Praying Even When Feeling Abandoned

My Sunday School teacher from my Middle School days, Tom Jansen, loved to retell today’s passage with a lot of dramatic flair. Mr. Jansen was a Kansas State Trooper. We knew he’d had a rough shift, if he was waiting for us in the classroom still wearing his uniform & had 3 Styrofoam cups of coffee lined up in front of him. (He joked that he was one of the most romantic men in the state of Kansas, because “when anyone saw him in his car, their heart skipped a beat.”)

He especially loved to open the floor for discussion about challenging passages like today’s 27:51-53, where the earth shook, the rocks split, & the graves opened. He joked that he was told that no one would be dumb enough to open a conversation on these verses with a bunch of middle-schoolers. He replied, “Oh, you underestimate me. I am that dumb.”

So, in tribute to Mr. Jansen’s “stupidity,” let’s take a look at several ways of interpreting one of the most mysterious passages from Matthew’s Gospel:

Literal – It is entirely possible that Matthew is documenting the actual events that occurred that original Good Friday afternoon. It makes sense that with the death of the Son of God, there would be a cosmic upheaval that disrupts the natural order & causes many saints to be resurrected en masse. If this is so, then this would be one of the first break-out sessions I’d attend in heaven where God explains everything in the Scriptures. (The PowerPoint slides would be epic!)

Symbolic – Perhaps Matthew describes the raising of the saints as a spiritual victory over death & the earthquakes were a sign that a creation-changing event had occurred. These sentences were meant to symbolically create a dramatic image that emphasizes that God’s Kingdom is in transition.

Theological – Remembering that Matthew is writing his Gospel for his fellow Jews, perhaps he’s deliberately invoking these images to help his friends link the sacrifice of Christ to passages/prophecies in the Hebrew Bible:

• The temple’s curtain being torn in two would be significant to a Jewish reader. It would remind them that the veil separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place (Exodus 26) & that only the High Priest could pass through the curtain on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). This would indicate that Jesus’ sacrifice allows us to access God directly.
• The earth shaking & the rocks splitting would remind the Jewish faithful of when “Mount Sinai trembled as God descended” (Exodus 19), or the “mountains quaking before the Lord” (Nahum 1), or the “earth shaking at God’s anger” (Psalm 18). This snippet would emphasize God’s powerful presence in Creation & the cosmic moment of judgment & redemption.
• The opening of the tombs & saints being raised would echo Hebrew prophecies like Ezekiel 37 where it is promised that “graves would be opened & believers would be brought up” or Isaiah 26’s the “earth will give birth to the dead.” Matthew could be emphasizing that this is the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promises.

One could argue that in these few sentences that Matthew is making the case that the Law, the Prophets, & all of Israel’s greatest hopes & desires all converged at the cross. This wasn’t an accident of history, but rather a fulfillment of God’s ancient promises.

So, this Easter weekend as we sing Charles Wesley’s hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today“ perhaps when we reach the stanza, “Made like Him, Like Him we rise,” we’ll think of Matthew’s passage & rejoice that Jesus has triumphantly vanquished the mystery of death for all His believers. (My Uncle contended that this was the hardest song to sing in the entire hymnal, because you always want to shout the lyrics.)

We’ll wrap up with one of Mr. Jansen’s favorite stories. He was going through the examination phase of being a trooper & was asked by the instructor, “What would you do if you caught your own Mother speeding?” Tom replied, “Well, first, I’d call for back-up.”