Although today’s poem is short, I do want to take a moment to reflect on the account of the aftermath of Christ’s crucifixion that’s in Matthew, specifically the literal and figurative aftershocks. Matthew 27:51-54 reads as follows:
51 [AX] And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. [31] The earth quaked, rocks were split, 52 [AY] tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. 53 And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many. 54 [32] The centurion and the men with him who were keeping watch over Jesus feared greatly when they saw the earthquake and all that was happening, and they said, “Truly, this was the Son of God!”
The first part, the tearing of the veil, gets a lot of time spent on it, and the significance of that barrier being taken down and the deeper symbolic meanings present inside the text.
But there’s more than that; the earth is shaking, and rocks are splitting open. Luke says that the entire land was darkened by an eclipse for three hours, and this passage says that the centurion and the men who were keeping watch are making the connections between Jesus’ death and the extreme geological and astronomical events that took place.
What was Pilate thinking? What were the Pharisees? What could anyone possibly do in reaction to that other than stand in awe and shame at what had happened? And yet, the soldiers, though they proclaimed Jesus was the Son of God, had their orders and followed them. What else was there to do in the wake of cataclysm?1
Later in the day, presumably after the return of the sun, Pilate approves the transfer of the body to Joseph of Arimathea and the next day we learn the Pharisees, who had felt the quakes, saw the sun go out, and heard the rocks splitting, instead of repenting, went to Pilate and asked for a guard to be put on the tomb in case the disciples tried steal Christ’s body.
Did they think it was all a big coincidence? That the disciples fabricated the earth shaking and tore the curtain themselves? I don’t get it if I’m being honest. If I were the Pharisees it seems like there would only be two possible actions to take: terrified repentance in the face of what had been done or terror in the face of what the disciples appeared capable of. Seriously, the curtain was torn and if the disciples had done it, they would have needed a covertly integrated espionage team with deep connections inside the temple2 to even have a chance at that destruction, and the Pharisees’ response wasn’t to run to the hills? What are a few guards and a seal on the tomb going to do in the face of that level of planning coordination?3
And what was Pilate thinking? The granting of the request for the guard makes sense if he thought that there was a huge conspiracy, or even if he was a bit jumpy at the prior day’s events, but what else was going through his mind?
Even after all that preparation, the seal on the tomb, and the guard at the door, the stone still rolled away and, at that point, whose doubt was left? Come Easter, the Pharisees must have reached apoplectic levels of paranoia; the roots of the conspiracy must have felt as if they ran so far beneath Jerusalem that they touched Hell.4
Did Pilate assume that the guards had failed in their task? Was he flummoxed by the failure of the great Roman warriors to keep an enormous piece of stone in place? Did he wonder if the answer to his question “what is truth?” was standing in front of him two days prior when he condemned an innocent Man to death? I’m not sure.5
And what about the saints who were raised? At the death of Christ, Luke tells us that the tombs were opened and many who were asleep were raised. It wasn’t until Easter that they would go into the city, but did anyone notice that the tombs were opened on that Friday? Did the Pharisees know that tombs were now in the habit of opening of their own volition? When they asked that Christ’s tomb be sealed and guarded, was it in response to those reports?
Tomorrow (or today for the readers that go to sleep at a reasonable hour), we’ll celebrate the resurrection of Christ, but on the first Easter, it wasn’t just Christ who returned. Many, many of the saints who were dead went into the city and appeared to many more people. What did the residents of that city think it all meant? The earthquakes, the rocks, the eclipse, and now, two days later, those once dead were alive again and outside of their tombs? Beyond that, what was it like for those who were raised? Did they know that they were due for that outing? Did they return to their tombs after a visit or go back to their lives? What did they tell their friends? What, if anything, did they tell the Pharisees? Pilate? It must have been surreal.
I’ve asked a lot of questions in what I’ve written above, but the only real place I’ve hinted at an answer isn’t even in response to my own question, but to Pilate’s, and the thing I’d like to end this absurdly long postscript to my rather short poem with is that Easter gives us confirmation of the answer I hinted at earlier.
The question: “What is truth”
The answer, confirmed by the resurrection which makes it so that we know that all that Christ said is true, is Christ himself. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and this Easter remember that His answer to that question is so much bigger than the other questions I’ve made in this post. That Answer is one that we are compelled to build our lives around.
Or Holy Saturday if you’re an incredibly fast late-night reader
Footnotes
-
It’s arguably a testament to the effectiveness of the military training they received ↩
-
And a giant pair of scissors ↩
-
You’d also think that they’d give up on the whole thing in the face of Christ’s body being placed in a tomb of the disciples choosing. I know if I was a conspirator on that scale, I’d just put a hidden tunnel in the tomb and then dare the Pharisees to open the tomb on Monday (but I digress) ↩
-
Though of course the conspiracy came from the opposite direction (assuming up and down are appropriate descriptors of supernatural topography) ↩
-
I am more than willing to admit that this might be deficiency in my education and reading and not because these questions or others in this post are unanswerable ↩