January 26, 2014: Matthew Chapter 28

The Gospel According to Matthew Chapter 28

Originally posted on Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Matthew Chapter 28:1-20  Resurrection Day

As the death of Jesus called forth signs and wonders so does his rising from death. Earthquakes, bright lights, and angels with messages are part of the ancient language of the end of the old age and the beginning of the new. For Matthew the cross marks the point of crossing. Jesus has crossed over from the physical realm of humanity to the spiritual realm of God. From now on Jesus will be the Christ of faith, spiritually present to all who believe. He will be with the church empowering its mission and message, its hope and its future. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.

Mary Magdalene and another Mary become the first to believe and to be proclaimers of the risen Christ. They are the first Apostles, so fitting in a Gospel that honors the role of women in forwarding God's work in the world. Even in their fear they are the first to encounter in their spirits a living Christ whose continuing presence cannot be held hostage by death. The disciples will listen to these women. They will travel to Galilee, to home. They will hear of their new commission to baptize and make disciples in all nations, among all peoples. Throughout the rest of their lives they will know with a certainty that defys logic, that there is one who walks with them, that one who will say to them over and over, in the hidden voice of the heart, "Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Resurrection is how we speak of the inward recognition of the ongoing spiritual presence of Christ in the world, continuing to do the work of God through the Church. The discussion of a physical versus spiritual resurrection speaks more to the concerns we have about our own existence beyond the grave. It is not the subject of the Gospel. For Matthew the resurrection of Jesus serves first as a vindication of Jesus' ministry and his message of the Kingdom of God as already beginning yet still to be fulfilled. For Matthew, Jesus, now the exalted Christ of faith, is the Son of Man who will return to judge humanity. For Matthew resurrection releases the spirit of Christ into the Church and empowers its missionary enterprise.

For some the language may be strange. We struggle to find our own words. How can we appropriate a first century world view and make it our own? Perhaps we need to ask why we count ourselves among those who make up the Christian community in which we now worship and serve. Why are we here? This is not the Rotary or Kiwanis. This place has drawn us to be a part of something we sense to be bigger than we are. This place speaks to something in our spirit. We want to be open to a God we cannot comprehend. We want to sense that what we do here has meaning beyond our limited perspective. So we listen to the language of yesterday and it speaks of the man, Jesus, who died and that somehow there were those who experienced  his presence as still available, still teaching, still calling people like us to follow him, to do for the world what God sent him to do. Maybe that's it! Maybe the resurrection experience is our recognition of a subtle and living presence that speaks to us in Word and Table and coaxes us to know what it means to do God's works of justice, mercy and compassion, where we are, now. Maybe we really do want to have something happen within our soul that is so compelling that we cannot help but let our heart overflow in kindness. Resurrection. That which is Christ intersecting with that longing within us to bring that Kingdom, that Reign of God just one step closer to reality. Resurrection. Jeus says, "Follow me."

Almost 2000 yeas ago a band of men and women experienced something that changed them, that moved them to live and act in a way that would cost many their families and their  lives. They were willing to move and to act in a dangerous world that rejected them. They did it because a Galilean carpenter walked their way and invited them to walk with him. He captured their imagination and opened up life's possibilities as agents of God in a Godless world. Did they do any good? Did they make a difference? Was it all worth it? Well, here we are, this Wednesday, February 6th, in the year 2008, and we are reading about them, and about the Jesus who called them. I guess we really do understand Resurrection.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notes

1) I have used Palestine/Palestinian a number of times while writing these chapter commentaries. While the first thought that might come to our minds is the modern usage of the term as a place where Palestinians live, its meaning in Biblical references is not the same. Palestine (Latin Palestina) describes the Roman province roughly within the borders of ancient Israel. The word itself is a Latin translation of the Greek word Palaistine from the Hebrew Pelesheth or Philistia, Land of the Philistines.

2) The story of the discipes coming in the night to steal Jesus' body was spread among both Jews and Gentiles. During the first several centuries, before Christianity became the religion of the Empire under Constantine, that story was a favorite way to refute the claims of Christian teaching that they served a risen Christ.

3) The belief in a general resurrection of the dead on a day of judgment was a relatively new idea in Judaism. Its first unambiguous appearance is in the Book of Daniel, written near 164-67 BCE during the Hellenistic Syrian oppression of Israel. By Jesus' time it was taught by the Pharisees and the Essenes but rejected by the Sadducees. In the Roman Oppression and grinding poverty of Jesus' time, such a belief offered hope for a new age in which the oppressor would be vanquished, and an age of abundance would dawn.