Bishop Robert Barron. CNS photo/courtesy Word on Fire
Some people are attracted to the graves of the famous. Hundreds, even thousands of people go to graves to muse and meditate.
One such person is Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, who serves in the Los Angeles area. He studied in Paris and spent many hours in the cemeteries holding the graves of Chopin, Abelard and Heloise, and even Jim Morrison. In a video talk, Barron says of graves: “They're places of finality. They're places of peace, of contemplation.” However…
Then there's the grave that the Gospel writers are fascinated by. I'm talking about the grave of Jesus, to which three women go early on Easter Sunday morning. They've gone with oils to anoint the body, according to the Jewish custom.
They worried about who would roll the stone back, but I'm sure they were planning there to perform this ritual, and to muse and to ponder, remembering the great things that Jesus had said and done, probably feeling some anger at those that had betrayed him and denied him, probably weeping in their grief.
But they arrive, and to their infinite surprise, they find first, the stone rolled away. Has a grave robber been at work? But their astonishment only increases when, looking inside, they see not the body of Jesus but rather a young man in a white garment, who says to them, "You're looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him."
The young man's message, to put it bluntly, was not that someone had broken into this grave, but rather that someone had broken out of it. What was their response to this shocking news?
And this is the first account we have in Mark's gospel. What's the reaction of these women?
"They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them." Yeah, graves, sure; they're places of quiet contemplation, places to muse, places to think. Then there's this grave, from which these women run in terror.
And thereupon, brothers and sisters, hangs the tale of Easter. Jesus is not a fondly remembered figure from the past. He's not a great spiritual teacher whom we recall with fond contemplation.
We participate in the terror that these women felt as the absolute novelty and shock and surprise of Jesus' resurrection dawned upon them.
What I love about this story is it militates against all attempts to domesticate the resurrection. And there's been a lot of this up and down the Christian centuries, and certainly in our own time.
When I was going through seminary — this is some years ago — these were the kinds of books that we read in the seminary.
"Oh, Jesus’ resurrection; oh, don't read that as something that really happened. Rather, the disciples after the death of their Master, knew that his cause would go on, and so they invented this story of an empty tomb and appearances to symbolize the fact that his cause goes on."
Or this view that was held by a very prominent theologian when I was going through school — after the terrible death of Jesus, the disciples nevertheless felt forgiven, and so they expressed this conviction with the stories of the empty tomb and the appearances.
Come on. I mean, this is impossibly thin gruel, and it does not correspond to the clear sense of shock, novelty, and excitement that runs through every page of the New Testament. Can you really imagine Paul tearing into Corinth with the news that "Hey, the cause of a dead person that I admired goes on." They would have laughed him out of town.
Can you imagine all the apostles, they go careering around the world to their own deaths — with the message that they felt forgiven? I mean, give me a break.
These attempts to flatten out and domesticate the resurrection are undermined by this fundamental witness of the facticity of the resurrection.
Can I just draw three implications, friends, from the fact of Jesus' resurrection? First of all, it means that Jesus is Lord. You'll find this phrase often in the writings of St. Paul. In his Greek, "Iesous Kyrios," Jesus is Lord. And we might say, "Well, that's a blandly spiritual thing to say." But that was deeply subversive in the first century. Why? Well, because a watchword of that time and place was "Kaisar Kyrios," Caesar's the Lord. He's the one to whom my allegiance is due. He's the one in charge of my life.
How wonderful: the first Christians, in light of the resurrection, they purposely twisted that language. Not Kaisar Kyrios; Iesous Kyrios. Mind you, someone whom Caesar put to death, but whom God raised from the dead, he's the true Lord. He's the one to whom your allegiance is due.
And furthermore, how wonderful that they proclaimed this long before there was anything like an institutional Church, long before there were armies and armies of believers. These are a handful of people who were declaring this deeply subversive message of the lordship of Jesus.
Here's a second implication of the resurrection — again, not as some thin gruel, some vague symbol, but the fact of the resurrection — that Jesus’ claims about himself are now ratified.
Unlike any of the other religious founders, Jesus consistently speaks and acts in the very person of God. "My son, your sins are forgiven."
"Who's this man think he is? Only God can forgive sins."
Right. That's the point. Jesus is speaking and acting in the very person of God. "Oh, you've heard it said in the Torah, but I say…" Well, for a first-century Jew, to claim authority over the Torah, which was the supreme authority — the only one that could possibly do that would be God himself. Uh-huh. "You've got a greater than the temple here," Jesus says, in reference to himself. Again, for a first-century Jew, the temple was the dwelling place of God. Who could possibly say he's greater than the temple, except the one who in fact dwells in the temple?
In fact, this is why Jesus is brought to the cross: this apparent blasphemy, this man claiming to be God.
And then, see, when he died on the cross, even his most ardent followers were convinced that he was a sort of a sad fraud. Think of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Yeah, we thought he was the one, but clearly he's not because there'd be no greater proof possible that someone was not the Messiah of Israel, than his death at the hands of Israel's enemies. Clearly he isn't God. Clearly he was just a deluded figure."
But when he rose from the dead — and I don't mean some vague feeling they had of being forgiven; come on — when he rose from the dead and appeared alive again to them, they knew now he is exactly who he said he was. They knew that Jesus' divinity, his claimed divinity, is ratified. And therefore, we have to give our lives to him.
If he is who he says he is — not one teacher among many, but God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God — what choice do I have? I must give my life to him.
Here's a third and final implication of the Resurrection: that God's love, everybody, is more powerful than anything that's in the world.
What brought him to his cross? Cruelty and violence and hatred and injustice and stupidity and all forms of human dysfunction. It's on that cross, he bore all of this. The sin of the world came upon him. He went into the muck and the mud of the human condition. In fact, it closed over his head.
But then in the resurrection, when Jesus says "Shalom," and he offers this peace on the far side of all the dysfunction of the world, he shows thereby that God's love is more powerful than any of it.
That's why Paul can say, "I'm certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither height nor depth, nor any other power could ever separate us from the love of God."
He knows it because of the resurrection, because he saw the risen Christ. That's where we find our hope, everybody. That's where we find our salvation. That word just means our healing. What's wounded us? Well, all the darkness and sin of the world; that's what's wounded us.
In the resurrection of Jesus, we find our salvation from all this, we don't take the resurrection as some, "Oh, that's an interesting fact from long ago." Come on; come on. We take it in as the definitive sign of the lordship of Jesus, the definitive sign that he's God from God, Light from Light, the definitive sign that God's love is more powerful than anything in the world.
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