By Keith Dyer
Professor of NT, Whitley College, University of Melbourne
Whether or not we follow the lectionary in our worship and preaching, it isspiritually enriching for us to let each Gospel speak on its own terms about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.Each distinctive Gospel account has its own validity and profound theology, and each was endorsed by the earliest churches as ‘Living Word of God long before they were brought together into the NT canon. Trying to ‘harmonise the four Gospel accounts by mixing up the Easter readings or merging the details misses the point altogether ¢â‚¬” you can only have harmony if the parts are kept separate and distinctive! So we are focusing here on what is distinctive about Matthew’s Easter narrative, assuming that we all know the basic story the four Gospels give us of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem. We are familiar with John’s Jesus organising his own arrest, carrying his own cross, fulfilling prophecies one by one and announcing his own death. We remember well the three distinctive sayings from the cross of Luke’s Jesus. And how can we forget Jesus’ haunting cry of dereliction as he dies alone in Mark’s account? But what stands out for us in Matthew’s story?
Somewhat surprisingly ¢â‚¬” given the wonderfully creative re-shaping of Mark’s Gospel in the rest of Matthew ¢â‚¬” Matthew stays very close to Mark’s account in all major respects. There are no new words of Jesus from the cross, just that same haunting cry of God forsakenness. Yes, it is from the first verse of the lament Psalm 22, which like nearly all lament Psalms finishes on a note of praise, but let’s not allow the hopeful ending cancel out the necessary grieving and lament from this story ¢â‚¬” or from our worship! We do well to allow our community to reflect on the reality of death on Good Friday without rushing prematurely to the good news of Easter Sunday.
Matthew does, however, have some very distinctive (and sometimes bizarre!) additions to Mark’s Easter account. This is a very brief and biased summary, so I heartily recommend that you get hold of David Neville’s excellent article in St Mark ¢â‚¬â„¢s Review (forthcoming), on preaching Matthew for a longer and more balanced overview.
An un-triumphant Palm Sunday (the ¢â‚¬Ëœking ¢â‚¬â„¢ on a donkey . . . or two!).
Every Passover, the Romans would make sure they had extra troops positioned in the Antonia fortress next to the Temple compound, just in case trouble broke out as the population of Jerusalem swelled with all the pilgrims. Can you hear those troops on the city walls laughing as Jesus makes his entry? Do you think the might of Rome would be threatened by a motley band of followers surrounding someone on a donkey and foal, no matter how much noise they made? Somehow we still call this “The Triumphant Entry ¢â‚¬Å¸ ¢â‚¬” forgetting that Matthew omits that very line from his quotation of Zechariah: ¢â‚¬Å“triumphant and victorious is he ¢â‚¬ (Zech 9:9 cf. Mt 21:5). Matthew forces us to consider carefully: What is the nature of Jesus’ “triumph ¢â‚¬Å¸ and “victory ¢â‚¬Å¸? What is the nature of the power of the empire of heaven, compared with the empires of this world?
Model worship (get those noisy kids out of there!?)
When Jesus eventually enters the Temple in Matthew, we find extraordinary scenes taking place. Whereas in Mark, the emphasis is on Jesus judging the Temple, Matthew goes further in painting a picture of what the Temple as a place of prayer should look like (Mt 21:14-16) ¢â‚¬” and it’s full of the blind, the lame, children and nursing mothers! Breast-feeding in God’s Holy Place, children crying out, disabled people!! I don’t think we need to argue for the historicity of Matthew’s account when he’s filling out these details ¢â‚¬” he is presenting truths far more profound than mere history: not so much ‘what happened’ but what should and will happen when God’s Messiah restores true worship (‘perfect praise’) . . . and it’s astonishingly inclusive and noisy!
Cleansing blood (for the release/forgiveness of sins)
Matthew is the Gospel that explores most profoundly the shedding-of-blood language in the Easter events (26:28; 27:4,25). The ‘blood of the covenant’ (see Ex 24:8) is poured out expressly for ‘the release/forgiveness of sins (only in Mt), which means that the dreadful words ‘his blood be upon us and our children’ (Mt 27:25) are not just words of judgment, but also of hope!
This particular focus on the blood imagery should be no surprise to us, given the Jewish context of Matthew. What is surprising, perhaps, is that this has become for some almost the only way to describe the significance of the death of Jesus. In Luke the emphasis is on the efficacy of the death of the innocent martyr (Lk 23:47); in John the lifting up in glory of the Divine Son (Jn 3:13-18); and in Mark the supreme example of the suffering Son of Humanity (Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:32-3). There are riches here that we do well to explore in our preaching, lest our people tire of repeatedly seeing the Gospel only through bloodshot eyes. Let’s appreciate the distinctive understandings without collapsing them all into one.
The turning of the ages (zombies in Jerusalem?)
The events that follow the tearing of the Temple curtain in Matthew are ones we usually try to skip over (Mt 27:51b-53). Again, I think we miss the point if we try to make historical or chronological sense of this vivid imagery. The earthquake in Matthew (8:24; 27:51; 28:2) indicates Divine intervention into human history and another level of significance altogether (hypertext!). Jesus’ death and resurrection is nothing short of the beginning of the Messianic Age, which ushers in the long awaited corporate resurrection of the dead. Paul talks of ‘the firstfruits of the resurrection of the corpses’ (1Cor 15:23); Matthew here has a much more graphic way of saying the same thing.
SO much more could be said, but may you and your community experience the ‘real presence’ of Jesus who for Matthew is God-with-us (Immanuel, Mt 1:23; 28:20) all our days until the fulfillment of the age (Mt 28:20).
Discussion
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