Stone, Sword and Shield

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

March 31, 2013 - Easter

Stone, Sword and Shield

Matthew 28:1-10

An earthquake;

an angel rolling back the stone;

soldiers, big, strapping, and swarthy,

frightened, fainted, and fallen.

This is the Easter picture Matthew paints for us.

A picture filled with drama,

far more drama than we find in the other gospels.

Neither Mark nor Luke nor John gives us an earthquake.

Neither do the others give us an angel at work

rolling back the stone,

nor guards frightened into a dead faint.

What all four gospels give us, though, is the empty tomb,

and Mary Magdalene as the first to discover it.

We know the story, don’t we:

Mary went out to the tomb in the early morning hours

of that first day of the week,

that Sunday morning.

John tells us she was by herself;

Luke tells us she was accompanied by Joanna,

Mary the mother of James,

and “other women”;

Mark tells us it was Mary the mother of

James and Salome who walked to the tomb

with Mary Magdalene;

while Matthew tells us simply that Mary’s companion

was “the other Mary”.

They had come to anoint Jesus’ body,

to finish the job that had been left unfinished on Friday evening

once the sun set and the Sabbath had begun.

Even before the sun rose on that Sunday morning,

Mary set out, determined,

a job to do with or without help.

It was Joseph of Arimathea who had placed

Jesus’ body in the tomb on Friday evening.

He had taken Jesus’ lifeless body down from the cross,

and carried it so gently to the tomb,

where he wrapped the body in linen and spices

as part of the burial ritual.

But then the sun sank below the horizon,

the last rays of light evaporating,

darkness blanketing the countryside,

and so Joseph rolled a large stone

over the entrance to the tomb and

went off to observe the Sabbath.

The morning of the third day came,

and Mary set out.

But as she and the other Mary approached the tomb,

the ground shook, almost knocking them off their feet.

And then they could see an angel “descending from heaven,

like lightning, his clothing white as snow.”

The angel rolled back the stone,

opening up the tomb,

and then sat on the stone and spoke,

“Do not be afraid;

I know you are looking for Jesus,

but he is not here.

He has been raised.”

The angel beckoned, and the two Marys stepped forward

gingerly, carefully,

around the guards who had fainted dead away,

having fallen heavily in a clatter of shield and swords.

The two women both looked in and saw the emptiness of the tomb.

They then they turned and walked away,

slowly at first,

but within a few yards they were both running,

running back to town filled with fear –

filled with joy,

filled with questions.

They spoke not a word to each other,

but they were both thinking the same thing:

how could this be?

They had seen Joseph place the body

in the tomb on Friday evening.

They had seen Joseph roll the stone over the entrance.

How could the tomb be empty?

Where was the body of their Lord?

The angel’s words propelled them forward:

“He is not here;

He has been raised.”

Was he truly alive?

Had he not died on the cross?

When Joseph had taken Jesus down from the cross

had he missed a faint heartbeat in Jesus’ chest?

As he wrapped Jesus in linen in the tomb,

had Joseph missed the sound of shallow breathing?

No, surely they had seen him die on the cross!

Surely there could be no confusing that!

Was this a cruel hoax?

Had someone stolen Jesus body?

Stolen it as a vicious trick to be played on those who loved Jesus?

“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,

we do not where they have laid him,”

was Mary’s anguished cry to Peter.

In John’s gospel she begged of the man

she assumed to be the gardener,

“Sir, if you have carried him away,

tell me where you have laid him

and I will take him away.”

The chief priests and the Pharisees,

those cunning, corrupt leaders of the Temple,

they suspected that Jesus’ followers

might try something like that:

steal Jesus’ body, hide it,

and then concoct a story

about Jesus magically, mythically returning to life.

They had remembered Jesus saying that just as

Jonah had been in the belly of the whale for three days,

so too, “the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.”

(Matthew 12:40)

So, on Saturday morning,

the day after Jesus’ crucifixion,

“the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate

and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that impostor said

while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.”

Therefore command that the tomb be made secure

until the third day;

otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away,

and tell the people,

“He has been raised from the dead”,

and the last deception would be worse

than the first.’

(Matthew 27:62-64)

No one else seemed to have remembered Jesus saying anything

about rising from the dead,

but the chief priests and the Pharisees – they remembered,

and the words haunted them:

“three days the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.”

They had worked too hard to rid themselves

of the troublesome carpenter,

the one who had challenged their authority,

their power,

their position.

They had to be sure, had to be rid not only of him,

but of all his troublesome followers as well.

                                        

But, Pilate had had enough of the religious leaders,

their infernal and seemingly eternal squabbles.

He had other things to do,

other things to think about,

so he brushed them off, saying to them,

“You have a guard of soldiers;

go, make it as secure as you can.”

“Deal with it yourself,”

was what Pilate was saying to the priests and Pharisees,

“Don’t bother me;

I’ve washed my hands of the dead man,

and now I want to wash my hands of you as well.”

So off they went, the chief priests and the Pharisees,

the great leaders of the Temple,

hustling out of the city to the tomb,

bustling and rustling in their fine clothing,

afraid of a dead man;

afraid of Peter, Andrew, James and John,

men who at that very moment

cowered in fear for their own lives,

certain that arrest and crucifixion

was their fate, too.

It was late in the morning on that second day,

that Saturday,

when the priests and Pharisees arrived at the tomb.

They wasted no time, barking orders to the guards:

“Set mortar in the cracks,

roll other stones on either side of the large stone

that covers the entrance.

Seal it; secure it!

Post two guards on alert at all times!

Let no one near.

Two days is all we need;

we have only to get to the fourth day.”

They were resolute, those men,

as they set stone, sword and shield against the dead man

and his band of ragged followers.

The priests and Pharisees were men of law and learning,

men of Scripture,

but as they toiled furiously

they seemed to have forgotten the words of the Psalmist,

that against the power of God,

“A king is not saved by his great army;

a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

The war horse is a vain hope for victory

and by its great might it cannot save.”

(Psalm 33:16)

Against the power of God

nothing stands,

no one stands.

And so, early the next morning,

on the third day,

the angel of the Lord effortlessly rolled the stone away,

the guards, as big and strong as they were,

dropped at the angel’s feet

frightened almost to death,

and the empty tomb was on display for all to see.

The empty tomb: for all to see the reality of God’s power

and God’s love for all the world:

“He is not here,

He is been raised.

Look not for the living in the place of the dead,

for he is risen.”

The angel of the Lord rolled the stone away

not to let Jesus out,

for no tomb could hold the risen Christ,

but to let all the world look in,

to see the tomb in all its emptiness,   

and to understand the utter powerless of

stone, sword and shield

against the power of God.

And the irony is that it was Pilate

who seemed to have been the only one

to have anticipated the power of God.

Pilate, as evil and contemptible as he was

sent the priests and Pharisees off with a smug shrug:

“Go ahead, you’ve got guards and weapons;

make the tomb as secure as you think you can;

but it will not help you,

for something tells me that you will not succeed.”

“All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have all turned to our own way,”

said the prophet, speaking of you and me.

(Isaiah 53:6)

But the shepherd is here to watch over us,

guide us,

and call us back to the fold when we do stray,

even now, two thousand years later,

for the shepherd lives,

risen!

The living Christ,

our Lord, our Savior,

risen for you,

risen for me!

“We shall go out in joy and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before us shall burst into song,

and all the tree of the field shall clap their hands,”

(Isaiah 55:12)

because the tomb was empty on that Sunday morning,

our Lord risen.

Yes, risen!

Risen indeed!

Allelulia!

AMEN