Caiaphas: "Quiet, quiet! Let me think. What sayest thou, Annas? Yes, yes. That is the best way. And Pilate does not want more commotion over this man any more than we do. My good men -- no doubt your imaginations have been running wild ... obviously, graveyard duty is not your strong suit! Perhaps we can ease this situation. Regardless of what you saw -- or think you saw -- it is not wise to let the rumor spread that this man was raised from the dead. Yet, He is not there. Perhaps 300 pieces of silver would clarify your memory, and you could admit that you fell asleep, and His followers came and stole his body? Would 500 pieces be even better? Don't worry about Pilate hearing about your falling asleep; we will take care of that. Go now, tell those who ask exactly what happened!"

And so the soldiers left to perpetuate the biggest lie a human being ever spread: the lie that Jesus did not rise from the grave! Apparently some of the guards were so shaken they could not even come tell the chief priests what had happened. Yet those who did tell the priests what happened in the garden told all they saw, says Matthew. My, to have been there to hear their testimony! I cannot help wondering how much money is enough to convince a man to lie about the raising of a man from the dead? And the soldiers were told not to worry about Pilate punishing them -- though death was the customary punishment for sleeping on duty. Perhaps the priests could take care of Pilate; but what, or who, could keep them from worrying to the end of their days about what they had seen, and the lie they had told about it! I can hear them now.

Guards: "Yes, for years I have pondered what I saw in the grey dawn of that morning. I know what I saw. Perhaps I do not know all that it means, but what I saw, I saw! And we soldiers were not the fools the priests thought we were! Did they really think all 16 of us would be asleep at the same time? And to think that the followers of this Jesus; common, ordinary, fearful men, could do all this while we slept! Listen, it's noisy work, moving that stone! And they would surely have been hurrying to get the body and get out of there -- so why unwrap the body -- yet I tell you I saw the graveclothes neatly folded and left behind on the stone slab where the body lay. I was no fool when Caiaphas paid us to lie about what we saw, although I have often wondered since, if perhaps I have been a fool not to talk with some of His followers about Him."

There is one aspect of this meeting of the soldiers with Caiaphas and Annas that shows, the mercy and grace of God. Just as Jesus continued to try to win Judas right up to the end, perhaps God was yet trying to get through to the religious leaders of Judaism, even after the murder of the Son of God. Notice the Scripture tells us rather deliberately that the women went to tell the disciples that Christ had risen, while the soldiers went to tell the chief priests "all they had seen." Did God send these soldiers so that Caiaphas might have one more chance to accept the working of God in Jesus? Now they hear from an unprejudiced witness that the sign of Jonah has been given! Did it have the effect of plagues on Pharaoh -- simply hardening an already hard heart? And what about those disciples? Disciples: "By the time we heard the rumor that we had stolen the body of Jesus, we had already met Him again, alive, praise God!" Indeed, we found it almost amusing, this rumor of our robbing a grave. Think about it for a moment. First, the rumor gave us credit for more boldness than we had shown when Jesus was alive! After all, we fled the garden when He was arrested, we were absent from the cross -- and now you think us bold enough after His death to defy a squad of 16 soldiers and steal His body? Do you think we would be more faithful to His dead body than we were to Him when He was alive? Not only did we have no stomach for it, but in the second place, we had no motive, no reason to steal the body. We had the body in our possession after it was taken down from the cross, we could have done with it whatever we wished. Why would we steal it from a grave? Joseph's tomb was finer than any we could offer Jesus, for sure. And to be caught with the half-buried body of our leader would certainly be fatal to our faith, and fatal to our lives!