8: Meditations on the Resurrection, Part 2: They did WHAT?

The Guards at the Tomb

No one witnessed the actual event of Jesus’ resurrection, but the Roman guards were the ones who came closest. They were only a few steps away when the angel came down and rolled the stone aside.

Curiously, the impression one gets is that the tomb was already empty. Jesus did not need the stone to be removed before he could get out; the stone rolling away was the like curtain rising to show the stage for the next, and even more breathtaking, act of God’s unfolding drama.

Not much is said about the guards, and three of the four Evangelists don’t mention them at all. Understandably, they are in a state of shock. Maybe they are lying on the floor; neither the angel(s) nor the women seem to take any notice of them at all. Only Matthew gives them a few verses in his gospel, and these verses are among the most hilarious, and the most tragic, of the entire Bible.

The guards have the front row seat in the theater, and maybe we can learn from their experience that “front row” can be too overwhelming. But privileged seats or no, they are the misfits in the resurrection accounts. Not only do they get the unmitigated scare of their lifetime, not only are they ignored by everyone in the story; they don’t seem to be planned into the story at all. Between Easter and Ascension the resurrected Jesus is witnessed by people who feel a great joy at seeing him again, people to whom he had meant something.

And by the guards, in a way.

It doesn’t mention that Jesus himself appeared to them, but it seems that they can be counted as witnesses to the resurrection – earthquakes and angels and an empty tomb and all that. But this seems purely coincidental, an accidental byproduct of a last-minute decision by the chief priests to have the tomb guarded.

The guards are just ordinary blokes doing their job; they have no hopes of a Messiah, no apparent connection to this Jesus. By contrast to the other people Jesus appeared to, there is no sense of Jesus seeking them out; it would be highly unlikely that Jesus would have given these Roman guards a Resurrection experience if they had not happened to be in a particular place at a particular time.

The guards had a simple task: guard a tomb from a handful of provincial fishermen. And failure at such a simple task carried the death penalty. And while they had not exactly failed the task of defending the tomb against some fishermen (who didn’t even show up), they did fail the task of defending the tomb against God and His angels.

Of course, someone who believes in God and angels may let them off the hook, may conclude very rationally that there is no way a troop of guards, even the best Roman guards, could reasonably be expected to keep the upper hand against such odds. But the Roman superiors probably wouldn’t believe the story. So in addition to having received the scare of their lives, the guards are also scared for their lives.

In such situations there is a great need for friends, and friends are easiest to find among people who have something in common with you. With unerring instinct, the guards run to the chief priests; at least they have in common with them the wish that this hadn’t happened, and the desire that no one finds out that it has happened.

And here’s where the story takes its tragicomical turn: these priests, men who have spent their entire lives studying Scripture and waiting for God’s Messiah, do not feel the least desire to find out what these supernatural events are all about. What they do feel is that their reputation is at stake. Since the lives of the guards are also at stake, there is significant potential for mutual blackmail in the situation.

I cannot decide whether their solution is brilliant or lazy. They bribe the Roman superiors into sparing the guards in return for the guards pretending to be the most incompetent jackasses in the empire. The priests save face and lose some money, the guards lose face but get away with their lives. Brilliant.

Or just lazy? Did no one bother to think of a plausible excuse, so they preposterously claimed that the very thing they were sent to prevent was what had happened? Why would the guards sleep on the job if their life was at stake? And, more hilariously, how can a sleeping guard recognize a Galilean disciple, to claim afterwards to know the identity of the bodysnatchers?

I’m not sure of the spiritual significance of the guards’ resurrection experience. It could be said that in this story, God put the guards’ life in danger, and the priests and Pharisees saved their lives. But there are two obvious points:

1. God doesn’t always reveal Himself only to those who are looking for Him, and
2. Even if you’re the one who is closer than anyone else in the world to a momentous spiritual event, it does not follow that your life will change. It does not even follow that you’ll be aware of the significance of the occasion.