Have you ever had a visceral reaction?

In Jesus’ time, people didn’t say “I’m heartbroken.” They said, “My liver is on fire.” Back then, Greeks and others didn’t say that emotions came from the heart, or the head. They said emotions came from their intestines. They had “gut feelings.” They said that they felt anger and sor-row in their viscera — they had “visceral reactions.”

To the gospel writer Matthew, the resurrection of Jesus is earthshaking. The Greek word is seismos, and means shaking, shock, earthquake. In seismic events, nothing is certain. Nothing is the same. Nothing is stable. 

A brilliant, terrifying angel rolls back the stone and sits on it. As if to mock the empire that rolled the stone there in the first place. As if to mock the power of death itself.