The Earthquake of the Resurrection - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you, and happy, blessed Easter to everybody. We've come to the great day, the high point of the church's liturgical year, the reason why we are Christians at all. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then our faith is in vain. St. Paul told us that. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, Christianity is a waste of time. This is the hinge point. This is the standing or falling point of Christianity. Taking Easter seriously is the source of our joy, the source of our hope. Everything else is secondary to the great declaration of our Easter faith. That's how important it is. In light of that, let me talk to you about earthquakes. Because we hear in Matthew's account, with the arrival of the angel and the rolling back of the stone over the tomb of Jesus, it was like a great earthquake, or it was an earthquake. First time I felt an earthquake was in California, not surprisingly.

0:55 I spent most of my life in Chicago, where you don't ever feel an earthquake. I was over in Europe, never felt one there. It was one morning, very early. I was up, and I was sitting in a chair in my bedroom. And this thump, this vroom. And my only frame of reference was, the house has been hit by a truck. And not a car, it was bigger than that. The whole house in one moment just shook. We must have been hit by a truck. And I was about to spring down the stairs to see what happened. And then it occurred to me, ah, that must be an earthquake. And I discovered that indeed is one type of earthquake, this boom, like that. but it shook the whole house. But more than that, it shook my consciousness.

1:50 It shook my frame of reference. I didn't know what to make of it, right? It was a couple years later on the 4th of July, I'm at my house and I'm sitting on the back porch of my house. And then out just across from me in the lawn on a lawn chair is my nephew. My sister was visiting with her family. And he must have been 19 or 20 at the time, I guess. And we're just talking away. And I didn't really feel this earthquake that much, but he did. This was not a boom earthquake. It was the second type, which is rolling. It's like the surface of the earth just rolls. And I remember he was just talking normally, and then he suddenly got up. And he said, what was that? And he looked at me and he goes, I don't like that. I get it, you know.

2:42 especially, you know, he's another Chicagoan. He'd never experienced an earthquake before. Disconcerting. What is going on? I don't know how to understand this. And maybe most importantly, the thing I thought was most fundamental, the ground, the earth, terra firma, right, is rolling like the ocean. Are you kidding? What can I possibly rely on? My whole world has turned upside down. I don't like this. Well, can I suggest to everybody, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an earthquake.

3:23 It's something that takes us by surprise, that overwhelms us, that unnerves us, that lies outside of our frame of reference. Yeah, we're tempted to say, like my nephew, I don't like this. I don't know what to make of this.

3:44 There's been a tendency from ancient times, but you can see it in modern times very strongly, to turn the resurrection of Jesus into a calm and tidy and safe little myth. Oh, yes, a nice story from long ago about a man who died, but he came back from the dead. It's like a myth. It's like a fairy tale. It's under our control. I can understand, man. It's like other stories of a similar stripe. Notice, please, everybody, in myths, we talk about once upon a time. It's nothing real. It's a story that evokes certain abstract truths. Okay, I love the myths. They're great. But once upon a time. I've often said, update it. You say, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But see what that does? I'm not frightened by that, or that doesn't cause me to rearrange my thinking. It's a safe little distance, a literary exercise.

4:44 Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. That is not the story they're telling here. As C.S. Lewis said so memorably, those who think the gospel is trading in myth have not read many myths. The gospel story of the resurrection is not in a galaxy far, far away. It's not once upon a time. It's not a little safe, cozy fairy tale. No, no. listen in Acts chapter 10, when St. Peter, this is very typical, gives this accounting of the resurrection. How does he begin? He reminds the listeners of the first utterances of Jesus up in Galilee. Oh, I know where that is. It's up north of Jerusalem. He says, after the baptism that John announced, oh yeah, John the Baptist, I remember him. And so I've situated it now historically. It goes on to say that he and the other disciples were eyewitnesses of all that Jesus did. And then he says, both in Judea and Jerusalem. Okay, I know where those are. And yeah, I spent a lot of time in Jerusalem. Sure. A myth? No, he's naming particular places and people.

5:49 Then it says, he was handed over by the authorities to this brutal death. And then without changing tone or register or anything, he says, God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear to us who were chosen as witnesses. Yeah, Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, John the Baptist. Yeah, I've situated this fellow in a historical context.

6:17 And then he rose from the dead. Then this line, I know I've said this before to you, but to me it remains breathtaking in its simplicity. and it's straightforwardness. He says, we, referring to himself and the disciples, we who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. We're not talking once about a time here. That's the point. We're not talking galaxy far, far away. We're not talking about a neat little story. We are talking about an earthquake. Can you imagine these people? They knew Jesus. They heard him. They touched him. They knew him. They saw him die on the cross, and then they ate and drank with him. I don't know if you know the movie Risen. It came out, I don't know, five years ago, maybe.

7:09 Joseph Fiennes is in it. He plays this Roman centurion, in fact, who presided at the crucifixion of Jesus. So he sees him put to death, and he's a hardened Roman soldier, knows a lot about death, has seen many dead bodies. He has to verify, because it's his job, that this man is dead. So he goes up and he looks into the face of the dead Christ on the cross. Yep, yep, he's dead. And then what I love about that movie is, after the news of the resurrection, he's now been sent to kind of quell this whole thing and figure this out. And he bursts into this room, and there the disciples of Jesus are. And he's looking around at them, sees these faces. and then he goes back. That's him. And there sitting around the table with the others is Jesus, unmistakably, the one he saw dead on the cross, and he knew what a dead person looked like.

8:06 But there he is. And at that moment, he's up against the wall. He has his sword drawn, and he just slides to the ground, utterly stupefied. Earthquake. It was like an earthquake. It turned everything upside down. It was beyond his frame of reference. He couldn't take it in. What is this? It's a turning upside down of all of our expectations. What we think is terra firma, the fact of death, the finality of death, is no longer true. Because God has risen Jesus from the dead, has raised Jesus from the dead. And, you know, Matthew's account I've been looking at, but in St. John's account, there's a great stress placed on the burial clause. And it's fascinating, isn't it?

8:59 Like, why would they have remembered that detail? Well, Peter and John get to the tomb, they look in, and they see these clause. And the reason it's so striking to them is, well, if someone was stealing his body, and his body's not here, so something happened. Well, if people are stealing his body, they wouldn't bother unwrap it. No, you get the body and get rid of it as quickly as you can. You're not going to unwrap it. That was an elaborate process, by the way, of wrapping a dead body. So why are the cloths sitting there? See, that's what struck them as so odd. And I remember so vividly now, 2010, I had the opportunity to see the Shroud of Turin. I was over in Rome, and it was on display up in Turin. And so the group were going up there. And I went with them. And I stood at one point. They allowed you to go into—I was, I don't know, 15 feet away from the Shroud of Turin. And I remember thinking, this is the burial cloth that Peter and John saw on the morning of the resurrection.

10:02 Again, this is not a myth, everybody. I was able to look on what these disciples looked on that Easter morning. The reality of the resurrection is an earthquake that turns everything upside down. Now, here's the second image I want to share with you. Go back to Matthew now. It says, the angel descended from heaven and sat upon the stone. I love that detail, by the way, because the stone that was supposed to keep that tomb closed forever, the angel rolls it back and sits on it. I don't think this is going to control me, pal. But then we hear, his appearance was like lightning. His clothing was white as snow.

10:53 He's an angel, right? Angelos means messenger in Greek. Hence, euangelion means good message, good news, right? So an angelos has appeared, but not from Galilee or from Rome or from Athens. No, no. A messenger has come from a higher world, from this world of light. You know, I was thinking as I reread this of Spielberg, how often Spielberg uses light in a very creative way in his movies. Think of Close Encounters. Think of E.T.

11:29 Light coming from under a door. Light coming from around an object. Light behind a mountain. in. Light indicating some mysterious world beyond the one that we can immediately see. There's something else. There's something more going on. And the light that I sense indicates it. Well, the angel, the angelos, the messenger from a higher realm is the light that signals the breakthrough of this higher world into our world. See, think of Jesus' whole life, everybody. What is it but heaven breaking into earth? Mind you, not lifting us up out of the earth, not negating or destroying the earth, but rather transfiguring and illuminating the earth, the light, the heaven and earth meeting. Well, the resurrection is that moment par excellence, when heaven and earth meet. The fact that Jesus rises in his body is exceptionally important.

12:38 We don't say his soul ran up to heaven. We don't say, oh, he's left the earth behind and now lives in some... No, what we say is his body, this body that they touched, that they knew, this Jesus, as their friend, who died, yes, and now has been transfigured and elevated into a higher pitch of existence. We call that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And what it means is an earthquake, a new world, the finality of death overcome. Something else is the case. A higher world can rescue and transform this fallen world of ours.

13:27 That's the earthquake. That's the light. Don't allow them to domesticate Easter. That's my message to my fellow Christians listening to me. Don't let them domesticate Easter into one more little charming folktale. It's not a folktale. And mind you, the tyrants have always wanted Easter to be a folktale. Because you make it a harmless story, it threatens nobody. But you tell the story of Easter the way the first disciples did. The breakthrough of a higher world into this one. Overcoming the finality of death. That gives rise to a whole new vision of things. Don't domesticate Easter. Allow it to be light. allow it to be an earthquake and God bless you