Readings:
- Various Readings
- Romans 6.3-11
Psalm 118.1-2, 16-17, 22-23 Response: “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.” - Matthew 28:1-10
[Note: The Gospel for the Mass of Easter Day is always John 20:1-9.]
Reflections on the Gospel Reading
In the gospel reading at the Easter Vigil the single three-day commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus reaches its climax with the angel’s words: “He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said.” In Matthew’s Gospel the Easter proclamation moves from the faithful women to the eleven disciples in Galilee and then down through the ages to us as we celebrate this central mystery of our faith.
Each gospel writer presents the mystery of the resurrection in a different way. To understand what Matthew meant by having the angel say: “[H]e has been raised just as he said.”, we have to look at Jesus’ predictions of his passion and resurrection in Matthew’s Gospel.
Predictions of the passion and resurrection
- After Peter proclaimed Jesus to be “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Matthew remarks: “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Mt 16.21 NRSV)
- After the transfiguration, the cure of the epileptic, and an instruction on faith, Jesus said to his disciples: “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised.” (Mt 17.22-23 NRSV)
- On the way up to Jerusalem Jesus “took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.’” (Mt 20.17-19 NRSV)
“The third day”
Modern readers tend to think of “on the third day” as a chronological indicator. Counting Good Friday as the first day, Jesus appears to be predicting that he would be raised the following Sunday. However, in the corresponding passages of Mark’s Gospel Jesus says that he will be raised “after three days.” (See Mark 8.31; 9.31; and 10.34) That would put the resurrection on Monday or Tuesday after Good Friday. The phrases “on the third day” and “after three days” often only mean “in a short time.” However, they can also have an eschatological, rather than a chronological, meaning. They refer to a certain but unspecified time in the near future when God will appear and act to save God’s people.
“In the Old Testament, the third day is the time for theophany, as, for example, in the central account of the meeting between God and Israel on Sinai: ‘On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings. . . . The Lord descended upon it in fire’ (Ex 19:16-18).” (Ratzinger 2007, 250)
The prophet Hosea sees the third day as the time of God’s saving action. He puts these words in the mouth of repentant Israelites:
“Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6.1-3)
Also, the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel with its mysterious “Son of Man” seems to be in the background of Jesus’ prediction that he would suffer and be raised “on the third day.” This book of the Bible was written in the second century before the Christian era in response to the terrible persecution of the Syrian King Antiochus IV Epiphanes. At the time of Jesus the martyrs who had suffered for their faith under the wicked king were widely revered.
In Daniel’s vision the “Son of Man” is identified with “the holy ones of the most high” who had suffered under the wicked king “for a time, two times, and half a time
“[T]here are good reasons for surmising that, on Jesus’ lips, the phrase [son of man] could on occasion possess a collective dimension . . . the passion predictions may have been formulated with more than the solitary fate of Jesus in view.” (Davies & Allison, 2.661)
Thus, when Jesus predicts that he will rise “on the third day” he is primarily referring to eschatological time, the time when God acts to save God’s people, the Day that the Lord has made, no matter on what day of the week it falls. Easter Sunday, then, is not a simple chronological calculation ahead from Good Friday. Rather the Resurrection marks the first day of the new creation – the ultimate revelation of God’s saving action.
Vindication
In Matthew’s Gospel the resurrection is the ultimate sign of God’s vindication of Jesus’ honor as the Son of God. Raising Jesus from the dead was God’s answer to the brutal punishment and mockery to which Jesus was subjected in an attempt to destroy his reputation and to intimidate his followers. Perhaps this is why both the angel and the risen Jesus tell the two Marys that they have nothing to fear.
The Resurrection is also God’s answer to Jesus’ only words from the cross in Matthew’s Gospel: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Far from forsaking Jesus, God rewards his obedience with a triumph over death itself.
Still, Matthew’s story of Jesus’ resurrection contains a puzzling element. The assault on Jesus’ honor was very public. Matthew tells us that four different groups of people challenged Jesus’ honor by mocking him while he hung on the cross: 1) the soldiers of the Roman governor who “placed over his head the written charge against him: This is Jesus, the King of the Judeans;” 2) the passers-by; 3) the chief priests with the scribes and the elders; and 4) the two revolutionaries crucified with him. They all ridiculed his claim to be the Son of God.
In the honor/shame culture of Jesus’ time a public insult called for a public response. A private response to a public insult was no response at all, no vindication. Yet, in Matthew’s Gospel the vindication is very private. Only the two women and the eleven disciples actually see the risen Lord. How, then, is the resurrection a vindication of Jesus’ honor?
To answer this question we have to take into account the implied audience of Matthew’s entire Gospel – all of us who read or listen to his account. We are the ultimate public who witness both the shaming of Jesus and his vindication by God.
Peter put it well in his speech to Cornelius and his family.
We are witnesses to all that [Jesus] did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.” (Acts 10.39-42 NRSV)
Faith in the risen Lord, then, is not the result of disinterested observation or scientific calculation. Faith is our response to the witness of the women and men disciples of Jesus coming down to us through the centuries in the Church. They challenge us to make Jesus’ vindication public. We are the ones who are called to reverse the scandal of the cross. We who eat and drink with the risen Lord in the Eucharist reverse the shame of the cross by the witness of our lives and by our proclamation of the good news that God has raised Jesus from the dead.
The resurrection, then, is not an event that ended in the distant past. It is a reality that continues in the present, our present. “Jesus Christ is risen today!”
In preparing these reflections, in addition to the biblical texts, I consulted the following works:
Davies & Allison 1991 – W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr. A Critical and Exigetical Commentary on the Gospel According To Saint Matthew, Vol. II [Chapters 8-18], The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, J. A. Emerton, C. E. B. Granfield, and G. N. Stanton, General Editors (London: T&T Clark, 1991), pp. 653-661.
Harrington 1991 – Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., The Gospel of Matthew , Sacra Pagina Series Volume 1, A Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 408-413.
Malina & Rohrbaugh 1992 – Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), pp. 165-169.
Meier 1990 – John P. Meier, Matthew , A Michael Glazier Book [1980] (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990), pp. 359-364
Neyrey 1998 – Jerome H. Neyrey, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 139-162.
Ratzinger 2007 – Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Translated from the German by Adrian J. Walker. (New York: Doubleday, 2007)
Senior 1998 – Donald Senior, Matthew, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), pp. 339-343.