Reflections are everywhere - in crystal blue lakes and shining, marble surfaces, in the glass of towering skyscrapers and the concave lenses of ever-present cameras. They capture my thinking and mesmerize me, enticing me to look again because there's more in the picture!
I am surprised by people from time to time, but not usually. However, Jesus surprises me with his teachings and actions frequently. Reading the New Testament over a number of years produces little surprise for some people who have studied it. Reading it again is merely a mundane or routine exercise in duty for them. But for me it offers enchantment in places I have glossed over in the past or enrichment to the passages that I thought I had milked for meaning. Here at the time of year when Jesus died and rose on the third day of death, a passage I have read a huge number of times has resonated in my mind and enriched me this weekend.
One aspect of the New Testament's rising from death has always been amazing to me. The three famous "raisings" Jesus performed, Jairus' daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus, were mentioned as just one of many miracles and were not given "magnanimous" status. The Church Fathers that followed in the years and centuries later didn't highlight those ocurrences either. That's surprising to me. Nobody returns from death, and so to be a living example of someone back from the dead should have been given tremendous more press than it received. There should be an apocryphal book ascribed to Lazarus or to the widow's son, or to Jairus' daughter. Church historians should have follow-up biosketches of the people Jesus raised, but they don't. That's so amazing to me.
Matthew 27 records an event that should be just as amazing. It should be in the annals of the Church Fathers for sure. The examples in the above paragraph are raisings of single individuals, but Matthew records "many" people all at once being released from death, walking out of their graves, and mixing again with the people of Jerusalem. If there is a superlative term greater than magnaninous, stupendous, or incredulous, I would use it for this miracle of miracles. But the event is mentioned as a matter of course in the two effects of the aftermath of Jesus' death.
Verse 51
Καὶ ἰδοὺ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη ἀπ’ ἄνωθεν ἕως κάτω εἰς δύο καὶ ἡ γῆ ἐσείσθη καὶ αἱ πέτραι ἐσχίσθησαν
(And it happened that the curtain in the temple was ripped in half from top to bottom, the Earth was shaken, and rocks were split apart)
Verse 52
καὶ τὰ μνημεῖα ἀνεῴχθησαν καὶ πολλὰ σώματα τῶν κεκοιμημένων ἁγίων ἠγέρθησαν
(Tombs were shaken open and many bodies of good people who had fallen asleep were woken up.)
Verse 53
καὶ ἐξελθόντες ἐκ τῶν μνημείων μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ εἰσῆλθον εἰς τὴν ἁγίαν πόλιν καὶ ἐνεφανίσθησαν πολλοῖς
(They left their tombs after his resurrection, came into the Holy City, and were seen by many.)
Many dead people mixing with many live people, πολλοῖς (many). How does that get overlooked in a city of 75,000 inhabitants (an average of what scholars have estimated)? Were they Christians or devout Jews since they were referred to as the ἁγίων (holy ones, good people)? What kind of lives did these people live before and after their raising? Did some of them change? Did they wholeheartedly embrace the Christian movement as it separated itself from Judaism in the decades following their resurrection? Were they all followers of Jesus to begin with when they died or good Jews who would turn to Christianity after coming back? Did they become Christian leaders in the years following Jesus' ascension?
The wording of the passage, πολλὰ σώματα (many bodies) could be interpreted that these many people who came back to be seen in Jerusalem appeared to others in the same way Jesus did when he appeared to the men from Emmaus or to his apostles and Mary. He had qualities not quite like the rest of us humans. He could just appear and disappear at will, and the ones mentioned above didn't recognize him at first. However, he was in bodily form and everyone did finally recognize him. Also, each of the main verbs used in the three verses, with the exception of came (verse 53), is passive. Every action was caused by someone other than the subject of the sentence. The agent causing the action is not mentioned except in the case of were seen by many in the Holy City (verse 53). The other actions or verbs could only have one agent, but an implied one rather than an explicit one. Only God or Jesus who had been charged by God could cause the earth to quake, the temple curtain in the Holy of Holies to rip in half, the rocks to split, tombs to open, and dead people to come alive again. Only one person. This would imply that that they were not under their own power. So they didn't enter Jerusalem as if they were doing it of their own accord. They were made manifest (were seen), ἐνεφανίσθησαν, so they might not have been continuously seen like they were when they were alive.
Either way the record reads many people! They were dead but came back to life. That is no small event.
But I get it. They are not the main attraction. They were not the ones who taught about the Dominion of God. They didn't raise themselves from the dead or perform many other miracles. They didn't die a criminal's death or have all authority over the affairs of Heaven and Earth. That was someone else - Jesus - God's son and chosen deliverer for his people of Israel. Jesus, who said he could lay down his life and take it up again, told us he was going away to prepare for us a place and come again to take us to live with him. Jesus, who told us he came so that we could have life and an extraordinary place, is the one with the story of stories to repeat for the generations to come - not Lazarus, the widow's son, or Jairus' daughter, and right, not even many people back from the dead, all at one time.
I plan to wake up from death when my life on Earth is over. I look forward to having life in an extraordinary place after life here because Jesus was true to his father's charge to share his life with us. He laid it down, he took it up again. He woke up three days after he stopped breathing, appeared to many, many people, and is now preparing places for me and for all those who say, "You are the one who was chosen, the son of the living God."
[Introductory photo of reflection is found on Instagram's Natural Mirrors Amazing Places to Visit, retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/qaisarazeem/photography-of-nature/. The second work of art Welcome Home is by Danny Hahlbohm and retrieved from http://www.fulcrumgallery.com/Danny-Hahlbohm/Welcome-Home_663673.htm]
[The first song is Alive in You by Jesus Culture. The musical narration, He is Here, is found on Creative Sheep.com. The last song is He Reigns by Newsboys]
[The Greek text used for the New Testament references is the Nestle Aland 28th edition]
[Translations from Greek are my own.]
