“An attempted cover-up”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Monday, April 10, 2023
Matthew 28: 9-15 (Forward, p. 71) CEV p. 1024
The chief priests are in ‘damage control’ big time. Some news has just come to them that would ‘overturn the entire apple cart’, as it were. The soldiers guarding the borrowed tomb of Jesus have just come back to them and reported that, somehow, the huge rock guarding the tomb had been rolled away and that the tomb is now empty—that is, no body of Jesus. The chief priests really didn’t have the time or leisure to ponder why or how this might have happened: they simply had to squash the rumour before it got around. After all, it would have changed everything, and they certainly did not want that to happen!
So, why were they so worried about this? If Jesus was indeed alive, as the empty tomb might suppose, then it meant that God had overruled their sentence of death, and had, indeed nullified and defeated even death itself. Clearly, if that was the case, they would have been shown to have been wrong in condemning Jesus to death, disastrously wrong.
Furthermore, it would have shown that God had put His stamp of approval upon Jesus, even with such a shameful death, such a cursed death! It meant furthermore, that Jesus had indeed been doing the Father’s will, and might, might even be God’s chosen one, the Messiah. It would go a long way, a very long way, in backing all of Jesus’ claims, and certainly would have shown that they were very wrong in their estimation of Jesus.
And, what might this mean in terms of their own power and authority? This was probably the thing that they feared the most. For, if they had been so very wrong in this one thing, who was going to believe them or obey them in anything else?
And then, how might this ‘sit’ with the Romans, for their Roman overlords expected them to keep everything peaceful and orderly? What if Jesus and His followers were to exploit this new-found status in any openly political way? This would be dangerous, dangerous indeed, and the Romans would not like it and would ‘come down’ upon them, and upon all their Jewish subjects, rather heavily. This the chief priests could not risk.
So, when the guards from the tomb came, reporting all that had happened, the chief priests, upon consulting with other Jewish leaders, decided to bribe the soldiers to tell a false story about these recent happenings. They were to say that Jesus’ disciples had come during the night and stolen the body. Of course, this would not have explained how the disciples moved that enormously heavy stone right from under their very noses, and that, in the dead of night. Of how they, an armed guard of probably pretty burly and hardened soldiers, had allowed this to happen.
Anyway, they were assured that should news of this somehow get out to the Roman governor or procurator, Pontius Pilate, which it most assuredly would, that they would ‘deal with it’ and keep them safe. They would somehow put his mind at rest. Just how they would do so, is not explained.
Now, here is where Biblical scholars have something of a field day. They ask, in all sincerity, whether these guards were Temple guards or Roman guards. From chapter 27, verses 65-66, it would appear that they were taken from the ranks of the Temple guards, which only makes sense of their having reported to the chief priests in verse 11. And likewise, why the chief priests felt that they could excuse or exonerate their failings. For, on the converse, if they had been Roman soldiers—as some allege—they almost certainly would have been executed for dereliction of duty (see the example of Herod in Acts 12:19, and the actions of the jailer and soldiers in Acts 16:27 and 27:42).
But, of course, the news ‘did’ get out, for Mary Magdalene and the other women immediately gave out the news, and so too did numerous of the disciples. And most assuredly it was not a lie for many of them persisted with this story even unto their lives’ ends and often were even persecuted or put to death on account of it. Chuck Colson, of Watergate fame, has this interesting thing to say about this:
“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me? How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world—and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”
The lies of the Temple authorities and the guards eventually came out for what they were, lies, but the story, the testimony, of those who had seen Jesus alive and well that Easter day and thereafter, continues on forever—and furthermore, it continues on with each of us who have given our lives to Him and who now follow Him. Indeed, for He lives on, even if absent from earth, in each one of us. Amen.
Forward notes: “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid’” (verse 10a).
“The chief priests want to keep Jesus’s resurrection a secret so they concoct a plan with the soldiers that blames the disciples for taking Jesus’s body during the night. They pay them off to stick to this story, covering them should news reach the governor. Who could blame them? No politician wants a scandal. People in power want to keep it that way, and money talks, but Jesus cares nothing about money or power. He says to tell his brothers to go to Galilee, where they will see him.
“Whenever I am filled with fear, I remind myself that Jesus has already gone before me to Galilee. This reminder calms me when I experience fear or anxiety. And I think of Jesus going before me, before us, every time I enter a patient’s room at the hospital or the trauma bay in the emergency room. We need not be afraid: Jesus has gone before us.”
Moving Forward: “Imagine yourself as a disciple in the days after Jesus’s death and resurrection. How would you have responded?”