Matthew 27:45-65 – The Cross, the Curtain, and the Tomb

Jesus, beaten senselessly, bleeding profusely, and stripped naked hangs on the cross for the world to see. Many people mock him, some ignore him, and his closest friends, those who were actually present, mourned him. Matthew writes,

45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:45-46

Jesus’s cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” coupled with Matthew’s comment regarding the darkened sky takes me back to that moment “when darkness was over the face of the deep” (Gen. 1:2). The earth was “without form and void,” but the earth was not without hope; in the darkness, it awaited God’s voice to ring out, “Let there be light.” Many years after that initial moment of creation, the earth was once again covered in darkness and on the verge of chaos when Jesus hung on the cross. It appeared that Satan had pulled off one of the greatest coups in history by driving God from the face of the earth and breaking the relationship between the Father and the Son. We aren’t told long the earth floated in the darkness without form and void awaiting God’s breath of light, but we are told that Jesus, the Son of God, was separated from the Father for three long hours.

If we stop for a moment to study these three hours we will see many layers of evil. The first obvious evil was Satan’s attempt to overcome God and his rule; Satan, however, is not alone in this as we also often seek to overrule the Father’s will. Then there is the weight of evil Jesus bore while hanging on the cross; the accumulation of all the sins of all humanity, ourselves included. But there is a third evil we must not miss in our close study, and it is possibly the greatest evil of all: the broken relationship between the Father and his Son; we must also not miss the fact that this evil was precipitated by our sinfulness. We often tend to think of evil as an entity, and perhaps it is, but evil, as we most frequently encounter it, is more of a description of how things are as opposed to how they should be. In this instance, the relationship between the Father and the Son is not supposed to be broken. The Father and Son’s relationship has, for all eternity, been unfractured, but our sin caused a rift between the Father and the Son, even if only for three hours. Three hours may not seem like a long time for a rift in a relationship, but a fractured human relationship can not compare to the immensity of the momentarily severed eternally existent relationship between the Father and the Son. There is no one who can fully comprehend that split, at least, not at the moment, but, I would like to suggest there are some who will one day comprehend the meaning of this fracture.

The pain Jesus suffered when he was scourged, mocked, and hung on the cross was something very few of us, if any, could bear, but if given the choice between that physical pain or a complete and eternal fracture of our relationship with the Father, most of us would embrace the physical suffering. When Jesus hung on the cross, abandoned by the Father for three hours, he experienced what those who reject Jesus’s work on the cross will endure for eternity. Such people are the only ones who will ever comprehend even the smallest fraction of the depths of Jesus’s pain during those three hours, but even that smallest fraction of his pain is greater than any of us should ever wish to endure. Jesus’s cry to the Father is the same cry that will bellow out of the depths of hell for eternity from the mouths of those who will never know the intimacy of the Father. Jesus was beaten for us, crucified for us, and abandoned for us so we wouldn’t have to ask the Father why he had forsaken us. Our prayers for the Father’s deliverance from evil — the evil of eternal separation in a godless hell — are prayers Jesus answered on the cross and in the darkness so we would never have to cry out, as he did, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Most of this, however, probably went over the heads of those standing nearby, because Matthew writes,

47 And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” 48 And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. 49 But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”

Matthew 27:47-49

In Matthew 27:39-44, we are told that many mocked him and said that if he was actually the Son of God, then he should be able to have God save him. Now, in this passage, we are told that after Jesus said, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” the bystanders thought Jesus was calling out for Elijah to save him. Perhaps the people didn’t know the language Jesus spoke or maybe Jesus slurred his words because of the pains he was enduring, whatever the case, they completely missed the point. Instead of recognizing the spiritual battle that was ongoing, one of the gawkers decided to try and give Jesus some wine, but the other gawkers stopped him because they wanted to see what would happen. This might be the first time the paparazzi are ever recorded in history: this group of people didn’t want to intervene, they just wanted to watch the events.

Nothing would have changed if that person had lifted the sponge to Jesus’s lips, but this interaction exposes yet another evil to which we are prone and from which we need deliverance. Jesus came to minister to the weak, impoverished, sick, imprisoned, possessed, and alien, and he taught his disciples to do the same. Jesus never promised that ministering to another person in pain would change the outcome of their agony, but he did tell us to minister. It is evil to withhold service when we can give it, and it is evil to merely pray and then passively wait to see if someone else, or even God, will take care of the weak, impoverished, sick, imprisoned, possessed, or alien. Such is not the mark of a disciple of Jesus (Mat. 25:31-46; Jas. 2:14-17), and from such a paparazzi-like inclination we must pray for deliverance, for such is evil.

Then, in a single line, Matthew describes the finality of an event that had been known and planned from the depths of eternity. Matthew writes,

50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

Matthew 27:50

Beaten, bruised, bleeding, naked, abandoned, and now dead, Jesus hung on the cross. In Eden, God killed an animal so that Adam and Eve could cover their shame (Gen. 3:21). In the land of Moriah, God asked Abraham to offer his only son as a sacrifice, but provided a ram for the sacrifice instead (Gen. 22:1-14). At Mount Sinai, God commanded Israel to offer sacrifices as a means of atonement for their sins (Gen. 20:24). God did all of these things so that when his Son hung on the cross we would understand why. God’s holiness demands perfection. Man’s sinfulness cannot be perfect. But God, in his love, provided the only way for sinful man to be reconciled to the holy God: his Son, Jesus, willingly followed the Father’s will and covered our shame, substituted for our death, and atoned for our sin.

When the sacrifice was complete — when Jesus died on the cross — the old way of approaching the Father was now obsolete. Matthew writes,

51 And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, 53 and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. 54 When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

Matthew 27:51-54

The centurion may not have fully comprehended what was happening, but he did come to the right conclusion: this man on the cross was the Son of God. And, as if to emphasize the significance of Jesus’s death, the earth shook and the dead were raised. But this earthquake was more than a statement of God’s wrath being expended, it was a declaration of God’s presence. When God descended onto the mountain and spoke with Moses, the earth shook (Ex. 19:18); when Isaiah entered the throne room in the year King Uzziah died, the foundations shook (Isa. 6:4); the hand of God was accompanied by turbulence and fire in Ezekiel’s visions (Ez. 1:4; 10); and God’s throne in Revelation is continually surrounded by lightning, rumblings, and thunder (Rev. 4:5; 8:5; 11:19; 16:18). The earth shook when Jesus died because the Father descended upon the earth and tore down the curtain limiting access to the Holy of Holies from all but the high priest once a year. The blood of Jesus cleansed us of sin and paid the price for admission into the Father’s eternally powerful and glorious kingdom. What Satan meant as evil, the Father intended for good.

Matthew further describes this scene when he writes,

55 There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, 56 among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Matthew 27:55-56

Notably absent from this list of those at the foot of the cross are the disciples. While John’s Gospel tells us that “the disciple whom he loved” was there (John 19:26), we have no other indication any of the other disciples were present. While nearly all of the male disciples of Jesus appeared to have abandoned him, the women did not. The lowest rung in the social ladder — Jewish women — did not abandon Jesus in his darkest hour. Rather, they chose to continue serving him. Their actions show us one of the ways in which God answers our prayer for deliverance from evil: these women, instead of abandoning what might have been seen from the outside as a lost cause, continued to express their love for Jesus by serving him even in the darkest hour. Evil is not defeated by a sword, as was attempted in the garden just hours before; evil is conquered by remaining at Jesus’s side when all other hope is gone. Evil may seem to have the upper hand, but most of us are not tasked with battling evil on the grand stage of history. There was nothing the disciples or these women could have done to stop Satan from placing Jesus on the cross — in fact, as repugnant as it might sound, the cross had been planned by God in the depths of eternity (Eph. 3:11). Rather than trying to fight a battle that was not theirs to fight, or running as did the disciples, these women chose to battle evil in the only way available to them: they served Jesus even while all around them was darkness and confusion. Even after Jesus breathed his last, Matthew describes another task undertaken in the battle against evil when he writes,

57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 59 And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. 61 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

Matthew 27:57-61

We, in our modern world, are frequently told to reach for the impossible, but in attempting the impossible, we often miss the importance of doing what we can, and only what we can. The true followers of Jesus, regardless of their wealth or position in society, recognize this truth. In this instance, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the poorest and lowest, could only sit and watch, hoping for a miracle. Rich Joseph, on the other hand, had the means to speak to the Governor of the region and procure the body of Jesus for a decent burial. Joseph was not better than the two Marys because he used his power and influence to get Jesus’s body; they were both doing only what only they could. Evil, in this case, would have crept in if either group had tried to do something they couldn’t. Furthermore, we once again must note the absence of the disciples. Instead of helping out with something, they were nowhere to be found. When we pray that the Father would keep us from evil, we are praying that we would be more like Joseph, Mary, and Mary and less like the disciples who, after the debacle in the garden the night before, were notable in their absence.

Matthew records the final scene in the crucifixion narrative with the following:

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64 Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

Matthew 27:62-66

Jesus was dead and buried in a closed tomb yet his antagonists were still not comfortable. They asked Pilate to guard the tomb so as to make sure no one could steal Jesus’s body and then claim he had been resurrected from the grave. This might seem a tad bit excessive, but the Pharisees, apparently unlike the disciples, had been actually listening to Jesus and they knew he had claimed that he would rise from the dead. The Pharisees had listened closely to his teachings — they knew who Jesus claimed to be and they knew what he claimed he would do — but they wanted no part of him. This is yet another evil for which we need the Father’s protection: knowing God’s Word inside and out yet not knowing God. Just because we might be well-versed in scripture and doctrine does not mean that we have chosen to follow the will of the Father. Looking at the Pharisees here tells us that having knowledge about God does not mean that we know God or that God knows us.

Then, when we view the other side of the interaction, we see Pilate. I realize the popular narrative seems to indicate that Pilate gave the Pharisees a guard of soldiers, but I don’t believe that is what this passage says. Matthew, the only Gospel writer to record this interaction between Pilate and the Pharisees, appears to indicate that Pilate told the Pharisees to use their own guards when he said “You have a guard of soldiers.” Later, we learn that these guards did not report back to Pilate, as they would have if they were Pilate’s guards, rather they returned to the chief priests to tell them of the earthquake and the opened tomb (Matt. 28:11). Ever since Pilate’s wife told him about her dream, Pilate has distanced himself from those wishing to harm Jesus and even appears to be somewhat sympathetic to Jesus’s plight: Pilate has no reason to give Joseph the body of Jesus, but he does. For whatever reason, God used Pilate to aid the Pharisees in crucifying Jesus while still allowing the Jews at that time to claim responsibility (Mat. 27:25; Rom. 9:22-26). He used Pilate to order Jesus’s flogging and to give Jesus’s body to Joseph, both actions that fulfilled prophecy (Isa. 53:5, 9). God also used Pilate to help the Pharisees unknowingly produce valid evidence that Jesus’s disciples didn’t steal the body (Mat. 27:62-66; 27:3, 11-15). The ways of God are truly mysterious.

Every prayer asking for the Father’s hand to deliver us from evil was answered on that day when Jesus was tried, scourged, crucified, mocked, and buried in the tomb. But that day did not only provide deliverance from evil, it was the key to opening up the entrance into the Father’s eternally powerful and glorious kingdom. For such we pray.

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