Preamble – TBD – notions that are particularly propagated through collective prayer but also through hymnology and from the pulpit. Ideas that become almost institutionalised.
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.
Matthew 27:54
It is puzzling that most commentaries rush to spiritualise this event depriving themselves of understanding the more basic significance of the rent vail. The other peculiar thing is that we link this event with the truth of the “new and living way” of Hebrews 10:20, when in fact the verse goes on to say that there is still a veil in place. There is no rent veil in Hebrews 10:20. Despite this, the notion that Matthew 27:54 is somehow linked with Hebrews 10:20 is widely recited in collective worship.
To unhinge ourselves from this notion, here are some thoughts which spring from a simple reading of the passages in their context.
First of all Matthew attaches no significance to the event. Sometimes a writer will call out the specific significance under inspiration from The Holy Spirit (cf. John 12:33, 19:24, 21:19), but not here in our passage. If we wish to explore the significance therefore, we must tread carefully. Our inclination can be to spiritualise details like this and whilst this is sometimes appropriate (with typology for instance), edifying even, this type of reading will have to hang together well with support from scripture elsewhere. So what is the significance then of this mention to Matthews’ readers?
We do well to remember that Mathews readers were Jewish. There is a significance connected with the rent veil that would have been appreciated by the Jews long before it dawned upon the early church that there was a new way into God’s presence. Instead of looking at this event from our perspective, put yourself in the place of a priest serving in the temple. Realise what it meant to him. The veil in his mind was what protected him from the awesome presence of God Himself. With the veil now rent, he might well have fled the holy place. But there would always be that chilling question in his mind, ‘where was God?’, because He wasn’t there in the Holy of Holies. Luke says that the veil was rent in the middle so any priests that were either there at that moment in time or subsequently entering the sanctuary would have been able to see right into the Holy of Holies. Now whether they looked or not it would have been very apparent that the inner shrine was empty, cold, void of the presence of God. What could be clearer evidence of that fact that all was not well with Judaism. It was dead, bereft of life. This would have been most unsettling for a devout Jewish priest.
Ezekiel tells us very clearly that the manifest presence of God had left the temple. But this miraculous event confirmed it in a way unthinkable and unimaginable. Now because we are not Jews perhaps this significance is lost on us. But it is no surprise to me that when you come into the book of Acts, many of the priests were (as it says in 6:7), “obedient to the faith”. These were men who were Jewish through and through, the most unlikely of converts. But the rent vail was too much of a testimony against Judaism to be ignored because it showed them that Judaism was dead. Christ was not a more preferable alternative, He was the only way to God because Judaism was no more.
We have come to see the rent veil as some sort of symbol of God opening up the way into his presence. Did the priest also think that the ‘way into God’s presence had opened up’? Did Matthews readers attach this significance to the event? I do not think so. It was unthinkable to a priest that the way into God’s presence should be opened up without a particular means of approach. At that particular point in time, the only thought on his mind was that Judaism was in great crisis and his priestly duties a charade.
There are other possible ways of looking at the rent vail. It was miraculous along with the earthquake and opened tombs. These events, as did the earthquake, led people to realise that the man on the centre cross was indeed, The Son of God. Jews needed signs to convince them and here were three signs that compelled them to contemplate the truth that the man on the centre cross was who he claimed to be. In fact, if Matthew does place a signifiance on these events, it is just this (Matthew 27:51-54).
These conclusions may be less satisfying than finding a spiritual significance, they are somewhat plain and pragmatic. Be that as it may.
Now, on Hebrews 10:20. Despite Judaism being dead, there is still a holy place in 10:19, despite Judaism being dead, there is still a veil in 10:20, despite Judaism being dead, there is still a high priest in 10:21 and despite Judaism being dead, our hearts still must be sprinkled or made clean (10:22). The Lords death is being compared in harmony with not by contrast to the types of the Old Testament. Writing to those who knew all too well the importance of these things in the earthly tabernacle (recall that it is the earthly tabernacle which is being compared in Hebrews – for it was the tabernacle in particular that was a pattern of things in the heavens cf. Heb 8:5 not so much the temples which stray from the pattern of the tabernacle), the writer is not saying that the way into God’s presence is open carte blanche. Nor is he saying that it is open because of the rent veil. And yet by linking the rent vail from Matthew 27:51 with the new and living way in Hebrews 10:20 we inadvertently suggest that it is. It is not. We still come to God on the grounds of shed blood, through the veil, which is his flesh. And of course we all believe that, it’s just that we tend to rush into to spiritualising the rent veil when it is what was behind the rent veil (or what wasn’t), that is significant. Hebrews 10:20 explicitly says that we enter ‘through’. Not ‘over’, over the torn remnants of the rent curtain. Some translations render egkainizo as ‘opened’ which reinforces the correspondence between the open Holy of Holies in Matthew 27 and our verse here in Hebrews 10. But the idea really is similar to when we open or dedicate a building and there is a cutting of the ribbon. The new and living way has been initiated. But the way itself into that building has a particular means of approach. The way into God’s presence still has a particular means of approach, by means of Christ.
So if we see a connection between these two matters it is not that the ‘rent veil’ allows us access into the presence of God. It is that access to God is no longer through the law which is ‘dead’ but through Christ who is alive.
These comments hopefully offer a healthy challenge to the widely held significance placed on the rent veil. The loss of such a notion in our collective worship will be worthwhile if it means we are being more honest in our reading of Scripture. In addition, we can be relieved of some connected ideas such as the Lord’s flesh being rent – which some say is being suggested in Heb 10:20. That view naturally flows from making the connection between the two passages described here (Matthew 27 and Heb 10) but with the connection void, we should dispense with this also.
