We have awe amnesia. We get so familiar with amazing things that we lose our sense of wonder at them. We do it with our bodies. We’re quick to feel it when they don’t work or begin to creak and age but we take for granted that they work in a million and one amazing ways every day. We forget the wonder of who others are; those God has formed who in some amazing and profound way are made in his image.
We do it with creation as we drive past grass and flower and plants and animals all provided for and growing and co-existing in ways that are held in an astounding balance. We do it as we drive or walk under stars but fail to look up and see distant light that has taken years, and centuries and sometimes even millennia to reach us because God’s creation is just so vast.
And we do it with Easter. We can miss or lose any concept of how vast the impact and scale of the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday really are. But Matthew emphasizes the sheer scale of what God; Father, Son and Spirit are doing and achieving and transforming in a number of ways.
Jesus death transforms relationship with God(50-51). As Jesus cries out in a loud voice and gives up his spirit Matthew stresses that “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” We read that and rush past. But if you were a Jew hearing the news about the temple of the curtain tearing in two you would have gasped out loud. You wouldn’t have been thinking the priests better get their sowing kit out, you’d have been traumatised and terrified.
That huge, heavy curtain hung between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place in the temple. It was both a barrier to keep people out of God’s presence, and a shield to save sinful people from coming face to face with a holy God and being consumed. It was a permanent reminder that God hates sin and is too pure to look on iniquity. That sinful people cannot stand in God’s presence and survive. Only one person once a year could enter and even then only after an elaborate process of making sacrifices for sins and fearfully.
That curtain was like the shielding on a nuclear reactor, or the blast doors that provide protection from explosions or fire.
That curtain, that barrier, that shield, is torn in two from top to bottom. Imagine the confusion and concern for those in Jerusalem, what does it mean? Are we in danger? Will God consume us? How can we relate to God?
Matthew wants his readers to grasp Jesus’ death changes everything. The curtain is torn. Sin no longer separates from God for those who trust Jesus because he has paid for sin and the way to God is open. Jesus is the once for all sacrifice that completes and fulfils all the temple pointed to, it’s no longer necessary and everything is different.
You can imagine friends and family asking the early disciples why they don’t make sacrifices at the temple anymore? Because Jesus death has changed everything. Jesus has dealt with sin once for all, there’s no more atonement necessary. There’s no barrier between them and God, they live life in his presence, right with him, knowing him, enjoying him.
We need to grasp that too! There’s no barrier between us and God. Sin that used to separate us from God is taken away and nailed to the cross. We’re always and forever free to come into God’s presence. Yes, we will sin, but we can come to him and confess it. We don’t have to do penance, or make it up to God, or make sacrifices, striving to fix or be good enough. We can come to God by trusting Jesus made atonement for us, he tore down the barrier, paid for the sin that separated us from God.
We need to apply that in all sorts of ways. Sometimes we struggle to pray because we feel the heavy weight of guilt and shame over past sin, but the torn curtain says atonement has been made. Bring it to God because Jesus has paid for it already.
Sometimes we can default into works mode – I need to do something to make it up to God – we need to call that out for the dangerous lie it is, we only ever need to come to God in Jesus, good works flow from recognising and growing in an understanding of his grace not from trying to earn it.
Easter changes everything for ever, because it fulfils and completes the old way of relating to God and opens up a new way in Jesus and gives us access to God by grace through faith. The curtain is still torn and we can enter by grace.
Jesus death has cosmic consequences for creation(51). At the moment Jesus dies and the curtain is torn there’s an earthquake, so strong that the rocks split and tombs break open. Creation itself responds to the death of its creator. We saw in v45 creation cloaking itself in darkness as the light of the world is extinguished. Now the earth shakes as if in convulsions of grief and horror at what’s happening.
Creation knows and witnesses to, the significance of these events. Creation has been waiting longing to be released from its slavery to sin. Longing for the day when the King will come and end sins rule and bring about the kingdom and it is finally free to praise God in all its reflected glory. And creation recognises these events as that happening. It groans, but it’s groaning in hope for new birth, and recognises it as coming a step closer with Jesus death.
Sin’s rule is defeated. Creation will be freed from its slavery to sin.
As God’s people, disciples of Jesus, we pick up Adam’s call to guard and garden creation. That’s why work has value – because we’re helping the world see God’s glory in a cleaned floor, a working car, a child grasping the beauty and intricacy of the world, a life protected and so on. But we do guard and garden God’s good creation knowing it’s sick with sin. It’s beautiful and it’s broken. It bring moments of great joy and others of immense frustration. And so we care for creation because God calls us to; we guard it, we garden it, so God’s glory is seen, but knowing it will one day be reborn as we will. And Jesus death is good news of all of creation being transformed.
Jesus death means death is defeated(52-53). The earthquake may crack open the tombs. But lots of earthquakes have done that throughout history. But Jesus death and what follows has a far greater significance. The tombs aren’t just broken open and corpses exposed. No “The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” Jesus death changes death itself. Jesus dies and tombs crack open like Easter eggs, and after Jesus resurrection the dead come to life. But not all of them. Who in particular? “many holy people”. That doesn’t mean particularly good people, it’s those who lived and died set apart because they believed in and looked for God’s promised Messiah.
These are the firstfruits of Jesus death and resurrection. Just like first apple or peach or pear or plum, you see on the tree tells you there’ll be more along just like it. So Jesus resurrection, and these resurrections, testify to deaths defeated, and there being resurrection coming for all from the dead in Jesus.
Jesus defeats death and that means death isn’t the end. It changes everything for everyone but in different ways. In a society that believes life is it and after death there’s nothing, Easter gives us better news to tell. There is life after death, death isn’t the end, Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Death no longer needs to terrify.
That resurrection is to bodily life, it’s not reincarnation, you won’t come back to now as a sparrow or a slug or a sea sponge. Death is defeated and resurrection is a reality. That tells us our bodies matter – they are not disposable, they’re not interchangeable. They’re God given and will carry on into eternity but perfected and made new.
Jesus death and resurrection conquer death for everyone. But as Jesus warned his disciples whilst all will rise, some will rise to judgment and condemnation because they won’t accept Jesus. While death may not terrify, we do need to hold on to this truth, all will rise, all will stand before God, and all will face judgment. Whilst this is a joyful hope for those who trust Jesus, it is a horrifying reality for those who won’t, and that ought to motivate us to pray, to live out the gospel in generosity and grace to share the gospel, proclaiming Jesus.
The death of Jesus has cosmic consequences – we can know God in Jesus, creation itself will be transformed and renewed, and death is defeated and there will be a day when resurrection comes and life with God for those who trust Jesus in a new creation.
That has to change the way we relate to God. It has to transform the way we think of creation. It has to transform the way we think of our bodies, death, and life eternal. It has to give urgency to our living out the gospel and speaking the gospel to the world around us.
These are cosmic truths. This isn’t just true for you and me. It’s not just true for those who believe. This is true. Jesus death changes everything for everyone for all of time.