Matthew 28:1-10 Commentary

The world is about to turn! It is no longer the Sabbath and a new day and a new week is dawning. I just love that the NRSV describes the time with the -ing ending on dawn. Easter is meant for dawnings.

We go from the quiet of the dawn to the shock of an earthquake. A spunky angel makes a show of things as it comes to roll the stone away and then sits on said stone for good measure. The angel is also shiny, bright as a lightning flash with clothing pure white. The guards cannot handle the supernatural encounter, fainting and becoming dead to the world.

The women don’t faint at the sight of the angel or the feel of the earth shaking under their feet. Are they still so deep in their mourning that they can’t even take in what is happening? If the angel is correctly assuming what they are feeling, the women are at least a little afraid…

And what the angel says next is a lot to take in all at once. They are looking for Jesus but he is not there. The angel explains why he’s moved the stone: he wants them to see for themselves that he is telling them the truth. Then, having seen for themselves, he wants them to go and tell the disciples the pertinent information.

As is the case in all of the gospel texts, the first step of the Easter good news is a report, not an actual encounter with the resurrected one. We don’t know whether or not the women needed to go inside the tomb to see for themselves or whether they did so as the angel was talking, because the next thing we know, the women have “left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”

The women are still afraid, but they are hopeful, letting themselves feel the honest mix of what they know to be real and what they hope will be even more real and true. The world is about to turn! There’s no time to waste! Jesus is on his way to Galilee and they’ve all got to go there!

And look who meets them on the way! Jesus greets them and our English word “Greetings” really doesn’t do it justice. Like the word for “greetings” in many other languages, it’s actually a command; the verb means “to be in a state of happiness and well-being” or to “rejoice and be glad,” which over time also came to be a shortened form of address. Clearly, it’s a communication of happiness or gladness to see one another: Jesus is happy to see them, and he is happy to be seen by them.

If we were missing a record of how the women reacted to the angel, their reaction to seeing Jesus is quite clear. They fall before him, grab his feet and worship him. Doing so is an act of submission. Plus, as Anna Case-Winters points out, anytime someone has finally figured out the truth of Jesus Christ in the gospel narrative, Matthew describes them as responding in worship.

What’s so interesting is that the women are still feeling joy and fear. It’s been compounded by facing what they hoped was true. Even as they worship, they are overwhelmed with fear and awe and gratitude even if they cannot comprehend what it all means and will mean. That’s Easter power for you; it’s a “Yes! And…” kind of good news.

The “And…” of Easter power is usually something we are to do. What happens after worship? It’s doing what Jesus says. It’s trusting what you’ve been entrusted with. It’s going with your Easter message and sharing the good news. Jesus reiterates the task, telling the women to go to his “brothers” and get them to meet him in Galilee.

That Jesus calls the disciples his brothers stopped me in my tracks this year. It’s this little detail that tells of a very big promise for all of us: God keeps no record of wrongs. To the group of his closest friends, to the group who betrayed him and left him alone at his greatest hour of need, Jesus does not hold their sins against them. He calls them brothers. That’s real Easter good news right there.

Textual Point

Idoú, idoú, idoú! Behold, behold, behold! Suddenly, suddenly, suddenly. Matthew uses this word three times in our passage, trying to communicate the sense of urgency, the heightened emotions and experiences of the scene. The first instance is in verse 2 as the earthquake hits. The second is connected to the news that Jesus is going ahead of them all to Galilee. And the third is connected to the promise that they will see what the angel has said.

Illustration Idea

You’ve probably seen someone pay a person a compliment with a fake motion of worship. Their arms stretched out straight in front of them as they sort of bow from the waist, up and down, up and down a few times. Usually it’s meant a little jokingly, but also communicates a clear recognition that something pretty impressive has just been witnessed—something that the person paying homage finds perfect for the moment or a feat and that they likely wouldn’t be able to accomplish themselves. I think too of John in Revelation and how on multiple occasions, he’s so overwhelmed with the greatness of what he is witnessing that he falls down in worship. (Granted, John’s usually falling down in front of the angels who have to tell him to stop because he should be worshipping God, not them…) But all that to say, worship isn’t just about what we idolize, it’s also about what we are in awe over; we worship when we have a sense of our own smallness, our limits. That’s what I think is happening in the Easter story.

Alternate text: John 20:1-18: https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2023-04-03/john-201-18-4/