(Audio)
“You are to say,
‘His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.’
And if this gets to the ears of the governor,
we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”
The resurrection is an inconvenient truth for those to invested in their own power and privilege. The chief priests and elders rightly realized that the old structures of authority were all called into question by this proclamation. If they accepted it, their whole world would have been turned upside down. Their role had been to help God's people live in right relation with him through their actions and sacrifices. This had been good and appropriate. But what did it mean if Jesus was the final sin offering and that the law would now be written on the hearts of every person who accepted that offering as his own? Who would the former Jewish leaders be after that? They did not want to decrease for Jesus to increase.
The soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.
And this story has circulated among the Jews to the present day.
The resurrection is still an inconvenient truth in our world today. Authority in our world is so often based on fear. Would it not make such authority nervous if their was a people who had been delivered from fear and could no longer be manipulated? As Christians we are meant to be such people. Set free from fear we are still good citizens, better in fact, who act not from compulsion but from the impulse of love planted by the Spirit within us. But those outside can't see or fathom this so to them we seem like a risk on which they must keep a watchful eye.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went away quickly from the tomb,
fearful yet overjoyed,
and ran to announce the news to his disciples.
The resurrection can be an inconvenient truth for us to the degree that we still find our meaning and happiness in the temporary things of this world. It reveals that such things don't have the finality we imagine and points the way beyond them. What pre-resurrection habits and beliefs still define us? To what are we desperately seeking to cling? Perhaps we too are still fearful even while we are overjoyed. We all have difficult time allowing Jesus to completely change us from the inside out. All familiarity with the past is laid to rest and useless. Jesus wants to help us to finally surrender this fear so that we can live entirely from the new source of life the resurrection offers.
Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid.
Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee,
and there they will see me.”
There is now a man who has been raised "from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it." Those who are willing to be removed from the center of their own lives and take refuge in him experience this freedom.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you (see First Peter 1:3-4).
The resurrection freedom of Christ makes us bold witnesses. After all, what have we to fear from speaking of the one who has done so much for us? How can we help but proclaim the gospel?
God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.
Exalted at the right hand of God,
he poured forth the promise of the Holy Spirit
that he received from the Father, as you both see and hear.
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