Matthew 27:62-66

Brothers and sisters in Christ,

The Bible passage for this evening is Matthew 27:62-66:

⁶² The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate ⁶³ and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ ⁶⁴ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” ⁶⁵ Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.”⁶⁶ So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

It’s the Sabbath, the day of rest for the Jewish people. Jesus’s followers, devastated by his death, are resting: “On the Sabbath day they rested according to the commandment” (Lk 23:56). But “the chief priests and the Pharisees” are busily at work. They’ve insisted on an appointment with Pilate. They demand that he set people to work securing Jesus’s tomb. When Pilate tells them to use their own “guard of soldiers” for the task, they don’t hesitate. They supervise the Jewish soldiers’ labor in “sealing the stone and setting a guard.”

These are the same religious leaders who got so mad at Jesus if he so much as healed anyone or even plucked heads of grain on the Sabbath. What’s got into them that they’re now so ready to work and to put other people to work on this obligatory day of rest?

The reason they give is inadequate: “Lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’” Well, yes, but a fraud like that would be exposed fairly quickly by the discovery of the stolen body, or it would just fade away when the risen Jesus himself remained an embarrassing absence, failing to appear in person.

So, what do the religious leaders really fear? Let’s look at some of what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours or so. For three hours, while Jesus was on the cross, “there was darkness over the whole land … , while the sun’s light failed” (Luke 23:44-45). Whether this was a solar eclipse or divine intervention of another sort, it would have been deeply unnerving. Solar eclipses were read as threatening omens back then and for many centuries afterward. There was also an earthquake, apparently with a specific target. At the moment of Jesus’s death, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Mk 15:37-38). This was the curtain that blocked entrance to the Holy of Holies at the heart of the temple to anyone but the high priest on the Day of Atonement. With Jesus’s death, the barrier was removed. Tombs were opened, as well, and “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.” Although the risen saints didn’t “appear to many” in Jerusalem until after Jesus’s own resurrection, rumors of resurrection must have been in the air. All this was enough to persuade at least one centurion that Jesus was both “innocent” (Lk. 23:47) and truly “the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54), but it must have given the “the chief priests and the Pharisees” the heebie-jeebies.

Is it possible that they are afraid of more than the theft of a body? They don’t admit this to Pilate. They probably haven’t voiced the fear to one another or even, perhaps, allowed themselves to be conscious of the true reason for their fear. But, is it possible that they were terrified that they’d made a dreadful mistake and that Jesus really would rise from the dead and prove himself to be the Christ, the Son of God? Given all that had happened, it wouldn’t be an irrational fear. And only an unspoken fear of such magnitude would plausibly explain their demand, on the Sabbath day, that soldiers work to seal the tomb and guard it against not just body snatchers but—God forbid!—a resurrection.

If that’s what’s making their stomachs churn, they don’t have many options. Do they really think that sealing the tomb will keep a risen Christ inside? Or that a guard of soldiers might arrest and conceal the risen Christ? These are desperate and inadequate measures. The portents of imminent supernatural intervention are staring them in the face and they’re flailing helplessly. Even Pilate has no confidence in their efforts. He says, “Go, make [the tomb] as secure as you can.” He’s being ironic. They can’t make it secure. Not against what’s about to happen.

The fears of these religious leaders may be profoundly characteristic of fallen human beings in general. Even in our times, those who deny the resurrection of Christ may, at some level, be afraid that it might just be true. They’d deny their doubt, of course, certainly to us and probably to themselves. But if, as we believe, Jesus really did rise from the dead on that first Easter Sunday, then his resurrection threatens a spiritual earthquake in the life of anyone who prefers not to answer to (or even to be loved by) a risen Christ. It must seem easier to guard against faith.

We who, by God’s grace, have been allowed to believe that Christ not only died for our sins but was also “raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25) are blessed to await Easter Sunday morning not with fear but with sure hope and great joy. May we also take time today to pray for those who deny the resurrection. May we pray that their fear, too, might be replaced with a joyous faith in the love of God in Christ.

Your brother in Christ,

Max