NOTES for Mar 15:42-43
Sometimes people who have remained unnoticed for a long time suddenly find themselves at the center of events. Thus, all at once, Joseph of Arimathea, whom the evangelist mentions, appears on the scene. Almost nothing is known about him except that he was a man of very high standing. What was Jesus to him? What was his relationship with Him? A secret disciple, as the other evangelists also say about him, but what did it mean to be His secret disciple? To give support in a situation where none of the open disciples could do anything, to use one's position so that the impossible would become possible? Yes, of course, that too. But the main thing was readiness.
In a certain sense it is easier to be an open disciple. Jesus, of course, tells all the disciples and everyone willing to hear that one must always keep watch, that spiritual laxity and the path into the Kingdom are incompatible. Still, for those who are constantly beside Him, it is easier in a certain sense. They see the Teacher with their own eyes; for them He is absolutely real at every moment of their life. The secret disciples, no doubt, communicated with Him much less often. He appeared to them and disappeared, and one could never say exactly when He would appear next.
The apostles experienced something similar during the Last Supper, when they understood that Jesus was going to leave them for a time. They did not know where He was going; they did not truly understand the Teacher and could not imagine what they would have to live through very soon. But they understood that, at any rate, now they would be left alone for some period of time, and a completely undefined one at that. They would not see the Teacher, would not hear Him, would not know where He was or what He was doing, and would not know what He would require of them when He returned.
This situation very much resembles the situation of every Christian today. We live in the age of the coming Kingdom, but when it will be completed no one knows except the Father. We cannot calculate any time frames here, even approximately. We can only live with the awareness that on any day everything can come to an end and the Savior can return.
One cannot prepare for that day in the way we prepare for one event or another in our world. We can usually imagine the events of our world somehow; we can at least try to think through and calculate what we may need, though how successful and adequate that calculation will be is another question.
But as for the Kingdom and the return of the Messiah, here we can neither imagine nor calculate anything. What remains is readiness as an inner spiritual state, presupposing the very spiritual alertness whose necessity Jesus spoke of and which His secret disciples constantly had to maintain: waiting for the Teacher's unexpected appearance and inwardly ready to do what is completely impossible to imagine in advance.