Today's gospel (Matt 28: 8-15) tells us something about the power of a garden. The women emerged amazed from the tomb and started to run to tell the disciples about what they had seen, but before they had gone any distance, Jesus is there before them. The women are instantly prostrate at His feet. What else would one do when meeting a person one saw crucified two days before? Their souls are filled with a sense of His adorable power, and they receive His message. Those who have encountered the Lord respond in this way. Human nature can only bear so much mystery: thereafter, it must either submit or distract itself. The rapidity with which people talk after prayer is a measure of how far they have travelled with the Lord. We can imagine these women delivering their message to the disciples but at the same time being lost on wonder, not to say flabbergasted, by what they had just experienced.
Contrast the women with the guards who are in the garden also. In the garden, they know full well what has happened. They have just seen a dead man walking, and no longer towards his crucifixion, but from his tomb into the morning light. These pragmatic, hard bitten Roman soldiers, some of whom may even have assaulted Jesus on Friday, were now the bearers of a hardly-to-be believed report: He's back, and maybe He's coming for us!
In the garden, they know the truth, but what do they then do? They go into the city. They flee back from the place of truth to a place of counter-narrative and confusion. They leave behind this bucolic vision of reality and open up their ears to the voices of serpents, no longer entwined around a tree but sitting in the judgement seat of Moses. As it were, they stop thinking about what they have seen with their own eyes, and ask their overlords for a new briefing.
And they are misled. Not only are they provided with a lie, but they are, bribed and promised protection to maintain the falsehood. What matters is not longer what is but how the power of darkness requires things to be. Like all of us, these men now have a choice: accept the bribes and espouse the lie, or risk their all for the truth of something hardly understood but so marvellous that they can hardly believe it.
But, did not Christ conquer death yesterday? Was not evil vanquished as the Saviour spoke his last words on the cross: It is accomplished? Can't we just put our feet up and let the Easter eggs roll in?
Everything needed for evil to conquer was overthrown; of that there is no doubt. But every individual must live that conflict in themselves, even now. I am just as capable today of raising my hand against my brother as I was on Thursday. Every human being that breathes has this choice to make: will he submit to the reign of the Lamb or continue to revolt?
And those of us who believe too much in our own piety should ask ourselves too: how can we remain the wonderstruck, adoring servants of the Lord? And likewise, what must we do to avoid becoming those who flee to the city of distraction, accepting the bribes of darkness to engage in the deceits of the powerful, be it the mob or the mobsters, whose bullying voices ring in our ears on a daily basis?
Only through the all conquering grace of the Risen Lord can such questions be solved.
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