As the entire nation of Japan can testify, there is nothing quite so terrifying as an earthquake. Unlike a storm we can track, a fire we can extinguish, a flood we can move to high ground to escape, an earthquake is utterly unpredictable. The very ground we stand upon, the planet itself, shifts and shakes, calling everything we believe about our world into question. And as terrifying as we find earthquakes in the twenty-first century, when we know all about plate tectonics, consider how profoundly frightening a shifting, shaking world was for the people of the first century?

Matthew’s gospel begins the story of the Easter morning resurrection with nothing less than an earthquake. The world has shifted. Everything has changed. Reality has re-aligned. Thus Matthew communicates that new realit…