Reasons not to fear: A reflection on Matt. 28
A reflection on Matt. 28:1-15
One of my favorite things about Spring is how it brightly the light streams into our home in this season. The light is coming earlier, staying later, growing stronger, but there are no leaves on the trees creating shadows and shade like there will be in Summer. Even in my usual daily perches—the chair by the front window before the kids wake up, Jane’s bed at nap time, the kitchen sink in the late afternoon—the light is always a bit of a surprise.
Like spring light in a familiar room, the Spirit can surprise us in the stories we know like the back of our hand if we’ll linger long enough. To me, this is one of the most compelling reasons to observe the entire feast season of Eastertide, rather than just one glorious Easter Sunday. I’ve been taking time in these 50 days of Eastertide to notice the ways the light hits the Resurrection Story. These words are shared out of that lingering.
The guards at the tomb, adrenaline still pumping, hands still shaking, armor marred with dirt from falling to the ground in terror before the angel of the Lord, ran to tell the chief priests all the had happened that morning. The earthquake. The angel. The stone. The empty tomb.
And worse, some of the women who followed him saw it all too. Their story would, of course, be worthless—laughable, scorned—in a court of law, but still…people will believe anything these days.
The guards didn’t mention the part where they were so filled with terror that they collapsed to the ground unconscious, missing what the angel said to the women or which direction they went.
The chief priests decide it is in everyone’s best interest to cover this up by whatever means necessary, including fear-fueled bribery and a patched-together story about the reasons for the empty tomb and missing body. It doesn’t have to be good. Just expedient. After all, people will believe anything these days.
Mere hours after Jesus’s defeat of Death, Hell, and the powers of evil through his victorious rising, corruption and evil seem to be alive and well.
The angel greeted the women coming to see Jesus’s tomb, saying, “Do not be afraid.” He says no such thing to the guards at the command of those interested in protecting their own power and controlling the narrative at all costs.
After the angel speaks, the guards (after regaining consciousness) run to the chief priests, and the women run “with fear and great joy” to proclaim Jesus’s rising to the disciples. Along the way, Jesus meets them, and they fall at his feet in worship.
If the women were clinging to Jesus’s feet (v. 9) as they worshipped him, they must have noticed the scars where nails had held him to the Cross only a few days before.
Right before their eyes, the scars marking Jesus’s resurrected body thrummed with the tension of it all:
There is reason to fear, and there is reason for joy.
Harm has been and is and will be done, and healing is possible.
Creation is broken, and those shards hum with possibility and beauty.
We are surrounded by death, and we are surrounded by signs of resurrection.
We are heavy laden with the reality that they actually can kill the body, as Jesus warns in Matt. 10, and face no earthly consequence. And He lifts our heads with the deeper truth that they cannot kill the soul, and that no scheme of Hell or Man can lessen the power of God to restore both to a beauty and goodness beyond our imagining.
In every age, there have been many legitimate reasons to be afraid. But I suppose the difference between the women worshipping at feet of the resurrected Jesus and the chief priests chasing their own kingdom is that only the women had any reason not to be.
In this world, we will face many troubles, but take heart, beloved of God—He has overcome the world.