Sermon: “The Tombs Were Also Opened” Matthew 27:11-54, March 29, 2026

Scripture: Matthew 27:11-54

Preacher: Ryan Slifka

Sermon: “The Tombs Were Also Opened”

Today is Palm Sunday, marking Jesus’ triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem. Jesus leads cheering crowds into the city of David, Palm branches waving, children cheering. This is it, it’s what everyone’s been waiting for. The Messiah, the true king sent by God striding into the city, to take his throne, and retake the kingdom for the Lord, from both the Roman colonizers and their Judean collaborators. It’s like the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is the moment, this is it. The future is here.

Of course, the exuberant parade doesn’t last long. Today is not only Palm Sunday, it’s also Passion Sunday. Because no sooner is Jesus in the city, than he is betrayed. He’s arrested, imprisoned, tortured. Convicted as a political insurgent, while a murderous revolutionary is set free. Abandoned by almost all of his followers, mocked by Roman soldiers. Then nailed to a cross. While darkness blankets the earth, Jesus cries out the first verse of the 22nd Psalm, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” The crowd thinks he’s crying out for the prophet Elijah, defender of the oppressed, but he’s answered not by Elijah, but with sour wine on a stick. Jesus lets out a loud cry and he breathes his last. All this with a sign hanging above his head in multiple languages “King of the Jews.” So much for the king, eh? 

So much for the king. So much for the king, so much for the parade. So much for the triumphant parade. So much for the hopes dashed, expectations crushed. So much for Palm Sunday. So much for Jesus. The palm parade ends not with a great victory, the ushering in of a new golden era for God’s people. But with betrayal, abandonment. Suffering, and death. The most humiliating kind of death possible, in fact. Cursed is the one who hangs on a tree.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Ryan’s just trying to sneak in a Good Friday sermon! It’s a trick!

Asides from catching Good Friday skippers, though, there are lots of good reasons why there’s a long Christian tradition of having the passion–the story of Jesus’ death–read on Palm Sunday.

One reason is this: we need to be constantly reminded against Christian triumphalism. Christian triumphalism.

As Christians we are constantly tempted to think that faithfulness to God is rewarded with good things. That earthly success, prestige and power, are signs of divine favour. That all our days should be Palm Sundays. “You never ask questions when God's on your side,” said Bob Dylan over sixty years ago.

Holding these two together, though, reminds us that we worship not a powerful Caesar at the head of all of the armies of Rome, but the crucified Messiah whose only weapon was the word of his mouth, and has made a cross his throne for the sake of the world. Today is a warning, a hedge against Christian arrogance, Christian pride, against Christian self-satisfaction and self justification. Leaving all who seek to follow Jesus a posture of humility as their only option. To take up their cross and follow. 

Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday are one day. Because we need set of guardrails against Christian triumphalism. In all its forms.

Now, there is a second reason we read these two together. One that’s just as important. If not more so.

While we have been given a hedge against triumphalism… it doesn’t mean that there’s no triumph at all. In fact, what the passion story tells us is that Jesus’ passion, his death on the cross, is the true triumph. The triumph of the one true God.

You might have noticed this in today’s reading. Good Friday’s all going along like normal, with the darkness, the abandonment. The curtain of the temple is ripped in half, top to bottom. So far so good in terms of the vibe, but also with how the other three gospels report the passion.

Then, out of nowhere, this happens: “The earth shook,” it says. “The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” And, here it is: “The tombs also were opened. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.”

You heard rightly. “The tombs were opened, and the dead were raised.” In my mind I picture countless vampire movies where Dracula is sleeping peacefully in his coffin, and suddenly his eyes pop open, sensing that something is afoot. But instead of Dracula it’s a long-dead Old Testament prophet like Amos or Ezekiel. The earth cracks open, tombs crack open, and many bodies of dead saints–presumably faithful Jews long dead–raised. Alive again. They were only sleeping.

And not only are they alive again, it says, after Jesus’ resurrection, they all crawl out of their tombs, and waltz right into the holy city, presumably surprising many average citizens out for their Easter Sunday stroll.

It’s this moment, this mini-resurrection, where a Roman Centurion, staring at Jesus’ lifeless body post-earthquake, “truly this man was God’s Son!” Like, he doesn’t see any of these old Israelites wake up or walk around. But somehow, staring at Jesus quiet on the cross. He knows what’s up.

What a strange scene! John’s gospel has the raising of Lazarus. But none of the other gospels have formerly dead Abraham and Sarah stopping by a local cafe for matzo ball soup. None of the other gospels have anything like this. Like, what happens to them? Do they just settle down, get jobs, and just continue life as usual? So many questions!

As strange as it may all seem to us, though, Matthew records this with a very particular purpose in mind: to give us a little clue, a little sign, that Jesus death on the cross is not a defeat. But his true triumph.

First, this is meant to demonstrate that Jesus’ death fulfils Old Testament prophecies. Which isn’t surprising, because Matthew’s audience is primarily Jewish. Matthew is at great pains throughout to demonstrate Jesus’ Jewishness, his faithfulness to God’s law, and his continuity with the Old Testament scriptures. And in the Old Testament scriptures, there’s this thing called the Day of the Lord. The day where God himself would set the world right. Many Jews expected a resurrection of the righteous to mark the beginning of the messianic age. Zechariah 14:45: “and the Mount of Olives will be split in two then the Lord by God will come, and all the holy ones with him.” Or Daniel, which we spent 12 weeks on in the fall: Daniel 12:1-2 “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake.”

It’s all there to show that Jesus is the Messiah. And that on the cross, the world has been set right. Jesus’ death on the cross is a fulfilment of Old Testament promises.

Second, this scene is here to portray what is traditionally called the “harrowing of hell.”

You might remember that the Apostles’ Creed, that ancient statement of faith, includes the words “he descended to the dead.” Other versions say “he descended into hell.” Depends how you translate the latin ad infernos. It means underworld. The realm of the dead. You can find this in the first epistle of Peter, chapter 3:

There it says that Jesus “was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times were disobedient.” If you ever wondered where Jesus was between Good Friday and Easter, according to some traditions he was down in the underworld, smashing the devil’s lair, and freeing the Old Testament saints from the bondage of death.

It’s the subject of countless wonderful medieval and renaissance artworks. According to this reading, this is what’s being portrayed with the bodies being raised. 

In this scene, hell is being harrowed, the dead are being released from their prison. Already. Even before Jesus is raised on Easter.

And here’s where the triumph part comes in. Though Jesus didn’t take over the kingdom and toss the Romans out, the scriptures tell us that Jesus has nonetheless won a mighty victory. Not a victory over flesh and blood, but an even greater triumph: the decisive defeat of what the Apostle Paul calls the “final enemy”: death itself.

Now, by this I clearly don’t mean that Jesus made it so you and I can never die. If so, every last Apostle who knew Jesus face-to-face would still be around. No, what I mean is death as a spiritual power. A shadow that hangs over all aspects of human life.

Death, which fills our hearts with fear and anxiety about the future, our own and of the earth. Death, that has us cling to false idols like wealth, status, and self-justification for security. Death, that has us trade the plight of our neighbour for our own piece of mind. When Matthew shows the dead rise at the moment of Jesus’ death, death itself has already been thrown down.

It’s like the D-Day moment of creation, it’s the battle where the tide of the war has turned for good. On the cross death has been defeated. And though it’s on retreat, one day death itself is gonna be put to death. Forever and for good.

Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday are held together because Jesus death is the triumph. It is the victory.

A few years ago, the late Pope Francis made a visit to Iraq, which at the time had been torn apart by a long time insurgencency of ISIS, also known as the Islamic State. During that time the number of Christians in Iraq dipped from one and a half million to under 300, 000 in 2021, and it continues to dwindle today. 

During that trip, Francis made a point of visiting burned out and blown up mosques and churches in territory once occupied by Isis. He said he “had no words” after seeing the scale of destruction. “Human cruelty,” he said, “our cruelty, is impossible to believe.”

And yet, in the midst of the Pope came to encourage the Christian community to hold fast in spite of the violence, and to not be afraid. On his last day, children lined the aisles of a local church, Palm Sunday-style in excitement for the Pope’s visit, and the Pope delivered a message of hope to all gathered:

“Our gathering,” he said. “Our gathering here today shows that terrorism and death never have the last word. The last word belongs to God and to his Son, the conqueror of sin and death. Even amid the ravages of terrorism and war, we can see, with the eyes of faith, the triumph of life over death.”

Think about it–Good Friday, the darkest day, the murder of God. It should be the moment where tear-filled eyes are closed tightly for good. But instead, it’s the moment of absolute triumph. It’s at this moment where the dead have their eyes opened. Instead of death, like an earthquake swallowing up the earth’s inhabitants, God’s power for life shakes the corpses from their slumber.

And you and I–we’re like those dead saints struck alive in the shadow of the cross, awaiting that final Easter day. Because you and I know that even when our world is at our darkest, we have hope. Even amidst the ravages of terrorism, even in the midst of war, even when the world is at its most God-forsaken, even when our own lives feel like they’ve been stamped down in to the dust we need not be struck down by fear. We need not be buried under anxieties about the future. No!

But because we believe in a grave-opening God, we know that death is not the last word, but the last word belongs to his Son, who by this sign–the cross–has conquered. We can see, with the eyes of faith, the triumph of life over death.

May your eyes in this way, dear friends, be opened. May you be struck alive, may your hearts not be given over to despair, but be kindled with hope! “Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim till all the world adore his sacred name!”

“O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

“Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ!”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.