The Passion According to St. Matthew Part IX

Crucifixion & Resurrection

Read: Matthew 27:45-66

In this final instalment of our series on St. Matthew's passion, I wish to focus on one detail of the story that I mentioned yesterday, the signs and wonders that immediately followed the death of Jesus in Matthew 27:50-54:

Then Jesus cried with a loud voice again and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.  After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, "Truly this man was God's son."

  
The sky had already been covered in darkness since noon.  This is a detail recorded by the other evangelists. The detail of the torn curtain was known to Mark as was the centurion's confession. Luke knows a slightly different version ("Surely this man was innocent!").  The tearing of the veil of the Temple is highly symbolic.  Several interpretations have been proposed. Perhaps the simplest interpretation suggests that as destroying the Temple was something Jesus claimed he would do and was, of course, a charge leveled against him and one of the taunts from the foot of the cross. The tearing of the Temple veil (just as the earth is torn open) suggests symbolic fulfilment of that claim. Another interpretation, based on the ancient text the Testament of Levi (10.3) foretells that "the curtain of the temple will be torn, so that it will no longer conceal your [priests'] shameful behavior" (Davies and Allison, Matthew, v.3, p 631).  If such prophecy was floating around as part of the prophetic or apocalyptic ethos of the day, it does coalesce very nicely with the narrative in which the behavior of the priests, according to Matthew, is shameful. 

Davies and Allison, two very astute and learned commentators on the text, have noted that Matthew's unique story of the graves opening up and the dead being raised is often taken as fulfilment of the prophecies in Ezekiel 37 (the valley of the dry bones).  However, they note (see entire discussion in Davies and Allison, ibid, 628-9) that if this were the case, Matthew's text curiously makes no mention of bones, the most obvious symbolic feature in Ezekiel's text.  If Matthew were thinking of Ezekiel 37, would he surely not have mentioned the bones?  They suggest a more likely prophecy that was on Matthew's mind (and equally important as an apocalyptic text is: Zechariah 14:4-5,

On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley; so that one half of the Mount shall withdraw northward and the other half southward. And you shall flee by the valley of the Lord's mountain, for the valley between the mountains shall reach Azal, and you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the Lord will come and all the holy ones with him.

The opening of the earth and the appearance of the "holy ones" coupled with the location of the Mount of Olives makes is fairly clear that this text was Matthew's basis for constructing his narrative.  We must ask, though, why is this important? 

As we know, Matthew's gospel is filled with scripture-fulfilment proclamations throughout the text, "This happened so that the words of the prophet might be fulfilled..." Mathew goes beyond strictly quoting scripture using this scripture-fulfillment formula. He embeds the fulfilment of scripture into the narrative itself.  The prophetic and apocalyptic mindset, and the Old Testament prophetic and apocalyptic texts that express this mindset, serves as the narrative substructure from which the narrative, itself, emerges.  The fulfilment of scripture is embedded into the very narrative itself.  To Matthew's way of thinking, he whole story of Jesus is prophecy-fulfilment.  That is his primary mode of communicating the Good News of Christ. For example, it has been suggested (by Dale Allison again, see his book, New Moses) that Jesus is a kind of new Moses, delivering his people from slavery into freedom.  The new commandments Jesus gives are framed as a New Torah. Just as Moses went up the mountain to give the Law, so Jesus does so when he gives his "Sermon on the Mount".  The gospel has five distinct discourses given by Jesus, perhaps equivalent to the five books of Torah.  This all to say that Matthew has a profound sense of control over the shaping of his narrative and we need to pay attention to these details, and how he uniquely tells the story.

It is my reading, and I mentioned this in several previous posts, that the character of Satan in the story is trying to stop the crucifixion, for it is the means through which he loses his power and continues to hold the world in slavery.  This is why right up to Jesus' death, as I wrote yesterday, Jesus is being tempted, as he was in the beginning, to put an end to his mission and come down from the cross.  Matthew, perhaps most profoundly amongst the evangelists is intent on showing the victory of the cross most immediately. At the moment of Jesus's death, the resurrection begins, the dead are ransomed from captivity and begin their journey to freedom.  The ground splitting, might just be an echo of the Red Sea parting, as well and the holy ones in the graves might just be the Israelites coming dryshod through the sea. Matthew doesn't wait for the Resurrection of Jesus to proclaim the Resurrection. He gives it to us as part of the crucifixion. Jesus' mission to "save his people" as his very name reveals, is immediately efficacious. Even the centurion at those at foot of the cross (no longer mocking!) proclaim the truth, which was considered blasphemous until now, "Truly this man was God's son!"

May each of you taste the glory of the Resurrection in the Passion of Christ on this holiest of days. A blessed and holy Good Friday to each of you.