In my last post, I argued that Matthew’s story of the passion exposes the violence from all sectors of a human society united against Jesus. In the follow-up to the passion, the burial and resurrection, Matthew continues with that theme. If, however, no one group assumes greater responsibility for the death of Jesus than another in the passion, the burial-resurrection narrative implicates especially the “chief priests” along with the “Pharisees” (27:62) and the “elders” (28:12) in another plot against Jesus—a cover-up of his resurrection.
From 27:62, the story begins with the “chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate” asking for “the tomb to be made secure” in order that Jesus’ disciples may not “go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead’”—a “last deception”, they say, which “would be worse than the first” deception, presumably Jesus’ own prediction that he would “rise again” (27:62-64).
For someone who was so plainly destroyed and humiliated before their very eyes, the chief priests and company show a most peculiar fear. Rather than delighting in the elimination of one who was such a threat to their power, they are consumed by the fearful prospect of his enduring influence. That fear is tied to Jesus’ disciples who—if the chief priests had been watching from the events of Thursday-Friday—were nothing to fear. Indeed, long ago they “all” had “deserted him and fled” (26:56). The disciples, not courageous enough to stay with Jesus in his darkness hour, were scarcely a threat to steal his body from the tomb and willingly proclaim a lie, a resurrection that was not. Yet the chief priests fear precisely that. They fear it so much to go to Pilate and ask for “the tomb to be made secure”, a request that Pilate grants with a “guard of soldiers” (27:65).
A “guard of soldiers” and “sealing the stone”, however, is not enough to prevent what they fear. In fact, their first fear gives way to a worse one—evidence that what Jesus promised of himself has actually taken place, his resurrection from the dead. In one sense, of course, their fear was not fulfilled; the disciples did not steal away the body. In the other sense, their fear increased. They who had feared a “last deception worse than the first” find themselves ensnared in a “last fear worse than the first”: Jesus, their enemy, is alive.
Ironically, that which they feared would happen—the disciples stealing the body of Jesus and proclaiming a lie—is, following the report of Jesus’ resurrection by the guard, all to which the chief priests have to cling; their first fear remains their last security—and a flimsy one at that. The very lie that the chief priests feared is the lie they now actively spread, paying the soldiers a “large sum of money” to say that “ ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away’” (28:13).
Of course, the chief priests find themselves clinging to a “last deception worse than the first” because they could not submit—neither in Jesus’ life nor now in his resurrection—to the truth. No amount of plotting, scheming, or force can thwart the Life that Jesus embodies. He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6); they—we—the “imposter” we made him out to be (27:63).
Surely the story has something to say about the trap of fear. Just as the chief priests submitted to their worst fear rather than to the truth in Jesus, so we, doing the same, find our “last” condition “worse than the first” (see also Mt 12:45). Yet in the grace and mercy of his resurrection he says to us, as he did to two Marys, “Do not be afraid” (28:1, 10). Or to “the eleven”, those who had deserted him: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:16, 20).
-Joe
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