Daily Manna
Monday, April 4, 2016
Topic: The empty tomb 6
Reading: Matthew 27:57-66, 28:1-15
Scripture: He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee. (Luke 24:6)
Note: Eventually, Pilate got the news of the empty tomb. He had to be given a feedback report on the tomb watch mission, since it was through his authority that the soldiers were released. It stands to reason that Pilate would not have accepted the cock and bull story of the four soldiers sleeping on the job, allowing the disciples of Jesus who were unarmed and untrained in combat, to break through their ranks, sneak into the tomb with nonchalant ease to whisk the controversial body away.
Trained and being an expert in the art of interrogation, it would not take long before Pilate would have sufficiently grilled the heavily bribed, ambivalent soldiers to the root of the truth. He would have faced the stark reality of the truth that the innocent man he dubiously sentenced to death due to politically motivated advantage he stood to gain, was after all a just man, as confirmed from the dream of his wife, who had earlier warned him to wash his hands off the case of Jesus. The exclamation in confirmation of Jesus Christ being the Son of God by no else than Pilate’s own centurion at Golgotha after the earthquake and the sudden darkness when Jesus hanged on the cross and cried “It is finished” would all have combined to send the truth home to Pilate that indeed, Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Faced with the reality of the truth, Pilate was in no hurry to indulge in a fruitless search for the body of Jesus on planet earth. If at all, he was going to leave that worry to the Jewish protagonists whose worry about the veracity of the angelic descent from heaven stuff, breaking of the Roman seal and rolling away the great stone, resulting in the empty tomb, was such a heavy burden of proof of Jesus’ Sonship and Lordship that they were prepared to part with huge sum of money simply to let the truth of Christ’s resurrection remain buried.
Of course, these Jewish crooks were too smart to go on a fruitless search for Jesus. If they ever suspected that the body had truly been stolen as suggested, the simplest and easiest thing for them would have been to court the help of Pilate to cordon off Jerusalem and diligently smoke the body out from the disciples. This, they never did. Sleeping dogs were allowed to lie low.
Food for thought: The truth, power and impact of the empty tomb was what gave impetus to the disciples to take over the whole world with the preaching of the resurrected Christ.
Declaration: This Jesus has God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. (Acts 2:32)
© Author: Rev Fred Aboe
