Earthquakes, angels, women running to and fro, a strange command. A highly unlikely tale. Yes, indeed, and that’s the point. Nobody thought in the first century, and nobody should think now, that the point of the Easter story is that this is quite a reasonable thing to happen, that dead people really do rise if only we had the wit to see it, that it should be quite easy to believe it if only you thought about it for a few minutes.
No. It was always a strange, crazy, wild story. What else would you expect if, after all, the ancient dream of Israel was true? If the God who made the world had finally acted to turn things around, to take all the forces of chaos, pride, greed, darkness and death and allow them to do their worst, exhausting themselves in the process?
If Jesus of Nazareth really was, as the centurion (greatly to his own surprise, no doubt) found himself saying three days before, ‘the Son of God’? What else would you expect? A calm restatement of some philosophical truths for sage old greybeards to ponder – or events which blew the world apart and put it back in a new way?
N.T. Wright, Lent for Everyone: Matthew, Year A
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