The Father had said that his holy one would not see corruption and the Son had said they would all see “the sign of Jonah.” There was no version of reality in which Jesus’ body would remain in the tomb to decompose and no possibility he would remain there any longer than Jonah had been in the belly of the great fish. God had spoken and it would come to pass, despite the most valiant efforts of the chief priests and Pharisees.

You’ve got to hand it to the chief priests and Pharisees: They did their best. They did their level best to keep Jesus in his tomb. After successfully overseeing his execution, they remembered that he had not only predicted his death but also spoken of some kind of resurrection. Wanting to make sure his disciples didn’t manufacture a way of sneaking his body out of the tomb, they asked Pilate to guarantee the situation. “Order the tomb to be made secure until the third day,” they demanded, “lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:64).

Pilate reminded them they already had access to troops they could assign to the task. The soldiers who guarded the temple could also guard the tomb. “Go, make it as secure as you can,” he told them (27:65). “As secure as you can” could almost have been words of prophecy. “So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard” (27:66).

And I can’t help but wonder: Did the angels laugh? Did the angels laugh aloud when they saw these religious leaders satisfied that a stone and a seal and a couple of soldiers could in any way thwart the purposes of God? Did they laugh in disbelief that these little beings thought they could stymie the Creator’s plan to save a people to himself? Did they laugh at the arrogance of it even as they wept at the sorrow of it?

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