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Saving Jesus
 Why did Matthew, in his report decades later, trust that on that first Sunday morning after the death of Jesus, two women discovered or knew where the body of the crucified Jesus now the Christ was entombed? They were ready to wash and scrape and oil this young body which was covered in blood, all of it pouring out, a final drain of his strength, a final puff of air from this earth, and a few amigos knew what had to be done to get him off that tall, painful cross and then carry him to the empty tomb, and knew what they must do to get him off that tall, painful cross and then carried him to the empty tomb offered by Joseph of Arimathea (many of us have genealogical lines back to Joseph. I’ve researched that.)
At least Joseph knew the order to complete the steps that had to be taken, aware that the women needed to be there to prepare what we considered, then and now, Our Savior, a man who had walked the walk on this earth in the areas of Jerusalem. We carry in our worries both the empty-tomb version and the risen vision tradition, which Matthew had brought to fore in his writings, after the facts, since none had really seen Jesus or anything to identify Him like a big buddy.
Even today, people struggle to get the truth into their souls, their minds, their hearts, because they have to believe in something. And there has been ample images and art works in all sorts of churches and cathedrals that act as a sort of record of how Jesus Christ did His healings on earth. In these extra days of appearances, walking the same earth, now dressed as the Holy Savior, He promised us He would, at some future time, return to take us to our heavenly homes, all of us, the alive and the dead, so we can be the way we ought to be, no more stumbling around as to what Christ wants us to be, and we too will ascend to the Heavenly Kingdom from which Christ departed after appearing on earth to teach us the Way we must take to get ready.
The well-known John Dominic Crossan and his wife Sarah Sexton, experts in figuring out and reading the many works of art that have been left in so many churches and holy places, traveled through Eastern Europe and the Holy Lands and the Middle East for fifteen years, studying various art interpretations of that most important, most miraculous moment in our religious history. In fact, their focus was on how and why, in so many works of arts on walls and churches, we learn how the risen Jesus grasped the hands of Adam and Eve as He rose to Heaven, among other things. It is referred to as Jesus’ ‘Resurrection’, which probably and surely happened because there are these spectacular images left behind, to give us and those interested, I guess, a Hint. St. Ambrose of Milan gave a logical and powerful statement: if Christ did not rise for us, then He did not rise at all, since He had no need of it just for himself. Wow! That is a whopper. Think on that. We don’t have to twist and turn in the night to wonder how to get to heaven. It seemed a fabulous reasonable truth. So, it allows us to return to the Easter activities that still cling to our souls at this time of the year.
Guards were certainly actors as well as witnesses in this very important unravelling of the step-by-step movements of what happened to and by whom, the night Jesus exited a so-to-speak locked down tomb. So, they were not just subtle but accessible characters of the moment. They saw what was going on like it or not. They saw who was there. They must have peeked into the big rocky mountain tomb to check if that strange and maybe frightened body was still in there, only to find out that what was left of that young men, the blessed one, for which the tomb had been borrowed, was apparently holy in all sorts of different ways, including the power of escape. And their vision, their vigilance, their standing up like soldiers to make sure things went right and not wrong, with order and not craziness, with respect and not something splashed around a tomb that belonged to a highly powerful, extremely generous man who settled all scores and complaints and problems by lending, or giving his tomb to a mysterious but godly style young man who claimed to be the Son of God.
And to boot, a bevy of women had come to the tomb - don’t know if all at the same time, there were various numbers given this honor depending on the author, or one by one through curiosity, but all trying to do the next steps that allowed a dead person to preserve a body and prepare a man’s spirit or soul, in the long run, so the giant rock could be pushed or shoved close off the stench and to avoid what we could call the celebrities the curious and suddenly famous man who claimed to be God and, surely, probably, He was. Like journalists, no one sees the story in the same manner. Or they hear a version, or they confirm this or that really happened. I was a journalist and it amazed me how many times my version of a story was far and away different from the other newspaper’s story… and that had to do with my spirit, my heart, my education, and what my eyes saw and transferred into a reality for me so I could come up with a true and interesting story. Did this happen with the four gospelers?
Apparently there had been a great earthquake and there were angels in and out, some coming from heaven, one guessed, because there was no sign that this body came from anywhere else, after already being cleaned and set properly for the tomb wrap that would be allowed to wrap up Christ properly and slowly, finishing that man’s earthly life and respect, even though he was a curious one and no one really understood why He was killed with two crooks and all three on tall crosses - remember we are watching this through the guards who were witnessing all this.
Matthew includes the guarded tomb idea - burial, guards placed, descent of angels, guards prostrated, empty tomb, risen vision, guards being bribed and many deep in sleep. I guess there was some conniving but there were also some real facts, which Matthew particularly grasped and threw into his story to hold the truth we all needed to know. So maybe there was a great earthquake on Sunday morning and an angel arrived on earth from the Lord, who came down from heaven and rolled back the stone and even sat on it.
It seems to me the only honest, un-frightened participants there at Christ’s tombs were the women. One, or maybe a pair, had a job to do and they knew how to do it. Probably others stood back with a distance, not sure what to do where or when to go into the tomb, as, I’m sure, they had learned to do through repetition of dealing with death in their families. The soldiers - probably young and feisty - I can imagine them flirting with the beautiful women hovering at a distance to see what was going to happen next. Surely the young men didn’t quite understand the meaning of the guarded-tomb tradition. It shows up as part of the burial process, the guards placed, the descent of angels, the guards prostrated, the empty tom and then the risen vision and the guards’ accepted bribes. It was a day of confusion. And after all that, Holy Jesus had not left the fields yet, and people saw Him everywhere as He needed to prove that He had the power of life, the ascension to the heavens which we all can enjoy and, in a few days, proving that He was truly the risen Son of God. Thank you, Jesus.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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