From Sunday to Sunday

In all four Gospels the week of Jesus in Jerusalem at Passover is climactic! (Nearly a third of Mt.) We watch with Mt as Jesus affects both the city and individuals. Mt wants not so much to explain as to show us. We must see Jesus ourselves. Our eyes, minds, hearts are challenged.

The theme of the drama is set at the start: Jesus enacts the prophecy of Zech 9:9 - Yahweh’s salvation comes to Zion as a humble King on a donkey. God’s kingdom breaking in. Yes!

But so much has happened since. Confrontation with the temple, traps by opponents, teaching, prophecy, conspiracy, betrayal, Passover meal, Gethsemane, trial, crucifixion, ... the tomb. Now the women disciples walk past watching guards to see a tomb. Death has conquered.

What Do You See?

Mt led to Jesus’ kingly entry with the story of blind men receiving sight and following Jesus. All that Jesus does is filled with scriptural expectations touching people’s hopes, desires, fears. Always our preconceptions and expectations are present. Peter, James and John, Judas, Mary Magdalene, Chief Priests, Pilate, modern readers: prosperous, oppressed, scholarly, open, skeptical, oblivious. Everyone knows what a king/powerful ruler is. We know what death is.

Jesus comes as a king. Humble, yes, but a king! People, disciples cheer and expect great things. We see our own hopes in him. But it goes wrong. Hopes dashed. Crucify! "We had hoped...." We have ready a universal story of aspiration and broken dreams in which to place Jesus. Jesus knows that human situation: We humans on our own with little, human-sized gods. Jesus takes that experience of broken, alienated humanity into himself all the way to the end.

Seeking The Crucified Jesus

But in the darkness, unseen, before the dawn, something has happened. Jesus has broken the story of brokenness and death. What no one could imagine, what can’t happen, happened. In Jesus God broke death’s grip to create new resurrection life - bodily, empowered by God. The power of all human empires is broken as God’s kingdom of life breaks in.

The Angel rolls back the stone to show that it’s done. Human-power guards are like dead men. The Angel knows that the women expect the tomb but seek Jesus, beyond all expectation. You should not be afraid. He’s not here. He has been raised. He told you, but you couldn’t hear it. Jesus is both past and present and future. He’s ahead of you. Go! Tell! You will see him. The women still live in this world: fear. But they are beginning to see. And great joy breaks over them. The kingdom of God, his true power and Grace, will be seen.

Tell My Brothers and Sisters - They Will See Me!

They run. They meet Jesus. The Angel’s words become solid. They touch, hold, a solid body. They worship in a world transformed. They had sung around the man on the donkey. They listened to his teaching, helped him in every way, despaired as he was condemned, killed. Now nothing will ever be the same. Their former hopes were far too small.

Jesus’ victory has no hint of revenge. "Tell my brothers..." the forsaking, denying disciples. "They will see me!" The priests, Romans, guards, the far away, all are welcomed into new life.

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 Centurion and soldiers are like the magi at Jesus’ birth confessing a truth beyond them.

The Women open our view to the larger group of disciples, the many experiences of Jesus already giving new life (Mary Magdalene). Their faithful following, ministering like Jesus. Mother of James and John (Mt 20:18-28) who learned what it meant to be at Jesus’ right hand. Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, knew the plots as secret disciple.

Alternative Stories

Mt includes the sealing and guarding of the tomb. Jesus’ resurrection was always controversial, with conflicting stories. The alternatives reflect different worlds: what happened and what "must have" happened: the in-breaking of the radically new or a continuation of old powers.

The priests and Pharisees no longer fear Jesus. Death has him. They fear a story that captures people about a power out of their control, a God outside the bounds of temple and ritual. They don’t set seals and guards to keep Jesus in but to keep disciples out. In the "must have" story, death is the end, money is decisive, truth is limited by what we can control or use.

The impossible story is what really happened. It doesn’t fit a constricted, fearful, death-oriented world where people serve money/power rather than a truth that remakes the world.

The World-Changing, Life-Giving Death

Mt helps us by pointing to Scripture, esp. Ezek 37 and Dan 12. Jesus releases the Spirit. Jesus’ clash with the corrupt temple ends as the veil splits: God breaks out among his people.

Earthquake! Boulders split like the veil. Death is conquered; tombs open, bodies are raised. This is God giving life to the dry bones of his people, to all nations. The Messiah’s kingdom rises.

An old story thinks it has won with seals, but God has already split tombs. He rests on the 7th day.

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.

Amy Henegar shares a scripture reflection from John 1:19-38 at our once a month Saturday Evening Service.

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.

We know the mocking is wrong: "Saving ... king ... trust in God ... God’s Son." The darkness that descends seems God’s sign of judgment. But then in that darkness comes the mysterious cry. Foreign! What does it mean? "Thank you Father for judging them"? No. Mt translates and it’s far more horrific. The Son of God forsaken by God!? What can it possible mean?

Mt trusts us to recognize that it’s from scripture: Ps 22:1. But he shows us that the darkness extends to those around the cross. Elijah? Something’s happening. Nobody knows what. Mt refuses to explain. He wants us to look deeply into an event not discuss a doctrine. But he helps us by pointing us, as Jesus did, to scriptures that focus and expand our thoughts.

The Death of God and Humanity

This is the moment the world changes (not Augustus, Constantine, Genghis, Luther, Galileo). Mt has shown us human Jesus as the very embodiment of God - able to show any glory. But what a God! Not simple, static perfection. Complex, dynamic, mysterious ... loving.

Here is God, fully human, crying the cry of human pain, physical, emotional, spiritual: Ps 22.
He lives out and cries out the alienation, grief and suffering of one who truly trusts God but experiences the deep horror human life can have, betrayal, injustice, torture, abandonment. Here are God and humanity, united in one person, in one cry, as God dies a human death.

The Messiah Died for Our Sins

Jesus is drinking the cup he prayed about. This is not God pouring out anger intended for us on innocent Jesus. All the horrors of sin, betrayal, injustice, torture that engulf Jesus flow from us humans pushing God out of our lives and substituting our own gods of power, self- aggrandizement, money, violence, sexual manipulation, racism, control, etc. Our little gods are not God. We force the absence of God, and destroy ourselves with every kind of sin and brokenness (the wrath). Alienated from God, we can’t free ourselves. On the cross God in Jesus drinks that cup. This amazing God takes our alienation from God into God’s own self and opens the door to new life, real forgiveness, reconciliation, union of God and humans.

All the signs that Mt describes point to this. The darkness, earthquake, temple veil all point to a change of the ages, a new relationship with God. The strange resurrections point to the aim: the defeat of death, creation of new life. But, for this moment, there is only dark mystery.

Larry Mudd Communion Meditation focused around the family table, and the table of the LORD.

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 and 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?

The End of Kingdom Hopes! Mockery all Around.

Mt want us to see how obvious it was to everyone that Jesus was a failure: 1. The people passing by (the crowds that cried "Hosanna/ Save us, Son of David" 21:9). What was most ridiculous was the idea that he/we thought he was a king! 2. The priests, scribes, elders, even 3. the anti-Roman insurrectionists crucified beside him. High priest, Pilate, soldiers all saw it. Death, the cross make it obvious. We know what kings look like, big and small. If he had any power he’d use it. He can’t even save himself! How could we have been so hopeful, so fooled!?

Jesus had announced the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. The mockery practically spells out the hopes people had for a king: Messiah, anointed king like David, God’s Son, God’s presence. Embodying his people as "King of the Jews," "King of Israel." The one who would renew the temple as the place where God and humanity meet, now reduced to temple destroyer. The one who would deliver/save his people in a new Exodus, overcoming the power of their sins that locked them in oppression under powerful, deadly empires. All ridiculous! It ends here.

The Undertow of God

Except! Scripture and the story of Jesus have been training us to look deeper. Within the story of mockery and defeat are the little echoes of Psalms pointing to God’s surprise deliverance. Even when Jesus is most powerless, his role in God’s great story is unfolding step by step.

Jesus is living out his own teachings, the way to which he called disciples. He is living and dying the astonishing way of God’s self-giving, self-emptying love. Can I see it? Do I mock or love?

[*N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion, 2016. pp 54-55.]

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?

Pilate comes to the question, "What shall I do with Jesus?" (v 22). Jesus is the object of others’ actions. He’s handed over. Judas, Peter, Priests, Pilate, crowds, soldiers, all do something with him. Mt asks us if we can see what Jesus is doing - through them, for them, for us.

Conflicting Power Plays

Pilate likely from spies knows about Jesus’ popular following this Passover - a threat to temple or Rome? He knows the priests’ fear. He wants to execute Barabbas without more uproar. He decides to play Jesus as popular Messiah to get the crowds to approve Barabbas’ death. Two Joshuas: Jesus Barabbas (Fatherson) and Jesus called "Messiah" - he uses their term.

But the chief priests see an opening. They know how much the crowds hate Rome and Pilate and push Barabbas to the crowds, thwarting Pilate. Throngs that cried "Hosanna!" now are ready to destroy Jesus. Pilate tries to play on their hope for a Messiah, but it doesn’t work.

Rituals of Irresponsibility

In all this Mt lets us see that everyone knows that Jesus is innocent of all charges his accusers brought. He’s not destroying the temple, setting up a Jewish kingdom to overthrow Rome, raising an insurrection army - all things that Barabbas likely did. But on a deeper level he also is absolutely guilty: He is indeed Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, King of the Jews!

Pilate’s wife sends a fearful message from a nightmare she’s had about Jesus. Pilate, the only one with real Roman power here, sees he can’t gain an advantage and pretends he’s not responsible by washing his hands. Mt echoes Judas’ betrayal. Still he hands Jesus over.

The manipulated crowds, the least responsible, take his blood on them, executing a blasphemer. By Mt’s day the negative side had been played out in Jerusalem’s destruction. But Mt also wants us to see another side: Jesus’ "blood of the covenant" on "the people" like the blood of the Passover lamb, the sign of God overcoming death and forgiving the sins of all people.

Finally we see Jesus with Rome’s soldiers, who know power. For them Jesus is a ridiculous fool. Mt. sees Israel’s Suffering Servant. Crucifixion begins. Under mockery, God empties himself.

Kyle Swann, our MDiV student intern from Princeton Seminary, brings us a message on the transformative power of the cross in the life of Paul.

Amy Henegar shares a scripture reflection from John 1:1-18 at our first Saturday Family Worship gathering.