(Dave Snoke)
Matthew 27:55-66 There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, 56among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
57When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. 58He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 59And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud 60and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. 61Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
62The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64Therefore 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.” 65Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” 66So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.
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Today’s passage coincides with the “holy Sabbath” of Jesus being in the grave. The Jewish pattern of counting days went from sundown to sundown, and counted part of a day as a day. The Day of Preparation, which was the first day of Passover, went from sundown on what we would call Thursday, to sundown on Friday. Jesus held the Last Supper on Thursday night, then was arrested, and killed on the same Day of Preparation, Friday afternoon. The Sabbath day started on what we would call Friday night, and ran until Saturday night, and then the “first day of the week” started at sundown on what we would call Saturday night. Jesus then rose at sunrise on this third day.
It seems appropriate that on the Sabbath day, essentially nothing happened. Yet Matthew tells us of the doings of people behind the scenes. These may seem to be minor details, but they establish a record of evidence and witnesses that there were no “shenanigans” to steal the body of Jesus and try to pull off a fake Resurrection. The body of Jesus was watched by the two Marys continually. Then Joseph of Arimathea got permission to put the body in a tomb and carefully had a large stone placed in front of it. Then the stone was watched by an official guard of soldiers (who would have been liable to the death penalty for sleeping on the job).
All of this is important because the Resurrection was different from other miracles in two key ways. First, Jesus refused to do miracles-on-demand for skeptics, but pointed them to the one miracle of his Resurrection as a public proof of who he was (Matthew 12:39-40, 16:4). Second, he himself was dead. Other miracles, even his many resurrections of other people, could be seen as outworkings of his active power. But in this, he is passive.
Over the years, there have been various theories of how a fake Resurrection could have been staged. Perhaps Jesus “swooned”—after hanging on a Cross and being wrapped in tight cloth, he somehow didn’t completely die, and in this state of weakness was able to push a large stone away and fight off the guards! Or perhaps the disciples got over their cowardice and shame at seeing Jesus die, and rapidly put together a plan to defeat the guards and steal the body, which they then kept secret for the next many decades! All of these ideas defy credibility. Matthew goes out of his way here to document that Jesus really died and was in the grave, and his followers were scattered, not organized in a plot.
For the early church in the first decades, it was an important point of doctrine that Jesus really died in the flesh. His divine spirit, of course, was indestructible, but as one who was truly human as well as truly God, his physical death was in every way real, painful, and complete. Because his death was real, it could be an atoning sacrifice for sin for people whose flesh he shares (Hebrews 2:14).
Today let us meditate on the death that defeated death, and the hope we have of our own resurrection to be with God forever. Hope in God’s salvation is not merely nice words, but a strong anchor based on the death and Resurrection of Jesus, attested by believers who saw it and passed this on as of first importance.
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An audio version of each devotion will be posted on our church podcast “Life Together at CRPC,” which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.