Because Jesus died on the day of Preparation, some of His followers had to hustle to bury Him before the Sabbath began. His body was turned over to Joseph of Arimathaea, a wealthy disciple who arranged for Jesus to be buried in a new tomb that had never been used. John uses an interesting word when He tells us about the burial, a word that catches our attention:

The place of crucifixion was near a garden, where there was a new tomb, never used before.

John 19:41

As readers of the Bible, we’ve been here before. The garden was God’s original design, a place teeming with life. It was the place where God met with us to commune, to walk and talk as good friends should and do. But that same garden became the scene of the crime, the place where it all went wrong. It’s where we exchanged a garland for ashes, communion for estrangement, life for death.

And so here we find the story of Jesus intersecting with the garden of death, with the tomb. He is buried and it seems for a moment that His story will end the same way every human story ends: in death.

But God had other plans.