Sealed Tombs

Matthew 27:50-66; 28:11-15

A Deep Mystery without Suspense

Matthew takes us into the mystery of Jesus’ cry – the human cry as one abandoned. God takes it into God’s self as Jesus bears human sin and alienation. He knows the absence of God.

We watch in astonishment as no one understands. The disciples don’t anticipate his death and certainly not resurrection, even when Jesus was explicit. The bystanders don’t understand. But Mt doesn’t leave us in suspense. He describes amazing signs pointing to resurrection.

He’s describing something that cannot happen in the ordinary course of events. He is not trying to explain it or document it as an ordinary event, but to give us means to grasp the meaning of this in-breaking of God’s life and future, God’s kingdom, into human life, into our life.

The Cadence of Remembering

Exodus 12:1-17

God establishes a cycle of festivals with the nation of Israel as annual touchstones to remind them of foundational moments in His relationship with them. These moments serve to establish and nurture His children's identity in Him and His love. Similarly, there are foundational moments in the New Testament and in the working out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that form and nurture our identity as Christians. As Jesus is born, lives, ministers, preaches, teaches, and ultimately gives his life within a Hebrew context, the working out of the roles of culture and Gospel as the great news is shared with other nations results in a freedom of observance and expression. Returning annually to salient points in Jesus' ministry, most notably in His incarnation and death/resurrection, establishes a cadence of remembering that works deeper into our hearts and spirits our identity as children of the King. 

The Dark Light of the Cross

Matthew 27:41-54

Into the Darkness
Everything in Mt come together to this point. The scripture anticipation, the teaching, ministry, healing, temple confrontation. It come to this moment, this event. Mt puts it before us with brevity and mystery, challenging us to look deeply. Here is the heart of God. 
Jesus has moved from celebrated prophet, king to one abandoned by all, disciples, leaders, crowds. We watch it happen: betrayal, denial, mocking. But we know who Jesus is. We’ve seen his birth, baptism, transfiguration, authority, power. He’s the very embodiment of God.

“He Saved Others, He Cannot Save Himself”

Matthew 27:32-44

The Skull of Death – The Missing Horror Matthew leads us to the crucifixion of Jesus itself.
We watch as they take him to Golgotha – “Skull” – symbol of death’s finality and hopelessness. We observe Simon of Cyrene, evidently later a disciple. We see the wine and gall. The clothes divided, the casting lots. But where is the crucifixion itself? One word in a subordinate phrase. No nails or thudding hammers, no bloody, weak body, agonizing pain, deep groans, labored breathing. What would I have written? Think of The Passion of the Christ (2004). Mt counts on his readers to know the horror, degradation, and prolonged torture of the cross. See N. T. Wright (*below). Mt leaves out so much and includes such strange little things: Simon, the wine and gall, the clothes, the lots, the watching, the head wagging, the multiple mocking insults. Mt expects a lot of us. So much that he says depends for its power on us knowing the scriptures. He highlights little details in the often-told story that point us to scriptures (esp. Ps 22 & 69). Mt is not writing for history, or even to move us emotionally. He juxtaposes scripture and mockery to force a quandary. What do you see? What’s happening? What would you say?

"What Shall I Do with Jesus?"

Matthew 27:11-31

A Silent Jesus – King, Messiah, Fool?
Mt. lead us through the swirl of events of Passover. The chief priests “handed Jesus over” to Pilate (Roman Prefect for 4 yrs, hated by the Jews, but worked with Caiaphas). This Passover has already seen one insurrection led by a man named Barabbas, charged with killing (a Roman), sure to be crucified with others (Mk 15:7). Now here’s another threat. Really? Caiaphas asked Jesus if he was “Messiah (Anointed king), Son of God,” in Scripture language. Pilate asks the same question in Roman words: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus gives the same reply, but then silence. It’s the core question. What does God’s King look like; do?

“I Don’t Know the Man!”

Matthew 26:63b – 27:10

The Mystery of Jesus
Mt carries us from the night hearing at the High Priest’s house to the capital trial before Pilate. He shows us people who in various ways can’t grasp Jesus, his identity, action, or aim. The HP & council, sure, but also his disciples, Judas and Peter. Jesus is handed over & over, but none know him. Mt wants us to learn. Each interaction challenges knowledge & reflection. Peter’s denials are bracketed by hostile chief priests, despairing Judas, & prophetic judgment. For all, Jesus posed a basic challenge: to imagine and trust a God whose kingdom, power, action are profoundly different from all the ways we humans know & expect power to work. The High Priest and the Remorse of Judas

Is He the One?

Matthew 26:45-66

He’s the One. Seize Him!

In this time of Passover, Jesus has been with his disciples and with God. Things are coming that the disciples can’t yet conceive. Mt wants to help us see reality through the fog of false understanding. Jesus gave his disciples a meal to help them look back on the astonishing events. Among the olive trees he grieved and prayed before the need to drink “the cup”– God’s wrath at sin’s enslavement when humans push God out and live in God’s absence. Now there is misunderstanding and irony at every turn. Who is Jesus? What is happening? On one level it’s just an arrest leading to a Roman cross. We know there’s more. But what?

Coming to the Garden with Jesus

Matthew 26:30-46

The Disciples’ Walk in the Dark
It had been a strange Passover. Jesus told them that one of them would hand him over. He described the bread and wine as his body and blood. After they sang a Passover psalms they left Jerusalem to walk in full-moon night across the Kidron valley. Judas disappeared.
The night was more inside them. Jesus matter-of-factly told them they would all stumble (skandalizein) because of him and cited Zechariah’s words about God striking the shepherd. But he also assured them that he would get up from the blow and lead them to Galilee!

"This is My Body...My Blood"

Matthew 26:20-30

A Passover of Deliverance and Betrayal
It’s the time of the great festival of Israel’s birth as a people, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation (Exo 19:6), of God defeating the oppressive gods of Egypt, of deliverance. But a story with a dark side of betrayal and sin. Israel made a golden calf at Sinai; brought on a new exile of 40 yrs in the wilderness. The betrayal of God’s deliverance continued till sins piled up in the great exiles of Assyria and Babylon. Now the Romans! People longed for a new Exodus.

“What will You Give Me for Jesus?”

Matthew 26:6-22

Seeing Jesus’ Crucifixion and My Place There
Matthew’s final sections focus on the supreme moments of the Gospel: Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Mt doesn’t approach them as doctrines but a events that were complex, astonishing, life-transforming. The whole NT is a quest to grasp their impact and meaning.
These stories were told thousands of times in many forms by eye-witnesses and new believers. Mt (using Mk) leads us through, selecting details to focus on, to help us see, be grasped by what happened. We’re his concern, with a priviledged view, watching many characters.
Jesus is clearly at the center, challenging, mysterious, inviting. We’re behind the scenes too with chief priests and others. We see one-time individuals like the woman whose actions or words reveal something significant. Especially we watch the disciples as they learn, falter, grow. But Mt often challenges our feeling superior to the disciples as the events unfold.

The Difference an End Makes: Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 9:1-18

A Surprising Voice in Scripture – Ecclesiastes / Qoheleth
Last week we focused on Jesus urging us not to be anxious about our lives. This week we hear from one who is deeply anxious about life’s circumstances and meaning. A Teacher (Qoheleth), he speaks sometimes in the character of Solomon, an ideal of wisdom, wealth, and power – and says “Vapor!” His image is not so much that everything is meaningless or absurd but that it is passing. There’s nothing substantial, lasting: Life goes round without clear pattern or reason and then you die.

A New Year’s Message from the Prince of Peace

Matthew 6:24-34

The Challenge of Mammon and Human-size gods
The Prince of Peace (Isa 9:6; Lk 2:14) speaks on a mountain to crowds of poor laborers, farmers, sick people, about the in-breaking of God’s rule. Seek God’s kingdom now! (Mk 1:15; Mt 6:10)
Israel’s ancient prophets attacked idolatry. It was about the people’s desire for human-size gods they can bargain with, get stuff from. It was also about reality. Serve Baal to get fertility and you serve nothing. Self-deception. The one living God is already there freely creating that fertility. But no bargain. God’s purposes are larger than fertility.
Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” Mammon is Aramaic for ‘stuff,’ ‘money,’ ‘what you trust.’ Jesus personifies it as the god who offers to supply all that. Matthew and Luke leave it as a god’s name. Mammon is the practical, powerful, human-size god who promises to provide all and secure all who serve him. He is money, power, sex, intellect, control, family, race, violence, war, progress, greed, etc. He’s the default god of humanity. We anxiously serve without realizing. (David Foster Wallace, “This is Water” 2005).

Proclaiming Peace to Far and Near

Ephesians 2:14-22

Advent: He came with Good News of Peace
Isaiah looked with hope for God’s intervention – a child, Prince of Peace (Isa 9:6). The angel at Jesus’ birth echoed his words: to you is born a baby in a trough, Savior, Messiah, Lord.
What is a Prince of Peace? One who imposes peace – Augustus? Paul’s Advent meditation points to Jesus coming to proclaim peace (Isa 52:7) to those far and near (Isa 57:19).
But Jesus is not just the messenger or a conquering power commanding peace. Paul says Jesus himself is our peace. He’s writing to people in societies of intense conflict, with deep societal divisions and fears: Jew-Gentile, Roman-Greek-other ethnic groups, slave- free, male-female. Acts 19 show explosive fears, superstitions, and conflicts in Ephesus.
Paul had seen the how Jesus (as message and active presence) had brought together Jews, Romans, Greeks, the enslaved, the fearful into a new unity. It was who Jesus is – his life, message, cross, resurrection, Spirit – that embodied a new Adam, human being, the Suffering Servant of Isa 53, and that showed God’s purpose to unite everything in him.

A Guide in the Way of Peace

Isaiah 52:7-10, Luke 1:68,70, 76-79

What Would a Prince of Peace Look Like?
In the context of Advent, the vision of a Prince of Peace may seem obvious. But in Jesus’ time, Augustus Caesar was the great prince of Peace, conquering all: peace under Rome.
Jews chafed under his appointed rulers over the land. God, not Herod or Pilate should rule. Where was Isaiah’s promise: “Your God is King”? When would “the coming one” come?
Jesus’ whole story is that coming (Advent): Birth, ministry, passion, resurrection, all of it. People thought they knew what they were looking for – their own holy, good Augustus. After all, who is a more absolute king than God? They were ready to join the revolution. Jesus comes calling followers to “the Kingdom of God.” What else could it mean?

Longing for a Prince of Peace

Isaiah 9:1-7

Longing for Peace in a Fear-filled World
We focused our Retreat on the call to be Fearless. This Advent season we are centering on one of its most basic, comforting, challenging ideas: Peace. The two interact together. We start from Isaiah’s celebration of the birth of a child (Handel’s Messiah, Isa 9:6). In the NT this passage echoes in Luke’s narrative of Jesus’ birth, in Matthew’s description of the start of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is this “Prince of Peace.” But what does it mean?
Isaiah began prophesying in a time of powers pressing in on Judah (Israel, Syria, Assyria). Peace was a dream. A son is born in the Davidic royal family, possibly Hezekiah born to Ahaz. That child is a symbol of hope in a time of disaster. The prophet gives him the long prophetic name: Pele-yoets El-gibor Aviad Shar-shalom. Like the famous prophecy of a virgin conceiving (Isa 7:14; Mt 1:23), these words had an impact in their own time.