This Easter Monday we come to the end of our journey through Matthew’s gospel and find ourselves in the climax of a story that is repeated again and again in the films that we watch and the novels that we read. Christopher Marlowe wrote that Helen of Troy had a face to launch a thousand ships, but from here at the end of Matthew’s gospel are launched thousands of stories of death and resurrection, from Harry Potter to Star Wars, stories that we never tire of listening to. Because this is the biggest twist in the tale that there ever was, the ending that we hoped for, but never dared believe could be true. Jesus was crucified to death, but death is not the last word.
As I write from my garden, I spot some adventurous field-mice take their chances to sneak past a sleeping dog. I’m reminded of a scene in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Aslan, the great lion, is dead, having been trussed up and slaughtered by the evil Queen with a cold knife upon an ancient altar. His enemies have departed and now two girls, Susan and Lucy, come to care for his body. They try in vain to loosen the cords that have bound him and are surprised when some mice come to gnaw through the ropes; mice like the ones I’ve found in my garden. Of course, Lewis was writing about Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who are helpless in the face of death, unable to free the one that they love. They come only to “see the tomb” and to prepare the body. I wonder if as they came, was there any glimmer of hope at all, any memory of Jesus saying three times that he would suffer and then rise from the dead. It seems that the only thing they expected to find was a cold, dead corpse. But what do they find?
Well everything comes thick and fast. They find a great earthquake, a rolled back stone, an angel dazzling as lightening and the guards paralysed with fear as if dead. And then these words from the angel that echo down the ages every Easter:
“He is not here, He has risen!”
In other words, who looks for bread at the butchers? The world has changed forever and you’re looking in the wrong place! All of history is torn apart; death is being undone in a way that has never happened before. There have been resurrections even within Jesus’ own ministry – a widow’s son and Jairus’ daughter among others. But these were all fleeting; the widow’s son and Jairus’ daughter would die again. Now something is happening that defies all that we have ever observed to be true in this world. The hands of the clock are turning back upon themselves.
And as the two Marys leave, going with fear and great joy, we read so simply, “Jesus met them,” saying, “Greetings!” In reply they have no words to offer, but only taking hold of his feet, “they worshipped.” These women are the first witnesses to the resurrection, and their response is what ours should be today, to worship at His feet.
Woe to the storyteller that leaves his readers with any tantalising plot holes or unanswered questions, and as a good writer, Matthew is keen to tie up any potential loose ends. So now we have a brief aside to explain what happened to the guards. They’re given a paper-thin explanation to defend themselves: guards that couldn’t guard, overcome by sleep who somehow allowed terrified disciples to move the stone and steal away Jesus’ crucified body. These sleepy guards had one eye open to identify the grave robbers but not two eyes open to stop them. Matthew makes his point: however earth-shattering and unbelievable the resurrection might be, this alternative conspiracy theory makes absolutely no sense at all.
And here comes the final word. Jesus’ disciples gather to Him at a pre-arranged mountain, and now it’s their time to worship like the women did earlier. What comes next is what’s known as the “Great Commission.” It’s Jesus’ charge to His followers that has been kept by the church for the past two thousand years, a relay baton passed from generation to generation, a golden chain that has never been broken. I remember standing at the back of a hot London Baptist church on a Sunday evening, listening to the preacher close his sermon with these words and I turned to the man next to me to ask, “What was that?” It’s the charge that Jesus gives not just to His apostles but to each of His disciples. He charges us to go; to go into all the nations, to make disciples and to do that by baptising them, and by teaching them. Not simply teaching them an intellectual assent but teaching them to observe all that He commanded. After all, it was the man that heard and did what Jesus taught who was commended as one who built his house upon the rock. And now comes the final promise. Matthew began His Gospel describing Jesus as “Immanuel”, God with us, and this is how we finish, Jesus really is with us: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”