His followers have run away.
Courageous women watch from the distance and know that all hope has been extinguished.
From now on they will be living only with the memory of his love and his words. It has been a dark day and a terrifying night. If the women and all of Jesus' followers on that night could have heard the chapter of Job read to us this morning, they would have recognized the feelings and they would have agreed with Job's words of despair. The women who loved Jesus watched as Joseph of Arimathea and his helpers took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth. They followed the men as they took the body to Joseph's own prepared tomb, a cave in a rock close to the city.