Today’s Scripture
Reading (November 30, 2017): Matthew 28
Benjamin Franklin once remarked that “He that is good for
making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” If that is where you want to
place your energies, then it is doubtful
that you will find any real answers. Excuses are a defense mechanism that says
to the world “I don’t want to find answers,
and I don’t want to change. This is my
lot, and though it is not much, I have no desire to try to find my way out of
it.” Excuses spread like wildfire. Once they are
made, then there are always more to come. Excuses are like eating your favorite comfort food, once you start
eating, it is hard to stop. (Now, where is that bags of chips?)
The reaction of the chief
priests reveals the darkness of this
moment in history. Something has happened. They can’t explain the missing body,
but they also do not want to give in to the thought that maybe Jesus was exactly who he said he was. And so they have to
develop a response, or more literally an excuse, for why there is no body in the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. And
so their plan is that they will bribe the
guards to say that they fell asleep at their post and give them enough money to
carry that secret to their graves. But the extent of their desperation is
revealed in the story that they choose to tell. It is a story that is still told as an explanation for the empty
tomb, but the story simply does not hold
up under examination. The truth is that the story only works if we refuse to
think it through.
Here is what it takes to believe
the story. First, we have to believe that
the soldiers were all asleep. Every single last one of them. This in spite of
the fact that sleeping on duty was punishable by death according to
Roman law. And here is the reason why the guards were offered a large sum of money. By agreeing to this, they were
possibly taking their own lives in their hands. Retribution might not come
soon, but the leaders who were bribing them would not be in positions of power
forever, and when the time of a change in authority came, someone might decide
that they did not want sleeping guards on the payroll. A literal translation
indicates “sufficient money.” Considering the lie, sufficient would have been a
lot.
Second, we have to accept
that the soldiers slept so soundly that the noise of the disciples gathering
around them and trying to remove a massive
stone from the mouth of a tomb, did not wake them up. The reality is that if
the soldiers were actually asleep, the
safest action for the thieves at the tomb
would have been to kill them while they slept. Maybe then the plan to steal the
body might have worked. But the guards were not only still alive; they were unharmed. They had merely slept through all of the commotion.
And maybe even more
surprising, despite this unnaturally sound sleep, the soldiers knew who had
stolen the body. They accused the disciples of the deed. For this to be true the
guards would have had to wake up in the final moments of the crime, and yet
they gave no pursuit and sounded no alarm. No one knew that the body was
missing until the next morning. The guards simply
let the thieves go. What may be most miraculous about the story is that there
was an amount of money in exchange for which the guards would agree to tell it.
The story leaves the guards guilty at every stage.
But the excuse was
necessary to avoid accepting what those in power had to be starting to
understand; that this Jesus really was
who he said he was, the Christ, sent down by God from heaven.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Mark 16
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