The Diocese of East Tennessee                                                                          The Rev. Jocelyn Bell, Rector 
 

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Saint of the Month

All that is certainly known of Joseph of Arimathaea comes from the narratives of the burial of Jesus in the Gospels.  Though John speaks of Joseph as a secret disciple of our Lord, and associates him with Nicodemus, another member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who was drawn to Jesus, we know nothing of any further activity of these men in the early Christian community. 

Where the Gospels leave off,  however, legend steps in and supplies us with the rest of the story by claiming that Joseph accompanied the Apostle Philip, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene and others on a preaching mission to Gaul.  Lazarus and Mary Magdalene remained in southern Gaul while the others traveled north.  When they reached the English Channel, Philip sent Joseph, with twelve disciples, to establish Christianity in the most far-flung corner of the Roman Empire, the British Isles.  The year 63 AD is commonly given for the “event”, with the year 37 sometimes alternatively being put forth.  It was said that Joseph achieved wealth in the metals trade and had previously visited Britain in the course of conducting his business.  What is fact about this story is that south-western Britain was a mining district and was well-known in the Roman world for its tin mines with established trade routes to the rest of the empire.  Even later medieval legend claimed that Joseph was the uncle of the Virgin Mary and therefore a kinsman of Jesus.  It suggested that he brought the young boy Jesus along on one of his business trips to the island; hence the words to Blake’s famous poem, Jerusalem:

And did those feet, in ancient time,

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

Further embellishments of the story associated Joseph with the founding of the first Christian church in Britain at Glastonbury, crediting him with bringing the Holy Grail to Britain and planting the Glastonbury Thorn.  The thorn supposedly grew from Joseph’s staff which in turn had been grown from Jesus’ crown of thorns.  The original Glastonbury Thorn was destroyed at the Reformation but a tree, grown from a cutting saved from the original, grows today in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and blooms each year at Christmas.  A cutting from that tree grows in the grounds of the Washington Cathedral.

Joseph’s claim for remembrance does not depend upon such legends, however beautiful and romantic.  When our Lord’s intimate disciples were hiding for fear of the authorities, Joseph came forward boldly and courageously to do, not only what was demanded by Jewish piety, but to act generously and humanely by providing his own tomb for the decent and proper burial of our Lord’s body, thus saving it from further desecration.

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