When our Lord hung from the cross, dead, I doubt if there was one person on earth who believed that He would rise in power to share our daily lives. Hours after the resurrection occurred, Cleophas and his friend, walking out to Emmaus, argued as we argue over the evidence. When the women told the disciples that the tomb was empty, it seemed an idle tale. Mary Magdalene, even after seeing two angels in the sepulcher, thought that her Lord had been taken away. And for a whole week later Thomas himself was skeptical.
On the day of the crucifixion, the only people who thought seriously of His resurrection were the rulers who slew Him. Knowing positively that He was dead, they were uneasy in their triumph, and asked themselves whether this was really to be the end. As we read how they acted, we discover what He meant when He said, "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." Having rejected the Messiah, these men, with all their theology and influence, became frankly "godless." In their perplexity, they did not pray-- they sought no guidance from their Scriptures. They had chosen Cæsar for their only king, and to Cæsar's deputy they turned, begging of Pilate soldiers to guard the tomb, lest the body be stolen away. It is truly amazing that Pilate doubted whether the entire forces of the Roman Empire would be sufficient to hold this Crucified Man. Before Christ died, he had said, "Know ye not that I have power?" Afterwards, he went no further than, "Make it as sure as ye can." Even Pilate wondered about the future.
Setting a Watch
Armed with this authority, the rulers sealed the stone before the sepulcher and set their guard. Through Friday night, Saturday, and into early Sunday morning, those men, doubtless relieved according to military routine, fulfilled sentry duty thereat. The usual civilian watch visited the place on their rounds. It was clearly explained to all whom it concerned that any attempt to break into the tomb would be made, if at all, on the third day, for He had prophesied that on the third day He would rise again. Yet soon after midnight, amid yet another earthquake, the Roman soldiers, actually more terrified, for some reason, than the watch itself, fled to the city. It was an offense punishable with death, but no charge of cowardice was advanced. On the contrary, the entire Sanhedrin was called together. The tribunal which decreed our Saviour's crucifixion solemnly denied His emergence from the tomb. And in the second case, as in the first, they rejected all compromise. Refusing the power of God, they had to assume a fraud by man; and to prove fraud, they had to perpetrate it. Before His death thirty pieces of silver were enough to buy the betrayal of the Redeemer. But as He lay in the darkness of the tomb, His very foes began to perceive that His importance--what we call His glory--was growing, and likely to grow, among the nations. To slay Him a second time, not physically, but by spiritual, by intellectual poison, they voted "large money," and so endowed that destructive analysis of God's Good News to men which continues to this day. I like to think that, whereas before He died there was one Apostle ready to betray Him for so small a sum, after He had risen no offer of wealth, however lavish, seduced His followers from their allegiance.
So far from stealing away His blessed body, His Apostles did not even bury Him. The disciples of John the Baptist had laid" that brave man's mutilated remains in a grave, now forgotten, and turned at once from the dead, however sacred, to Him who was the ever more-abundant Life. But with Jesus Himself thus slain, there was no one to whom Peter and John could go for hope, unless He came back again. They left Him on the cross, only watched by two or three women; and as we read of the mother of James and Joses standing there, we wonder why James and Joses were not there with them. It was doubtless a discouraging day for His Church, but that was no reason why, in that dark time, women alone should be worshipers. Yet, being there, they supplied an indispensable link in the chain of testimony to His triumph. They watched His body, with eyes of intense reverence, as He was carried from the cross to the tomb. And, with them thus faithful, it has never been suggested that His was other than a real funeral. They only left the tomb when the stone was rolled into position, the seals affixed, and the guard set.
Joseph of Arimathea
The faith of Nicodemus was still of the twilight, but he had already won for the Redeemer a friend in the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea--a man who was rich, highly educated, and right-minded. Joseph represents the silent rally to our Lord of the quiet and responsible elements in a nation--the Huguenots, the Puritans, the Evangelicals, the Jansenists; and according to his love, Joseph was rewarded. His view was that our Master was utterly good, but utterly impotent--an ideal, but unattainable; and that Pilate was still in complete authority over His stricken body. He did not tell Pilate that Jesus would rise again. He only begged of Pilate the permission to bury the precious remains. And it was actually Joseph's love and reverence that rolled the stone, which the rulers afterwards sealed, so separating the Redeemer from ,men, as happens to-day when the truly pious surround Him with traditions of their own, which the State afterwards fixes by Law and by Force.
Not knowing our Saviour's victory, but only His love and goodness, Joseph bought for Him fine linen, clean indeed as His righteousness, but designed for death, not life; for memory, not hope; for sorrow, not service. Yet his ministry was personal. He did not delegate to professionals this handling of the Dead, which the Pharisees had declared to be defilement of the Passover. Hardly conscious of what he was doing, Joseph was showing forth the truth that even in death God's Holy One could see no corruption, and from his day onwards they who die in the Lord are pronounced clean.
Christ of the Past
For Joseph was a man who lived under the constant shadow of the last enemy. He owned a garden full of flowers; he hewed therein a tomb of rock ready for himself. A tomb was therefore all that he had to offer to the Saviour, and he gave it freely. Nicodemus and Joseph, the unlooked-for witnesses of Christ, were not ignorant men, but trained and calculating statesmen. Unable to bring Him back again, they filled His tomb with spices, thereby instituting that kind of religion which lavishes wealth on worship, surrendering jewels, filling churches with incense, and devoting years to pilgrimages. If there had been no resurrection, the sepulcher would have become a kind of Mecca, where the Redeemer, lying dead, would have drawn the faithful, as Moslems to-day worship at the grave of their Prophet. The faith that we know would have been, as St. Paul tells us, "vain." Indeed, it would never have come into being.
The example of Joseph was rapidly followed by the holy women. They went home and, while keeping the Sabbath, found time to collect and prepare yet more spices. What they thought about was the Christ of the past, who could only be approached at certain seasons--not on the Sabbath--and in a certain place, which was a cemetery. So little did they believe in His power to remove mountains, founded by the Eternal Creator, that they were troubled about the done which was so designed by man as to be rolled away. And they had to learn from an angel the simple truth, still forgotten, that He is not here; He is not dead and gone, He is risen, gone before you into Galilee--the place not of death but of duty, of the old and unchanged duty, where alone we must expect to find Him. And when next we read of rich men and women bringing gifts, they were not spices for a tomb, but money, of common exchange, to be devoted, not to His altars, but to His poor. It was money laid, not in His sepulcher, but at the feet of His living Apostles.
About His uprising there was no haste, no confusion. Throughout the great day of the feast, He lay silent, a rebuke to the elaborate worship which was proceeding at Jerusalem, where men vainly endeavored to place above His one sacrifice for sin ceremonies which He had eternally fulfilled. And to the very end, He was perfect in obedience. He did not roll away the stone; it was an angel, one only of myriads, yet omnipotent when in9tructed by Omnipotence. Master of all flesh, He rose in solitude, none helping Him-instantly escaping from the napkin that He might see, and from the linen clothes that He might move forth, and arraying Himself gloriously in eternal garments. So He walked from the sepulcher, unattended; not annihilating the stone, but leaving the angel enthroned upon it; not rending the grave-clothes, but folding them in due order. Here was Christ the Historian, the Everlasting Truth of all that has happened. And the angel's countenance shone like lightning with His reflected glory.