And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
Totally spooky, right?
What might we say about this story?
What's fascinating is the ambiguity of the sequence. First, the tombs broke open. Then the text says, "the bodies of many holy people came to life." Next, they "came out of the tombs" but only after, and this insertion seems critical, "after Jesus' resurrection." What is unclear to me is when the dead came back to life. Did they come life when the tombs were open on Friday, only to emerge after Jesus' resurrection? Or was it that the tombs were opened on Friday with the dead only coming to life after Jesus' resurrection on Sunday?
Either way, the story is quite bizarre. It's also unclear what it means that the raised saints "appeared to many people." "Appeared" is different from "remained." Did the raised saints make an appearance and then return to their tombs? Or did they stay and resume their lives with their loved ones?
The puzzles and questions abound, but I do think there is a deep theological point being made about the tombs being opened on Good Friday rather than Easter Sunday. Specifically, we tend to align atonement theologies like penal substitutionary atonement with the death of Jesus and Christus Victor theologies with Easter Sunday. Different things happened on different days. That is, the death of Jesus, through his shed blood, was involved in the forgiveness of sins, whereas Easter Sunday was involved in Jesus' victory over the power of death.
And yet, the events of Matthew 27 blur that neat separation. The death of Jesus opened tombs, signaling the defeat of death before Easter Sunday. To be sure, the dead only appear after the resurrection of Jesus. But the defeat of death was clearly set into motion on Good Friday when the tombs of the dead were opened the moment Jesus breathed his last.
