovereign where grace abounds and that's what this track is about it's about grace and about how god's grace his his un his unmerited favor i think is the official definition it's god's god just does it whether or not you deserve it or whether you don't it's that's what grace is all about right and and so god's grace extends towards us now well we are going to get into this track called grace alone i am going to be back after that and hopefully the beautifully talented uh and just beautiful uh will saltworth is going to join us after this so here's the time of worship and reflection get busy in the comments we'll be back soon father you worked your will i had no righteousness of my own i had no right to journey your throne but father you loved me still and in love before you laid the world's foundation you pre-destined to adopt me as your own you have raised me up so high above my station i'm a child of god by grace and grace alone you left your home to seek out the lost you knew the great and terrible cause of jesus your face once said i worked my fingers down to the bone nothing i did could ever atone jesus you paid my death by your blood i have redemption and salvation i i was in darkness all of my life i never knew the day from the night spirits you made me see i swore i knew the way on my own a head full of rocks a heart made of stone spirits you moved me at your touch my sleeping spirit was awakened on my darkened heart the light of christ has shown yes stand in faith by grace and grace enough i will run this race by grace and grace and love i will reach the end by grace heaven citizen by grace and grace alone absolutely right let me get into this let me just take these off screen we don't need those oh oh well's joining us now apparently so true to the technical issues that we've been having this week uh it's taken a little bit of time for to join us hopefully he'll be with us in just a few seconds it will ring in my ears and then i will let him in so what did you think to will's talk what did you think about that that whole idea of the death of jesus the burial of jesus and next week actually sharon's going to be talking a bit more about the resurrection of jesus and why there is an awful lot of evidence for that um and why we should actually be very confident as christians in the resurrection and that it actually happened um so yeah it's it's one of those things where i think i think it's just a really fascinating thing to think about isn't the you know what happened between good friday and and easter sunday besides the gardening i think that we'll talked about what happened during those times and um and nicola you've put here never thought about uh without the death there would be no burial and most importantly no resurrection no path to forgiveness that's true and the burial actually signifies the death doesn't it you don't bury someone alive the the death the burial kind of signifies the death if that makes sense so um oh just getting some messages from will here we go tried phone trying laptop hang on it's connecting tried on chrome oh it feels like we've got technical issues going on so we'll hopefully come and join us uh just could not connecting oh sorry will i don't know why it's not connecting so anyway you keep trying bud and we'll see how we get on what i'm gonna do then whilst will is trying a few things let's mix things up a little bit shall we because we can because you know we have that power let's do catch up now um and then that'll hopefully give a couple of minutes i'm nicole will and see how we can get on with this so let me play catch up i'll be back again in a few minutes hello and welcome to this week's sunday catch up for those of you who don't know me allow me to introduce myself my name is josh edmondson i am a member of the team here at crowd church and i'm a student at the university of saint andrews studying physics for those of you who have not watched the stream before welcome it's great to have you here let me just quickly explain what catch up actually is every week we get in pictures and videos from members of the community and we put them up on the stream in this little segment called catch up just so that we get to see what everyone else is actually getting up to in usual fashion i will kick things off with something that i've been up to this week at university i am part of a society called the christian union this week we had an online zoom event where we did a murder mystery and it was really really good when people say that they're doing these kind of things on zoom i'm generally quite skeptical because as with everyone else after a year or so of doing everything online i'm getting quite tired of zoom gatherings but it was surprisingly fun but the way it worked was we split off into zoom breakout rooms and there was a suspect in each room i was asked to play one of the suspects and then the people that had signed up for the event would ask questions of the suspect and then they would rotate the suspects around the different rooms and so they got to interrogate everyone and then they made their guesses at the end my suspect was the saint andrews native which is funny because saint andrews if you didn't know is in scotland and i'm definitely not scottish and so i spent most of the evening just blagging the scottish accent trying to get into the role of my character honestly it was so fun and by the end of the evening i managed to even convince a few people i was scottish so i counted that as like a big win and just in case you're thinking josh what do you sound like with a scottish accent this is what i sound like this was pretty much how i talked for like the entire evening anyway that's enough for me let's get on to the catch-up clips great thank you so much for sending those in i love watching all the stuff that you put in for catch up we love watching this stuff so if you have any clips that you want to see on catch-up do send them in either to the whatsapp number that you will see on the bottom of the screen or you can use the hashtag crowdcatchup on instagram that's all from me this week thank you very much for watching and i will catch next time well okay so as you can see uh well let's just go through the ketchup one i'm not sure about the scottish accent joss i'm just not gonna lie i think it needs a bit of work but i'm sure you'll work on that over the next few years as you'll be up there now will still can't join us but um what i am gonna try and hopefully what will work is getting him here by phone so will can you hear me i can can you hear me i can so uh do me a favor everybody in the comments just let us know if you can hear will via the phone i should put a picture up of him somewhere but this is me and this is will so well sorry about all the technical dramas today well i'm sorry for you matt it's uh it's it's great otherwise but yeah i mean yeah there were there were some fantastic edits in that video i have to say it was uh it was amazing [Laughter] brilliant everyone can hear you uh and everyone can hear your kids going dad dad too yeah that was exiting the room quite quickly that's brilliant she's enjoying it it's good good to have her good well done aj love it love it love that you're here so will how did you find it doing that talk bud yeah it was good it was i mean as i said at the beginning i've literally never thought about it the whole burial is um that's just great um it was really good to sit down and think about well what is this about um and and why is it in there because it's really interesting when you start looking at the bible as a piece of writing and and you know i've been a christian a long time i was kind of brought up in church know the bible hear it read you kind of get used to it but but when you look at it just as a kind of a a bit of narrative and a story you begin to question well why is that in there and why has he done it that way and why does he put it there um or she whoever's writing and and it was really interesting just to kind of dig into that a little bit and think what is the particular purpose of this writer at this point uh for this story and uh yeah as i said that there's it's it's interesting that it didn't really fit any kind of uh the thing the thing you would normally use a burial for in a story and that for me is a part of the uh it convinces me that yes it's real this this is just an eyewitness account this happened uh yeah it was an unusual uh usual event yeah no it's very true very true and i i i'm with you you just it's not i have to i don't know how long you've been a christian will probably as long as i have maybe longer about 30 years for me and until this came along um it was this easter was really the first time i'd really spent any time thinking about what the burial of jesus meant um which is which is quite fascinating isn't it how you can go that long through the christian faith and and not actually think about something uh but yeah so what what do you think i mean you mentioned in the talk uh apart from obviously you have a very um i think we have a very similar movie interest liberty genre yeah yeah yeah you definitely reference the lord of the rings a lot but one of the things that you said um in there uh you know about the about the burial of jesus was the the distinct lack of let's just put ceremony if i think back to um prince philip's funeral which we obviously had a few weeks ago um and you know prince philip sure is a lovely chap never met him and you look at everything that was done for his funeral and yet here was the king of the jews and and nothing was done i i find that's quite an extraordinary thing yeah yeah absolutely i mean just the fact just as a jewish man the fact they didn't know that happened but but he wasn't just that he was a rabbi he was kind of famous um you know in his in his place and he'd really upset the the authorities he was like he was he was a famous person at that time and yet yeah there's none of that none of what you'd expect from a normal burial let alone a burial of someone who who is well known um and i'm part didn't really go into it but but some of the phrases we use about burial are kind of covering things up and i wonder whether actually everyone just wants to move on it's just like let's just cover up this slightly embarrassing scenario of jesus we don't quite know where to place him he's challenging our authority let's just get it over with bury it we don't think about it anymore let's move on and i wonder whether that's part of that that thinking in the story yeah um but you know got out of the plans yeah and that's fantastic about about this account but um even though humanly speaking it looks like the end and it and it's a very quiet end um that is not the end of the story yeah no it's very true i like that i and did you find um i mean you mentioned in there that um you know for me the takeaway was the burial was definitely the proof of jesus's death right yeah and all of these things that you talked about the fact that you know there was an executioner involved you know the the roman centurion guy um you know the fact you talked about what pilate wanted the fact that you know the jewish leaders would have been involved in this um and so the the burial proves the death doesn't it and and that i thought was quite an interesting idea actually no this proves once and for all that he was in fact dead not not like sherlock you know taking some clever chemical um which doesn't exist but well maybe it does i don't know jeremy but i i thought that was i thought that was really really fascinating and and such a good and powerful point that actually this is why it's important because it proves actually jesus did die yeah yeah and the whole thing of skating over the burial and and us kind of forgetting about it a little bit but the fact that mark made that effort to put it in a few verses as it is i mean a master short book but it was absolutely it's absolutely clearly in there and i think it's in all the other accounts of jesus's life as well that it's like no we're the burial is important to to spell out um for that very reason um and i think yeah i i think that's absolutely crucial to to the faith of christians and to that that's that belief in the resurrection that we have this account so i'm i'm grateful for it yeah but as but as you dig into it i'm you know i'm really persuaded about the authenticity of it for the reasons that i said in the talk yeah yeah no i'm brilliant i mean in the talk um you talked about obviously there was joseph and there was you know the two women um there at the and he gets buried and put in this jewish tomb which was a cut-out and a you know that and the stone was rolled over and you know that's quite familiar sort of pictorial stuff i suppose yeah i guess there's a one thing that you mentioned was a lot of people struggle with the idea that god would live a would die in such a shameful way yeah why do you think that is because i think people have a view of who they think god should be which is kind of hilarious because it's like you kind of create god in the world this is how i think god is and you hear people say it's like well i like to believe god is like this and it's like well you've just kind of created your own version of god there really and and what i love about the god that i believe in and jesus is he confounds all that he tears apart your preconception of what what god's death should look like if that were at all possible and and it's incredibly challenging because it kind of just hits you in the face and go well believe this or don't believe it but this is how it how it was and and and i love that because it it constantly challenges my view of like well i'm gonna get going back to this kind of script writing if you were gonna script the death of god in a film it's not gonna look like this and so so people struggle with that because it's like i thought it would be something like this yeah but as soon as you take that step you're kind of no longer allowing god to be god i mean like you know what sort of god can't do whatever he likes kind of thing you know he's like all powerful it's like god is who he who he is who he who he says he is it's not for us to decide what god can and can't do so since you get into that kind of territory of life well that it can't be god because god wouldn't do that it's like well are you god are you calling shots now on who god is and there's so many stories like that in the bible that really do challenge your preconceptions of what you think a god-like being should be um and yet it's there and it forces you to kind of decide and yeah does this fit with everything else i know of god does that fit with with the faith i have um and the bible doesn't pull any punches you know it's very straight with some some some stories like that which which wouldn't fit um any kind of self uh self-respecting script writer if they were going to script the story of god but there it is in the bible so you go well that just again just adds to the authenticity for me yeah no i get that i do get that i'm with you i'm like i get why people would struggle with the shame in it um and i'd i definitely wouldn't have predicted it like do you mean if you're gonna sit down and like you say write the story this is not the way you would have written it uh that's for sure um that is for sure now i guess one of the questions that i get asked a lot right a lot of people email him with this one big question and it's quite a common question is well why did jesus actually have to die why did he need to die why did he need to be buried why couldn't god just forgive sins regardless do you see what i mean have you thought about that yeah and and it's a it's a tough question um and it's kind of i don't know sometimes it feels like it'd always be easier if if that wasn't the faith because believing in a resurrection a death and a resurrection that that's kind of that's pretty hard to be honest you know it's not normal and people but if you think about it again if you think if god is worthy of worship and you've got all these characters of god that are described in the bible god is good god is fair god is righteous you know he always does right all those things that are great aren't they they are worthy of worship so if you've got a completely right guard who is pure in everything he does but then there's this kind of thing where he says yeah but on this occasion i'm just going to ignore the fact that actually people are wholly rebellious and the mess in the world and the darkness and the way people have just walked away from the perfect plan do you know i'm just going to forget about that i'm going to quietly ignore that and you know some faiths do that because it's much easier kind of thing to believe really but but immediately that old character of god is righteous it's like well no you've just got a bribable judge there is the kind of picture you've no longer got a judge that's absolutely saying this is what needs to be done about all this sin and evil and you go well actually on this on this occasion i'll just make an allowance and yeah just forgive you that's fine and it it completely changes the character of god and for me god is no longer worthy of worship because he's actually just in our image it's like just a person isn't it it's like yeah i kind of like all these people i'm just going to let them off all the rebellion so it's tough it's really the judgment of god is really hard and it's not a popular thing to talk about but if god doesn't judge what is unrighteous what is not good then really he's not yeah and he's not really worthy of our attention at all because he's just like another person and so i think people people can struggle with that sometimes because people don't like the idea of pain and again the shame thing the shame of jesus dying uh but actually it's it's completely true to the character of god as is described through the bible and and if there wasn't that payment for the sin and and that that um yeah that payment required from god then god is no longer who god is really yeah that makes sense no it does and sally's actually put something here in the comments she said um the shame in it makes it all the more amazing yeah god would do it and do it that way that his love for us is that big yeah because you're right right on one hand you're saying god is a god of justice but on the other hand god is a god of mercy and so he goes well this justice thing needs to be sorted out you can't do it so i'll come and do it that was the whole story wasn't it and so yeah absolutely that's a good way of putting it yeah that's brilliant listen well i don't know if you know much about the history of uh of crowd's q and a time but at the end of it we normally have a question either from matt crew or nicola morris it seems to be like this little two-horse race that's going on um and so i'm just waiting for somebody else to actually send me a com a question like i'm just gonna get one as soon as a live stream ends for next week um so uh and it's it's never a it's never what you call a deep theological uh it's just it's just a it seems like a tradition now in which we end off conversation stream uh and so the question is this right um if someone asked to be your apprentice uh and learn all that you know as an epidemiologist it's a miracle i can say that word um yeah well done yeah what would you teach them as an apprentice epidemiologist no no i forget the epidemiologist this is an apprentice what what would you teach them what would i teach them man that is that is hard okay i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna tell a very quick story that will give me some idea of how to to answer it so when i was an 18 year old yeah um i left school and i went on a a kind of um it was a trip to south america where we were building toilets basically it was kind of like experience helping communities develop and stuff and on this team of 16 of us um there were a lot of people like me quite cocky 18 year olds didn't know a scooby-doo about anything really but we thought we knew it all surely that's every 18 year old out there i'm apologizing now to every 18 year old watching the livestream it kind of comes with being 18 yeah yeah yeah i was there i've been there yet done it um and there was this guy who was a few years older than all of us and he actually had building experience surveying experience you know he knew how to build a toilet none of us knew at all and we'd have these kind of discussions about how to be doing stuff on the building site or whatever as a team and he would just sit there really quiet and sometimes we'd go on for like three quarters of an hour just arguing and and basically sharing the no the experience of our complete lack of wisdom and then he just quietly at the end just kind of come in with a just a phrase that that summed it all up challenged it all was the answer but he didn't put himself forward he didn't join that kind of fight to be heard and and you know his example has stayed with first of my life and that was a massive challenge for me as a cocky 18 year old so i think i would say to an apprentice be humble and listen more than you talk and don't be afraid to acknowledge that you don't know yeah and just ask people and and build that relationship to ask get off the whole kind of i'm expected to know everything i must be loud and make sure i know everything so probably that that is that probably where i'd start that sort of sense of humility and be able to listen to others very good i don't know if mine would be that holy well i'm not going to lie i'd probably start off with a phrase like this matt's always right and the sooner you learn that lesson the better i suppose the other way to answer that question is to say look at my children especially my sons hopefully that's that's the answer to your question anyway well listen this has been an absolute treat again apologies uh everyone for the technical issues but at least we got to talk to you uh yeah no well persisted yeah i'm sorry i wouldn't be able to join no no i'm glad i'm glad we found a way um listen well we're going to close out the live stream now um and so for those of you watching we uh next week sharon is going to be talking about the resurrection sarah's going to be hopefully with us next week she said in the comments she was so uh hopefully sal will be with us next week so we are going to be here 4 p.m uk time you can obviously come and join us join in the live stream we would love to hear from you and if i find this here just get my phone out the uh you can whatsapp us any prayer requests that you've got and you can reach out to us and connect with us via the website www.crowd.church and connect with us that way as well we would love to be in touch with you we'd love to pray for you in the meantime we're going to close out with a worship song so will um thank you so much bud really appreciate you doing that thank you for being on the live stream with you guys yeah bless you uh do you want to close us out well and just introduce the worship song which you have no idea what it is yeah yeah we're now going to sing a worship song i've got no idea brilliant fantasy i couldn't have done it by myself bro uh so we're going to play that's it now from me the live stream is going to end automatically after this worship track which you can carry on listening to thank you so much for being with us thanks for persisting thanks for all of your comments uh bless you everyone and we will see you again next week bye for now before i spoke a word you were singing over me you have been so so good to me before i took a breath you breathed your life in me you have been so so kind to me oh the overwhelming never-ending reckless love of god oh it chases me down fights till i'm found leaves the 99 i couldn't earn it i don't deserve it still you give yourself away never-ending reckless love of god when i was your foe still your love fought for me i felt no worth you paid it all you have been so so kind oh the overwhelming never-ending reckless love of god oh oh the overwhelming never ending recklessly of god there's no shadow you won't light up mountain you won't climb up coming after me there's no wall you won't kick down lie you won't tear down coming lie you won't turn out coming after me mountain you won't climb up [Applause] there's no shadow you won't light up a mountain you won't climb up come it the snow wall you won't kick down lie i could endure it i don't deserve it oh the overwhelming never ending recklessly of god
