(Matthew 28)
11 While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
This must've been some fantastic payoff. If I'm a Roman centurion, admitting to falling asleep at my post means I will be stoned to death. Of course, admitting the tomb I was guarding is now empty doesn't bode well either. Now I've got to depend on the word of these Jewish elders that they've got enough clout to keep me from getting killed? Guess my options are agree or go tell some insane story about how this dead guy has disappeared after I was sent into a catatonic coma when some lightening-looking creature appeared out of nowhere and sent a stone weighing at least a ton uphill to open the tomb. Um, yeah. Guess I'll take the money and hope for the best.
We never get to find out what happened to the guards, just another in a million strands of untold stories the Bible leaves us with. I always like the metaphor of the knothole in the fence. Max Lucado compared Bible stories to watching the action through this one hole, only getting to see people briefly in their encounters with God, and being left to wonder where their stories went after they walked off the tiny part of the scene that was recorded.
There is so much we don't know, so much we can't answer. But what we are left with is enough:
(Matthew 22)
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40This is the first and greatest commandment. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
I kind of love how this passage opens. Word comes that Jesus has stumped the warring faction, so the Pharisees see an opportunity to one-up those guys and score one for their team by testing Christ. Sound familiar? I think this little snippet is the most honest representation of God's followers' inclinations you could ask for. How much effort has been wasted on in-fighting among those who claim to be God's people? The One they've been waiting so many generations for is standing right in front of them, and what do they do? Get giddy over the idea they can do better at trying to stump Jesus than the other guys.
I think in large part this is why I sometimes cringe at my fellow believers' attempts to convert others through their words, through carefully designed arguments aimed at shattering wrongly held beliefs. Because all of that stems from the same vein: I'm right, you're wrong, let me tell you why. Not sure who really ever responds to such an attitude, but it hasn't stopped millions of people from taking that stance with both unbelievers and fellow believers who happen to disagree with them on some point of doctrine (or tradition).
Back to Max for a moment, who sums up the mindset of Nicodemus this way: Legalism turns my opinions into your burden, your boundary, and your obligation.
Christ turns that upside down, both in his answer to the Pharisees and to Nicodemus by essentially saying you have no idea the power of unseen forces at work in your life. Stop thinking you have Christ boxed up into an understandable package. You can't.
"Spirituality, says Jesus, comes not from church attendance or good deeds or correct doctrine, but from heaven itself. Such words must have set Nicodemus back on his heels, but Jesus was just getting started.
The wind blows where it wants and you hear the soudn of it but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. It is the same with every person who is born from the Spirit. (John 3:8)
By now Nicodemus is growing edgy. We religious teachers like to control and manage. We like to define and outline. Structure and clarity are the friend of the preacher. But they aren't always the protocol of God.
Salvation is God's business. Grace is His idea, His work, and His expense. He offers it to whom He desires, when He desires.
The question must have been written all over Nicodemus' face. Why would God do this? What would motivate him to offer such a gift? What Jesus told Nicodemus, Nicodemus never could have imagined. The motive behind the gift of new birth? Love. God loved the world so much that he gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him may not be lost, but have eternal life.
Nicodemus had never heard such words. Never. He has had many discussions of salvation. But this is the first in which no rules were given. No system was offered. No code or ritual. . . Could God be so generous?" (Lucado's He Still Moves Stones, 131-2)
Nicodemus clearly must have thought so after this encounter.
The only other time we get a glimpse of him through our knothole is right back at the tomb whose emptiness we celebrate this day. Instead of coming to Christ in the night, he and Joseph are the two men who, in the light of day, in front of all those Pharisees and Sadducees, bury the broken body of Christ before the coming Sabbath.
That's love.
You have to wonder what was going through his mind then.
Was it all for nothing?
You have to wonder where Nic was when he heard the rumors that the centurions had fallen asleep and Jesus' body had been stolen. Don't you know he revisited the tomb, saw the stone, that massive stone that he had seen rolled down the groove and sealed closed, lying uphill again? Can't you imagine the gust of wind that might have encircled him for a moment, just to make him smile?
I hope this Easter finds you reminded of the invisible forces that are always at work, oftentimes in spite of our feeble efforts to "control" the message we have received. I hope you feel a gentle breeze and are reminded that Love is uncontrollable, and can move immovable forces, if we allow it to work in our lives.
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