The Crucifixion-Matthew 27

“When they had crucified him…” (Mt 27:35a). Since this is Easter time, we’ll jump from The Beginning (Matthew 1) to The Crucifixion (Matthew 27).

“Why did Jesus have to die?” (powerpoint) is the impossible question this Easter sermon will attempt to answer. I’ve rarely liked Easter sermons, because some seem simplistic and shallow, rehashed and recycled, predictable and formulaic, while the Easter sermon should be inexhaustible, fresh and mysterious, and yet would not be complete because it’s scope and dimensions covers the cosmos and all of life. No matter how much I try to explain the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ, so much more can be said that was not said. So I’ve always asked others to preach at Easter. This year, I’m giving it a shot, and do I feel a heavy burden to just barely skim the surface of explaining the death of my Lord Jesus. Despite my inadequacy, may God reveal to you the mystery, majesty and marvel of the death of Jesus.

Jesus was tried and condemned by the chief priests, scribes, and elders under the cover of night (26:57-68). They now bring to light what was done in darkness in order to confirm their previous unjust judgment. They play an old and well-established game: Jesus must be guilty, because he is now under arrest. The very fact that he is to be handed over to Pilate confirms their judgments against him. Those in prison must deserve to be in prison because they are in prison.

Jesus must die. The chief priests and elders are unrelenting in their desire to bring about Jesus’s death (Mt 27:1). It is not enough that he has been beaten and ridiculed. He must be killed. Yet the right to kill belongs to Rome. So the chief priests and elders hand him over to Pilate the governor (Mt 27:2). Jesus’s fate will be determined by a Gentile, a minor official of Rome, who has the responsibility to keep order among a troublesome people. Pilate’s name plays a crucial role in Christian theology. In the Apostles’ Creed we affirm that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

John 1:11. Israel’s life was always intertwined with the lives of other people and nations. She could not escape from the world. After Babel, she was called, through Abraham, to be a people to dwell among the peoples of the world so that they might witness to the holiness of God. Israel was seldom in control of its fate. Often she was subject to more powerful nations. But she learned to survive. Survival sometimes was but a word for unfaithfulness. Jesus came to offer Israel more than survival. He offered her redemption. But he was handed over by the chief priests and elders to Pilate (Mt 27:1-2; Jn 1:11). Representatives of Israel use the powers of the world for their own ends but they cannot avoid being used in return.

Judas, like Peter, has witnessed Jesus’s condemnation. For reasons Matthew does not disclose, Judas changed his mind about what he had done. He brings back to the chief priests and elders the 30 pieces of silver, confessing, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Mt 27:3-4a). Judas tries to be faithful to the law, using Dt 27:25: “Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood.” Judas attempts to undo what cannot be undone. What he has done cannot be undone because those with whom he is dealing do not understand the forgiveness that Jesus enacts.

That’s your responsibility. “What is that to us? See to it yourself” (Mt 27:4b). Judas is but a minor player in a larger game. Ironically, the very words that the chief priests and elders use in response to Judas will also be used by Pilate to place the responsibility of Jesus’s death on the “whole people” (Mt 27:24–25). Judas is caught in a decision with consequences so dark that he cannot comprehend how he can continue to live. He hangs himself (Mt 27:5).

Did Judas repent? Some in the Christian tradition wonder if Judas’s so-called repentance means that he escaped damnation. Such speculation focuses on Judas rather than on the one Judas betrayed. What Judas did is not beyond Jesus’ forgiveness. The last word about Judas or us is not ours to determine because the last word has been said in the crucifixion. The challenge is not whether Jesus’s forgiveness is good, but whether any of us, Judas included, are capable of facing and acknowledging that, given the opportunity, we would be willing to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Sad irony. Judas threw the 30 pieces of silver into the temple (Mt 27:5). But the chief priests observe that it is not lawful to put the money into the treasury because it is “blood money” (Mt 27:6). The chief priests who have no difficulty conspiring to put an innocent man to death become quite concerned about what to do with the money they regard as tainted. The law is used not for the priests to change their lives, but to keep up appearances. Jesus’ depiction of the “blind guides” whose primary concerns are with the externals of the law is confirmed by the way the chief priests and elders deal with the blood money (Mt 23:16–22).

Prophecy fulfilled. After conferring together, the chief priests and elders agree to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury strangers and foreigners (Mt 27:7-8). To Matthew the prophecy of Jeremiah in buying a field during the siege of Jerusalem was fulfilled (Jer 32:6–15). However, Matthew uses Zech 11:13 concerning the shepherd’s disposing of the 30 pieces of silver to indicate how the prophecy of Jeremiah comes to fruition (Mt 27:9-10). Even the process of having him killed results in the fulfillment of what he has come to do. Just as there can be no church without the continuing presence of the people of Israel, so there can be no Israel without the church.

“Are you the King?” Jesus is subject not only to the chief priests and elders, but also to Rome in the person of Pilate the governor, who asks him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (Mt 27:11a) Jesus is called the son of David. He accepted that title after cleansing the temple and curing the blind and the lame in the temple (Mt 21:14–17). Pilate’s question is a question from a Gentile and a state official. He does not ask if Jesus is the son of David, but if he is the king of the Jews. He wants to know if Jesus may be a rival to Herod. It would never occur to Pilate that, in reality, Jesus is a rival to Caesar!

“You say so” [You have said so] (Mt 27:11b), Jesus answers Pilate with the same answer he gave Judas in response to Judas’s attempt to hide his betrayal with the rhetorical “surely not I?” (Mt 26:25) Jesus also gave the same response when the high priest demanded that he say whether he is the Son of God (Mt 26:64). “You say so” is a response that confounds those, including the representative of Rome, who would have Jesus condemn himself. He is a king, but his kingship is not one that Pilate can recognize. Pilate’s inability to understand the politics of Jesus (how Jesus rules) does not mean that Jesus is any less a threat to Rome. Rather, it means that the politics that Jesus represents is a more radical threat to Rome than Rome is capable of recognizing.

The chief priests and elders come to Pilate’s aid, making accusations against Jesus (Mt 27:12). Matthew does not tell us what the accusations are. But they are clever men. They recognize that a representative of Rome cares little that Jesus claimed to have a special relation to God the Father. Nor would Rome have any concern about Jesus’ prophecy concerning the temple. Rome wants order. Pilate doesn’t care to settle arguments between the people of Israel. Indeed he has no reason or interest to help the chief priests and elders kill Jesus.

Jesus remained silent, as he had earlier when accused by the chief priests and elders. Pilate is disposed to come to his aid. He asks Jesus if he does not hear their many accusations against him. Yet just as Jesus had not responded to the chief priests and elders, he remains silent before Pilate, answering not one of the charges made against him (Mt 27:13-14). His silence was described by Isaiah 53:7.

When power crucifies truth. Not to answer the chief priests and elders is one thing. It is quite another to remain silent before Pilate. Jesus now confronts the power of Rome. That power–the power of the old age–has no capacity to acknowledge the truth that comes as a suffering servant. That power is exposed and rendered futile by the coming of the Son of God. Jesus’ silence before Pilate is the sign of the end of the power that the Pilates of the world represent. Pilate’s power will crucify Jesus, but “when power crucifies truth, it signals to all the world that it has come to its effective end” (Lehmann 1975, 66).

A community of peace made possible by the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is silent because he is the new order of truth on which a community of peace is possible. A community of peace is possible only when order does not rest on lies and injustice. When a community built on lies and injustice is confronted by a community of peace a battle must ensue (Bonhoeffer). For there to be any community of peace there must be the forgiveness of sins. There is a community of peace for Christians because one will forgive the other for their sins (Bonhoeffer). The peace made possible by forgiveness is the peace of God, which challenges all that claim to provide peace yet are based on the denial of God.

The silence of truth is required when confronted by an order built on lies and injustice. Jesus’ silence before Pilate is the silence of the church whenever it is faithful to the witness of Jesus before those who would tempt us to confuse order with peace. Jesus’ silence before Pilate is the silence necessary to unmask the pretensions of those who would have us believe that the violence they call justice is the only alternative we have to chaos. Jesus submits to Pilate, but his submission subverts Pilate’s authority. Such is the power of truthful silence.

The one to die is in control of the one in authority. The governor was “greatly amazed” (Mt 27:14b). Pilate, like the crowds who heard Jesus’ teaching and witnessed his cures, is amazed. He has not encountered one such as this before. He is used to dealing with the chief priests and elders, who seek to accommodate him in the interest of sustaining their positions. But Pilate has nothing that Jesus wants. Jesus does not even ask Pilate for his life. Pilate stands helpless before the one to die, making apparent that he is the one in captivity.

Refusing to choose. Pilate seems to be rescued from having to kill Jesus to please the chief priests and elders by the custom that during Passover the governor should release a prisoner for the crowd (Mt 27:15). Pilate has Jesus Barabbas, a notorious prisoner, brought out to give the crowd the choice of releasing or crucifying Jesus or Barabbas (Mt 27:16). The crowd is gathered and Pilate asks whom they want released (Mt 27:17). Pilate pits Jesus against Barabbas, hoping to confound the chief priests and elders because Pilate knew that they had handed Jesus over out of jealousy (Mt 27:18). Pilate seems to have thought the crowd would ask him to release Jesus rather than Barabbas.

Pilate’s wife has reported to him that she has suffered from a dream she has had about Jesus (Mt 27:19). Pilate has a further motivation to seek the release of Jesus. Like Joseph’s dream about Mary (Mt 1:20) and the wise men’s dream about Herod (Mt 2:12), Pilate’s wife had a dream that told her that Jesus is an “innocent man.” She sends word to Pilate that he is to have nothing to do with Jesus. Pilate’s wife, unlike Herodias, does not desire Jesus’s death. Yet the outcome is the same, caught as they are in a politics of death.

Pilate is unable to heed his wife’s advice. The chief priests and elders have been working the crowd gathered before Pilate. They persuaded the crowd to ask Pilate to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus (Mt 27:20). So when Pilate asks the crowd who they would have him release, they ask for Barabbas (Mt 27:21). Pilate does not think that to be the end of the matter, so he asks them what he should do with “Jesus who is called the Messiah” (Mt 27:22a). This time Pilate does not identify Jesus as the king of the Jews, but identifies Jesus in a manner that the people of Israel would recognize–Jesus called the Messiah. He is careful not to say he is the Messiah. He says only that he is “called” the Messiah.

Crucify him! The crowd is unrelenting. They shout, “Let him be crucified!” (Mt 27:22b) Pilate is puzzled. He asks the crowd why they would have Jesus killed, since he has done anything evil. But they shouted “all the more, ‘Let him be crucified!’” (Mt 27:23) We cannot help but wonder if any who called for Jesus’s crucifixion were among those who heard him deliver the Sermon on the Mount, heal the lame, deaf, and blind, or dispute with the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes.

Crowds don’t know how to think for themselves. They are fickle and untrustworthy because they depend on opinion. During his ministry, Jesus has had compassion on the crowd, but he knows not to trust the crowd (Jn 2:24). Jesus taught that if anyone would follow him they must take up their cross and follow him (Mt 10:37–39). The alternative to the crowd not knowing how to think for oneself is to be a follower of Jesus. There are ways to escape from the crowd by learning to be autonomous. But Jesus’s call to discipleship is the alternative to the crowd and to our attempts to escape from the crowd on our own.

Avoid responsibility. Pilate, the governor appointed by Rome, cannot escape the crowd. He sees that he can do nothing to avoid doing what the crowd desires, i.e., to crucify Jesus. A riot is beginning (Mt 27:24a). Pilate fears a riot worse than he fears the injustice of killing an innocent man. In the process of condemning Jesus, Pilate now wishes to free himself of any responsibility. He asks for some water and before the crowd, following the procedures outlined in Dt 21:1–9 for absolving guilt of one who finds a body outside of the city limits (either murdered or killed by beasts), Pilate washes his hands, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves” (Mt 27:24b). Now the crowd, the chief priests, and the elders are in the same position as Judas was when he tried to undo what he had done to Jesus: “See to it yourself” (Mt 27:25). Jesus will die (Mt 27:26). That has never been in doubt. But John Milbank rightly asks:

Who then really killed Jesus and why? And why did Jesus submit to this? The only consistent thread in these narratives is that Christ was constantly handed over, or abandoned to another party. Judas betrayed his presence; the disciples deserted him; the Sanhedrin gave him up to Pilate; Pilate again to the mob who finally gave him over to a Roman execution, which somehow, improperly, they co-opted. Even in his death, Jesus was still being handed back and forth, as if no one actually killed him, but he died from neglect and lack of his own living space. (Milbank 2003, 82) The response of the people to Pilate’s gesture to free himself from responsibility for Jesus’s death is “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Mt 27:25) This has been used by Christians through the centuries to blame Jews for Jesus’ death. Many Christians named Jews “Christ killers” and treated them as murderers. Matthew’s identification of “the people as a whole,” moreover, has made it difficult to deny that it is not just the crowd or the elites that are guilty but all of Israel.

Who killed Jesus, however, cannot be determined by any one text. It is unclear from the gospels and especially from Matthew who killed Jesus. Matthew, from the beginning, writes his gospel in which we cannot avoid being (1) a disciple of Jesus, (2) one of the elites, or (3) a member of the crowd. The answer to the question of who killed Jesus, therefore, is that we all killed Jesus. The disciples killed Jesus by deserting him. The crowd killed Jesus because they were a crowd. The elites of Israel killed Jesus because they feared his call to holiness. Pilate killed Jesus because he had the responsibility to maintain order. “The people as a whole” killed Jesus because they had nothing better to do. We all killed and continue to kill Jesus. So let us all say that “his blood be on us and on our children!”

Jesus must be killed because Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus must be killed because Jesus has called into existence a new people who constitute a challenge to the world order based on lies and deceit. Jesus must be killed because he is a threat to all who rule in the name of safety and comfort. Jesus must be killed because we do not desire to have our deepest desires exposed. Jesus must be killed because we do not want our loves governed by his love. Jesus must be killed because we refuse to forgive our enemies. Jesus must be killed because we do not believe in a God who creates us and who would come among us after our likeness.

Why flog Jesus? Degrade and humiliate him before killing him? Pilate releases Barabbas and, after having Jesus flogged, hands Jesus over to be crucified (Mt 27:26). Why did Pilate have Jesus flogged? Why did Pilate hand Jesus over to his soldiers who would degrade him as Caiaphas and the scribes had done after they had supposedly tried him? Matthew does not tell us why Pilate had Jesus flogged or handed over to the soldiers, but surely one of the reasons is to preserve the humanity of those who will kill Jesus. They are going to kill an innocent man. It, therefore, becomes all the more important that he go to the cross degraded and unrecognizable as a human being. It is easier to kill those who have been literally stripped of all humanity before they are subjected to death. Those doing the killing, therefore, are able to comfort and delude themselves with the thought that they do only the inevitable.

Cruelty beyond belief. The soldiers of Pilate are more creative than the high priest and elders. They can be so because they are innocent of the traditions and hopes of Israel. They strip Jesus, cover him with a scarlet robe, crown him with a crown of thorns, put a reed in his right hand, and kneel before him, mocking him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” (Mt 27:27-29) They literally do not know what they do, but what they have done is acknowledge that this is a king who has come to serve rather than to be served. Their cruelty seems beyond belief. They were incapable of recognizing their cruelty even as they degraded the one who is the very embodiment of kindness. It is not at all clear that we, people who think we are civilized, would have done any better.

Mocking, spitting, striking. They mock Jesus, spitting on him and striking him on the head (Mt 27:30). But they tire of this game, so they strip him of the robe of scarlet, put his own clothes back on him, and lead him away to be crucified (Mt 27:31). Jesus is abandoned. Jesus is alone. Jesus says nothing. Jesus endures. This is not what he wants, but it is what the Father wills. The Son must suffer so that we might not only know, but be participants, in the life made possible by Jesus. This is what the Father has desired since Adam and Eve betrayed their creator. The sadness we feel in the face of Jesus’s suffering is wonderfully captured by Paul Gerhardt’s great hymn: O sacred Head, now wounded…

Forced to carry the cross. On their way to crucify Jesus the soldiers come upon a man from Cyrene named Simon and compel him to carry Jesus’s cross (Mt 27:32). Simon does not get to volunteer. He is compelled to carry the cross by the soldiers who will crucify Jesus. To be compelled to carry Jesus’s cross is not a result that Jesus’s cross is meant to achieve. Jesus has invited us to take up our cross, but he does not compel us to do so. Yet to be so compelled, to receive the gospel under coercive conditions, does not mean that the gospel has not been received. It is surely a judgment on the churches of mainstream Protestantism in America that the most nearly faithful form of Christianity among us came to those in slavery.

They came to a place called Golgotha, which Matthew tells us, means “Place of a Skull” (Mt 27:33). We are given no reason why it was so named, but the name does justice to the evil work that will be done there. The soldiers offer Jesus wine, mixed with gall, to drink, but when he tastes it he will not drink it (Mt 27:34), echoing Ps 69:21, where the persecuted was given vinegar to drink. Matthew’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus is suffused with echoes of the Psalms and, in particular, Ps. 22. Some may wonder if Matthew is forcing the crucifixion to correspond to these psalms. That very suggestion, however, fails to recognize that Jesus is God’s psalm for the world. It is not an accident that the Psalms became the hymnal of the church. When we pray them, we pray Jesus.

“When they had crucified him” (Mt 27:35a)—what more can be said? Matthew does not elaborate. All we need to know is that Jesus is crucified. He is nailed to a cross. That cross is the icon of God. Christians presume that we can follow Jesus without suffering. But we confront the stark fact that he was crucified.

Why did Jesus have to die? Why did he have to die on a cross? He had to die on a cross because that is the way Romans executed those they regarded as a threat to their interest. Hang them high so that all could see what happens when one challenges Rome. But ultimately he died on a cross to reveal the heart of God. The cross is where God’s life crosses our life to create a life otherwise unimaginable. It is the forgiveness of the cross. “The medieval image of God’s forgiveness was the flowering of the cross. The cross is the ugly sign of torture. But the artists of the Middle Ages showed this cross flowering on Easter Sunday. The dead wood put out tendrils and flowers. Forgiveness makes the dead live and the ugly beautiful.” (Timothy Radcliffe 2004, 11–12)

The cross is not a symbol to explain inexplicable suffering. One does not need Jesus to explain or to contain our rage when faced by the tragedies of the world. Rather, Jesus’s cross is his alone, making possible a people who do not need an explanation for inexplicable suffering. Love, not explanation, is required when faced by the tragedies of life. Our task, a task made possible as well as demanded by the cross, is not to turn away but to be present to one another when there is quite literally nothing we can do to save ourselves.

Why did Jesus have to die? Christians have developed explanations for why Jesus had to die called atonement theories. For eg., some suggest that Jesus had to die as a satisfaction for our sin, to serve as a moral exemplar for us, or to defeat the devil and the powers that have revolted against their creator. There is scriptural warrant for each of these accounts of Jesus’s death, but these theories risk isolating Jesus’s crucifixion from his life. Matthew’s gospel, Matthew’s story of Jesus’s mission to Israel, Matthew’s understanding of discipleship, Matthew’s description of the beginnings of the church—all climax in the death of Jesus.

Jesus’ death cannot be isolated from his life, because his death is the result of his life. He died because he had challenged the elites of Israel who used the law to protect themselves from the demands of God; he died because he challenged the pretentious power of Rome; and he died at the hands of the democratic will of the mob. He died because he at once challenged and offered an alternative to all forms of human polity based on the violence made inevitable by the denial of God. The gospels “tell the story of God’s act to bring us back to himself at his own cost. There is no other story behind or beyond it that is the real story of what God does to reconcile us… The Gospel’s passion narrative is the authentic and entire account of God’s reconciling action and our reconciliation. Therefore, what is first and principally required as the Crucifixion’s right interpretation is for us to tell this story to one another and to God as a story about him and about ourselves.” (Robert Jenson 1997, 189) Hebrews says that Jesus was made a little lower than the angels and that all things would be subjected to him. He tasted death for everyone of us—the death richly deserved because of our sin (Heb 2:7–18). This is the death of the Son of God, who has undergone for us what only he could do. Thus he is “the captain of [our] salvation” (2:10 KJV), having died for us so that we might live.

Jesus the king. The soldiers keep watch over Jesus. While they wait, they divide up his clothes by casting lots, fulfilling Ps 22:17–18. They put over his head their understanding of why he is crucified: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” These are Pilate’s men. Like Pilate they assume that Jesus is put to death because he claims to be a king. Like Pilate they are right to declare him a king, but like Pilate they fail to understand what kind of king he is. They fail, as we continue to fail, to understand how the one born to be king can die such a humiliating death.

If you are the Son of God… All who surround Jesus’s cross fail to see Jesus for who he is. They deride him, shaking their heads (Ps 22:7), saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Pilate’s soldiers identify him as the king of the Jews and is taunted. He is again subject to the same temptations he faced in the desert when the devil placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down” (Mt 4:6). This time, suffering even more than he did when he faced the devil, Jesus refuses to give the sign that would confirm his tormentors’ presumptions of what the priest-king of Israel will be. His crucifixion is that sign for which they ask, but they cannot see what is before their eyes.

Desiring a sign. He is also mocked by the chief priests, scribes, and elders. They acknowledge that he saved others–healing the blind, the deaf, the mute, bringing deliverance to the poor and the hungry, but surely one so powerful can save himself. If he is the king of Israel, they say, let him come down from the cross so they will believe in him. Again they desire a sign that makes it reasonable within the world as they know it to believe in him. But Jesus remains on the cross.

Taunting Jesus’ faith. The elites have one more taunt, a taunt that goes to Jesus’s heart: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’” This taunt is directed not only at Jesus, but to the Father. This is the agony Jesus knew that he and his Father would endure. The Father has willed that his very Son be subject to our fears so that we might learn to trust as Jesus trusts the Father. The Father will deliver the Son, but not before he has undergone death. The temple will be restored, but the restoration will be in the form of a body, the body of Jesus.

Taunting from condemned criminals. James and John had asked to be on Jesus’s right and left hand and, as Jesus said, they knew not what they asked. Like all the disciples, they desert him. Instead, on Jesus’s right and left hand are two bandits who have been crucified with him. Even these bandits taunt Jesus in the same way the passersby and the elites deride him. Common suffering did not produce sympathy or commonality. Jesus, the only true human being, is devoid of all human connection. Even the women looked on him “from a distance” (Mt 27:55). Those crucified with him, the passersby, the elites, the soldiers, are all witnesses; we too are witnesses to this “desolating sacrilege.”

From noon until 3 pm darkness covers the whole land. From the very beginning of Matthew cosmic forces are in play with the birth of Jesus (Mt 2:2). As his death grows near all of creation will respond. In Amos the Lord promises that “on that day” I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight (Amos 8:9).

Why? That day arrives. A day of judgment. A day of redemption. At about three o’clock Jesus cried aloud, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We wonder: “If you are the Son of God, should you be saying this? If you are God, if you are the second person of the Trinity, how can you be abandoned?” We try to explain, to protect Jesus from this abject cry of abandonment. Yet Jesus’s cry, a cry learned from Psalm 22, is the cry that only Israel’s Messiah can say. His cry is the exemplification of the love that is the life of the Trinity. It is the love that is Jesus…(Phil 2:6-8).

Jesus’s words from the cross, the cross itself, mean that the Father is to be found when all traces of power (as Pilate and the elites of Israel understand power) are absent; that the Spirit’s authoritative witness is most clearly revealed when all forms of human authority are lost; and that God’s power is to be found exemplified in this captive under the sentence of death.

In truth we stand with the Pilates of this world. We want God to be a king with armies. We do not want to give up our understanding of god as the one capable of putting everything right on our terms. We do not want Jesus to be abandoned because we do not want to acknowledge that the one who abandons and is abandoned is God. We seek to explain these words of dereliction, to save and protect God from making a fool out of being God, but our attempts to protect God reveal how frightening the God of Jesus Christ is. That God rightly frightens us. Yet God is most revealed when he seems to us the most hidden: “Christ’s moment of most absolute particularity—the absolute dereliction of the cross—is the moment in which the glory of God, his power to be where and when he will be, is displayed before the eyes of the world” (Hart 2003, 327).

In the cross of Christ God refuses to let our sin, the sin of his tormentors, determine our relation to him. God’s love for us means that he can only hate that which alienates his creatures from the love manifest in our creation. Cyril of Jerusalem observes that by calling on his Father as “my God,” Christ does so on our behalf and in our place. Hear these words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and know that the Son of God has taken our place, become for us the abandonment that our sin produces, so that we may live confident that the world has been redeemed by this cross.

So redeemed, any account of the cross that suggests that God must satisfy an abstract theory of justice by sacrificing the Son on our behalf is clearly wrong. Indeed, such accounts are dangerously wrong. The Father’s sacrifice of the Son and the Son’s willing sacrifice is God’s justice. Just as there is no God who is not the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so there is no God who must be satisfied that we might be spared. We are spared because God refuses to have us lost. Such is God’s justice.

Some bystanders hear Jesus’s cry and speculate that he must be calling for Elijah. They fill a sponge with sour wine to touch his lips in hope they can better understand him. Others protest their action, suggesting that they should wait to see if Elijah will come to save him. Cruelty knows no bounds. But Elijah will not come, because Elijah has already come (Mt 11:14; 17:12–13). The one who was received into heaven without dying had already come to witness to the one who will defeat death itself.

“Then” Jesus cried out in a loud voice and died. The Son of Man has died. Jesus is really dead, because he is really fully human. The Father has not died, but rather the Son has done the will of the Father and entered death itself. God is the great enemy of death, but death can be overcome only by the Son’s willingness to be subjected to death’s darkness. The death that the Son becomes is not “not to be,” but the more terrifying death of being separated from the Father.

The curtain in the temple is torn from top to bottom, as it was in the earlier desecration of the temple. The earth shakes and rocks are split in two. The temple, Jesus’s body, is broken. As prophesied in Dan 12:2, graves are opened and the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep are raised and, after his resurrection, enter the holy city. Jesus’s descriptions of the apocalypse (Mt 24:7), descriptions drawn from Israel’s life (2 Sam 22:8; Ps 68:8; Joel 2), surround his crucifixion and death. God commanded Ezekiel to prophecy to the valley of bones so that they might live (Ezek 37:1–14). Jesus’s death is the breath of God giving life to all. The dramatic events that accompany Jesus’s death mark the end of the old age and the beginning of the new.

When the centurion, who had kept watch with the soldiers, saw the earthquake and all that took place at Jesus’s death, he was terrified. He confesses that “truly this man was God’s Son!”—a confession that he may well have learned from those who tormented Jesus. Yet his confession is in the past tense. He has still to learn that this crucified one, who is dead and will be buried, will be raised, offering hope to him and his comrades. He has witnessed the triumph of God over the power of death so that he and all soldiers might be free to never kill again.

Many women were there and witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion and death (55a). The disciples had deserted him, but these women followed Jesus from Galilee to provide for him (55b). People were present to Jesus other than the twelve: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Zebedee’s wife—the mother of James and John (56). She now knows what she had asked for her sons (Mt 20:20-21), but she still remains present with Jesus.

A rich disciple, Joseph of Arimathea (57), went to Pilate to ask for Jesus’s body (58). Joseph a rich man who owns a new tomb, rather than using the tomb for himself, desires to bury Jesus in it. Given Jesus’s strictures about wealth (Mt 6:24; 19:23–26), is it strange that Jesus could have a rich disciple? Joseph, who has not deserted Jesus, does not use his wealth to protect himself. To ask Pilate for Jesus’s body, the body of one killed by Rome, could get one in trouble. But Joseph does not hesitate to request from Pilate that Jesus’s body be given to him. Pilate readily agrees.

Jesus buried. Joseph took Jesus body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in the tomb hewn from a rock (59). Jesus is dead. His body is cared for as a dead body. Joseph rolls a large stone in front of the door of the tomb and went away (60). Like the Joseph who cared for the baby in Mary’s womb, this Joseph cares for the dead body of Jesus. He went away, but Mary Magdalene and the other Mary sat opposite the tomb (61). The women wait because they trust what Jesus has told them. He is to be resurrected. These women sit across from the tomb, expectant and faithful witnesses to that resurrection.

But they are not the only ones who remember that Jesus has said that after three days he will be raised (Mt 16:21; 17:23; 20:19). The chief priests and Pharisees also remember that Jesus said he would rise after three days (62-63). The day after his crucifixion, therefore, the chief priests and Pharisees gather before Pilate to remind him that the “imposter” said “while he was still alive” that after three days he would rise again (63). The Pharisees suddenly reappear in league with the chief priests. They have not been among those who conspired to kill Jesus, but now they join with the chief priests to control any further news about Jesus that might go to the people.

Secure the tomb. The chief priests and Pharisees ask Pilate to secure the tomb until the third day, for the disciples may try to steal the body and tell the people he has been raised from the dead (64a). They assume that the resurrection means no more than that Jesus’s body is missing. They suggest to Pilate that if the people believe the disciples, that deception would be worse than their having stolen the body (64b). They do not trust the people, but ironically they are right to worry about the role of the disciples as witnesses to Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

Securely keep Jesus in the tomb. Pilate agrees to secure the tomb with a guard of soldiers (65). The guard was stationed at the tomb, and the stone in front of the tomb was sealed in place (66). The chief priests, Pharisees, and Pilate assume that a stone can hold Jesus, the Son of God, in place. They learned nothing from the earthquake and rocks that were split at Jesus’s death. They are obtuse, but that they are so makes them unwitting witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection.

Reference:

1. Hauerwas, Stanley. Matthew. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 2006.
2. Hauerwas, Stanley. Cross-Shattered Christ. Meditations on the Seven Last Words. Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004.
3. Hauerwas, Stanley; Willimon, William. Where Resident Aliens Live. Exercises for Christian Practice. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 1996.