Bribe
While they were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, ‘You must say, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’ So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.
Matthew 28:11-15
We never know for certain, but if you had to guess or just go with historical tradition, Matthew the tax collector wrote the Gospel of Matthew. It could be the very Matthew that is told about in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter nine, verses nine through thirteen. Matthew the tax collector did leave his tax collector’s booth in this story, but also continued to gather and assemble other people like him, that is, other tax collectors.
Perhaps this is just interesting trivia or speculation, but the idea that Matthew was a money guy who shared the story of Jesus with others whose professions were intertwined with money makes plenty of sense. The Gospel of Matthew is covered with stories about wealth and money; primarily it is about the renunciation of wealth. Matthew encourages followers of Christ to not lay up treasures on Earth, the disciples are sent out to “acquire no gold or silver,” the rich young man has difficulty receiving Christ’s message (19:22), and Jesus is said to have overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple. Yet Matthew tells stories about money that are about even more than a simple pushback against wealth. Matthew tells about Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. You may remember that part of the story. But do you remember how Judas also tries to give the silver back? It is as if he has remembered that admonition to the disciples to not accumulate this money and wants back to that way of being.
If Matthew the tax collector wrote this gospel, he certainly brought along his knowledge of attending to the trail money leaves in lives. He may have included money so dramatically in his stories because he likely knew how money could consume, bribe, and misguide. Money makes the world go round, right?
But we see the new narrative that Matthew found through Jesus quite dramatically in this resurrection story found at the end, in Matthew 28:11-15. This is another story of bribes and money being used as power. And this must have been Matthew the tax collector’s old story. Those who have the money have the power and the influence and get to tell their story. So this bribe to contain the resurrection seems to be a pretty good move to silence and limit this ragtag bunch of disciples who have been busy wandering around not accruing any wealth. Money equals power, right?
Except...the bribe didn’t work. The bribe didn’t work. And I know this because you and I are still talking about the resurrection today.
Telling this story must have been Matthew’s greatest taunt to his previous life. Because I’m sure he had people warning him to not leave his life built around the power of money. Why would you leave that influence, that security?
Because the power of resurrection is always greater than the power of money, that’s why.
To continue to speak of the resurrection is always an act against this bribe from long ago. Matthew spoke of it in the context of his day. He was not only a tax collector, but a Jewish tax collector. So he was describing an insider situation, calling out those he was closest with. We must be particularly careful to remind ourselves that Matthew was a Jew just as Jesus was. The religious figures in these stories are not equivalent to religious and non-religious Jews today. To suggest otherwise is a dangerous path toward anti-Semitism that we must publicly denounce.
Instead, to retell this story we are called to be aware of the weight of money that continues to attempt to silence resurrection stories today. This is, I find, actually an extraordinarily common story in churches. We have built ourselves systems and structures that require money, and lots of it, to fund buildings and pastors among other things. It’s a long way from the disciples who went out told to “acquire no gold or silver.”
We can have collective amnesia in the church about this part of the story. Because the bribe didn’t work, and instead the message of an itinerant Jewish preacher prevailed. So let’s be careful what we choose, yes?
This season, we are going to be listening to all kinds of resurrections stories, in part because of the power they hold. You’re not just going to hear them from me, but they’ll come from many people in our congregation. But the shared theme will be the same; resurrection stories might be confusing, enlightening, and not what we expected, but they will always have power.
I wonder if Matthew collected all these stories about money because he needed to be reminded that resurrection had the final word. I wonder if he dreamed about the life he left behind. I wonder if it is the equivalent I can feel when I wonder about what my life had been if I had pursued something other than ministry. It must be the same feeling any of us can experience when we follow a path to new life instead of the security of what once was.
Even now, I find myself wanting to encourage you to be thoughtful, reasonable, and to not empty your bank accounts.
Yet any bribe to keep us calm, complacent, and unable to imagine a new way of life will not last forever. God’s transformative power continues to upend the world. I believe in a future where we are less concerned about what we each individually earn and save and more about how all are called into abundant life. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is to say I believe in the one who taught blessed are the poor. I believe that our God is the God of life eternal, which means anything that exploits and hoards wealth for few at the expense of many is short-sighted and sinful.
I believe that the bribe did not work and that is why we are telling resurrection stories today.
Amen.