Tomorrow's Easter Skit: "A Very Prestigious Tomb"

Cast: Joseph of Arimathea and his wife

Wife: I’m NOT sharing a tomb with a perfect stranger!

Joe: I certainly don’t think of Jesus as a stranger. As for perfect, that’s another matter.

Wife: Don’t you dare change the subject. That tomb was meant to be OUR final resting place!

JOE: What else could I do? Jesus wasn’t from a wealthy family, and he certainly didn’t keep anything for himself. He gave everything away. I don’t understand why this dark little cave matters so much to you.

WIFE: I’ll tell you why it matters. That tomb showed that YOU were somebody, which means that as your wife, I was somebody. Have I ever told you about my grandfather’s burial? They stuffed him into a cistern. But they had waited too long and the cistern was too small. So they had to break his bones to fit him in. And I heard that. But that’s not all I heard. I heard some of the other girls snickering. They were laughing because he had to be buried in a cistern near the city dump, and that showed he was a poor man, an unimportant man.

JOE: So you thought of our tomb as a status symbol?

WIFE: Of course it was! When I told the girls at the club in Arimathea that we had an unused tomb at the garden, with its own gardener…they were all so jealous they hated me. It was wonderful.

JOE: Does it matter so much what other people think?

WIFE: Well, what other people think certainly matters to you. Why did you keep it secret that you were a follower of Jesus?

JOE: You’re right. I’m ashamed now how I treated Him in life. I would disguise myself and stay at the edge of the crowd when Jesus spoke. I went to see Him at night so my business partners and those Pharisee busybodies wouldn’t see me. He was the greatest man I’ve ever known, and I was afraid to let people know I knew Him. I’m a coward.

WIFE: A coward wouldn’t have gone to the Romans to ask for the body of a man they had crucified. That was brave of you, Joseph. Even without that prestigious tomb, I’m proud to be your wife.

JOE: I hope you noticed that I didn’t use our linens or spices to bury Jesus. Nicodemus supplied all of that; seventy-five pounds of the stuff. I don’t know how much that set him back. But I know he’d give everything he has to have Jesus back. So would I.

WIFE: Joseph, didn’t you say that Jesus spoke of His own death?

JOE: Yes, He did. It was strange; I’ve never heard a teacher talk of such things.

WIFE: And didn’t He say He was coming back from the dead?

JOE: He did, but surely He was speaking in parables as He often did. We understood He ment that His teaching would live on, that God’s Kingdom wouldn’t die.

WIFE: Maybe. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if what Jesus said was really true? Perhaps He really is the Son of God as He said. Maybe you didn’t really GIVE Him our tomb, you only loaned it to Him.