The
gospel reading today is five short verses but it is packed with significant
details and it gets at some of the most fundamental questions of faith. It’s all about contrasts.
The first
contrast is between the women and the guards.
You’ll remember that these guards are Roman guards the Jewish leaders
asked the Roman governor Pilate to have.
They said they wanted to have the tomb of Jesus guarded so that his body
wouldn’t be stolen.
The idea
is absurd – guarding a dead guy’s tomb.
Of course in America we have the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier but the
guard is of course simply honorary.
Biblical scholars tell us there isn’t historical reality behind the
presence of the guard at Jesus tomb. And
indeed the other gospels do not report it.
That means my speculation is pointless, but still, I wonder how I’d feel
if I was asked to guard the grave of just some country guy who had been
executed; so that his body isn’t stolen by his followers… who were so cowardly
they fled at his arrest! This guard duty
is insulting! But I digress.
We aren’t
told how many guards there are, but it is several big burly guys with the might
of Rome to back them up. Then there are
two women – Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary.” (Now that’s a way to get in the Bible – being
“the other” Mary.
We have
two women, women who aren’t allowed to own property, women who have no voting
rights, no political say, their evidence is hardly admissible in court; and
then these women aren’t even Roman citizens but Jews, making them even
lower. They have no strength, no
weapons, and no standing.
Both the
women and these burly guards experience the angel and the earthquake. We are told the men are so terrified they
shook and became like dead men. Whereas
we aren’t told how the women feel. They
are presumably afraid, but not as much as the men.
The women
hear the message and then they run to tell the disciples. The women run one way. What do the guards do? They run the other way. Verse 11 tells us that some of the guards go
into the city and tell the chief priests.
The
women’s message is that Jesus is alive and heading to Galilee, where it all
began. The guards message is that the
dead guy they were guarding has escaped!
They probably left out the part that they were so terrified they shook
while the women weren’t all that fussed.
On the
way the women meet Jesus. They lay hold
of him and worship him. Jesus also says
not to be afraid but tell the disciples and keep going to Galilee. The guards tell the chief priests who do what?
What did
they do when Jesus was teaching in the temple compound? They held a consultation. What did they do when they had arrested
Jesus? They held a consultation. What did they do when Judas returned the
money? They held a consultation.
So what
did they do here? They held a
consultation! This Jesus fellow is
certainly causing them a lot of headaches.
They would have loved to have Zoom to speed up all these consultations!
What did
they do in their consultation? Verse 12
tells us they “devised a plan.” What did
they do at all their previous consultations?
They made plans.
How much
did they give Judas to betray Jesus? You
know the answer to this, 30 pieces of silver.
That’s the value of an injured slave according to Exodus. An injured slave isn’t worth much. Who would want one? So Judas betrayed Jesus cheap!
Now what
do these “consulting” and “planning” leaders do? They offer a “large sum of money” to the
soldiers. We aren’t told how much. But it is certainly hush money. The religious leaders then tell the soldiers
to lie: that they fell asleep and the disciples stole the body. And, if the whole scheme catches up with them
and they get into trouble with Pilate the governor, the religious leaders
promise to keep them out of trouble.
Schemes,
hush money, lies… I could make a cheap
crack about politicians but it would hardly be funny. This is how the world works.
We are
just a few verses from the end of Matthew’s gospel. And we are still strongly seeing a theme that
Matthew has had from the beginning. It
is a contrast of kingdoms. It is the
kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of this world.
And the kingdom of this world includes: evil, the Roman government, the
Jewish leadership, and the human point of view overall.
The human
point of view, or the kingdom of this world, is all about protecting yourself,
getting ahead, and staying alive. It
makes the human intellect supreme. It
warps facts to suit its needs. And it
insists that the logical human point of view must be God’s point of view. In other words, it makes God into the human
image.
In the
kingdom of God everything is reversed.
There we learn that humans are made in God’s image – not the other way
around. In the kingdom of God we learn
that God’s sacrificial love is ultimate power, not self-preservation. In the kingdom of God all are equal. Things like money, looks, gender, brains, age
make you neither higher nor lower than anyone else.
Both
kingdoms require hard work. One leads to
exploitation and a dead end, and an endless lack of satisfaction. The other one, God’s kingdom leads to
wholeness of life.
It seems
to be an eternally ironic truth that the more you give of yourself – the more
you use your power in support of others – the more fully you become your truest
self. Selfishness is the path to
self-annihilation. Self giving is the
path to wholeness.
There are
two more points to make about these verses.
First, our translation says that the soldiers took the money and did as
they were directed. It would be more
literally translated that they took the money and did as they were taught.
Teaching
is a key point for Matthew. The Sermon
on the Mount is not introduced as a sermon but as a teaching. All throughout the gospel Jesus teaches. At one point he sends his disciples out to
spread the gospel and to heal and to cast out demons, but interestingly he does
not give them permission to teach. Next
week we will discover that Jesus’ final sentence to his disciples is the
commission to go out and teach.
It is
only with the crucifixion behind them that they know enough to teach, and can
now teach the truth.
But what
about these soldiers, representing the kingdom of this world? They are instructed by the religious leaders
to teach lies – a lie that the body of Jesus was stolen by his disciples.
And
that takes us to the final point. Why
did the women see the angel and the empty tomb and believe, yet the soldiers
also saw the angel and the empty tomb and they did not believe? They both had
the same evidence. They both had the
same experience.
The
resurrection is the key miracle of Christianity. It is also the most controversial and hardest
to believe. It is just too counter to
our experience for it to possibly be true.
Even the four gospels in the Bible struggle with it. Jesus is resurrected, real flesh and
blood. He can be seen. He can be touched. He can eat.
In John’s gospel he even cooks breakfast. But he can also come and go through locked
doors. He seems to appear and disappear
without regard to the laws of physics.
We’re
going to look at doubt more next week.
But for this week we acknowledge that facts do not equal beliefs.
Believing
in Jesus, or maybe I should say orienting your life to be in God’s kingdom,
does not come about by having the right facts and evidence. You cannot make believers by facts. Faith is not something we control. Faith is not something a person comes to by
analysis and conclusion. Faith is God’s
work. It is God’s gift.
We
are not given an answer a to why the women believe and the soldiers do
not. Instead we are given the invitation
to live the resurrection reality. With
that as our goal we can understand all of what Jesus did. We can understand why the crucifixion is actually
and expression of power. We can see that
God’s love does lead to restoration. We
can live without fear knowing that death is not the end. It is not to be feared. It too is within God’s grasp, and so we live
knowing God’s triumph is ultimate.
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