Robert Barron - The Revolution of the Resurrection
Peace be with you. Friends, for this Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we’re right on the cusp now of Lent, so next Sunday is the First Sunday of Lent, and it gives me the opportunity to talk about something I always love to talk about, which is the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I’m going to focus on our second reading from Paul to the Corinthians, his First Letter to the Corinthians.
If you’re looking for a theological description of the Resurrection, you won’t find it most thoroughly in the Gospels. You’re going to find it precisely here in chapter 15 of First Corinthians. Paul, of course, has this searching theological mind, and Resurrection was so central to his life. You can’t really overstate that. When Paul comes into these various cities to preach, he’s not preaching a moral message. I mean, yes, there are moral implications of his message, and you can find ethical teachings and all that in Paul, but that’s not his primary focus. The word that is just like a refrain in Paul is anastasis, anastasis, resurrection, resurrection.
In fact, one of the crowds listening to Paul heard the word so often they thought he was declaring a new God called Anastasis, Resurrection. It was the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead that Paul correctly took as the hinge, the central teaching of Christianity. And it wasn’t just a matter of intellectual conviction. The Resurrection changed Paul’s life, right? He meets the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. He’s going there to persecute the Church. He’s full of zeal, murderous zeal, persecuting the Church, and he sees the risen Christ, and then everything changed. That’s the Paul who can now say, «It’s no longer I who live. It’s Christ who lives in me».
That’s the Paul who can now look at everything he’d been trained in, the Law and Covenant and prophecy, «Okay, it’s so much rubbish compared to the resurrected Christ who’s been revealed to me». It was of revolutionary importance. So what do we mean by «Resurrection»? How do we theologize about it? Again, go back to chapter 15 of First Corinthians. It’s a long chapter. Our reading for today is just a little bit of it, but I want to walk with you through some of the highlights of that 15th chapter. Here’s a first observation. The Resurrection should never be read as some purely subjective experience on the part of the Apostles.
This was common. I’m kind of ashamed to say it, but a lot of the texts I read when I was a young man in seminary and university read the Resurrection this way. That it’s basically something that went on inside the psyches and consciousness of the first disciples. They remembered him with great fondness, or they became aware of the meaning of his life and message, and they expressed that in symbolic terms as a resurrection from the dead. Nonsense. Nonsense. And how that view became propagated, that’s a tale for another day. But it does not stand up to any kind of biblical analysis.
Listen now as Paul speaks: «He appeared to Cephas», that’s Peter, «then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive. Then he appeared to James, then to all the Apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me». Now, what strikes you about this? This is not a man trading in vague abstractions. He’s not talking about subjective experiences, like when you read a book and you say, «Oh, yeah, that’s a really interesting idea,» or «I came to see things in a different way». No, no, he’s naming names, and it’s very important.
Sometimes I think we get the impression that all these people that knew Jesus, they all just disappeared. They all got in a spaceship and flew away. Well, no, they’re all around. These people are around, and Paul is saying to his Corinthian audience, «He appeared to Cephas, Peter, and you could talk to him, then to the Twelve». I love this one because we don’t focus on it that much: «Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time». Wow! You say, «Well, oh, the Resurrection is just a few people having hallucinations». Not 500! Not 500 at one time having, what, a mass hallucination? And then don’t you love this? He says: «Most of whom are still alive».
What’s the point? «You can talk to them. Most of them are still around. If you want to find out, go talk to them. Then he appeared to James. You know James. You could see him. Then to all the Apostles. And then last of all, he appeared to me. Now, you Corinthians, whom I’m writing to, you know me. I’ve appeared and I’ve spoken to you. You know me. I’m telling you, he appeared to me, and he appeared to all these people whom you can ask about it». See, it’s cooked up in faculty lounges, this weird view that the Resurrection is some subjective conviction. No, no, no. These people saw him. They saw Jesus alive.
So don’t talk to me about hallucinations and private experiences and all that. Paul would have no time for that. And keep in mind too, Paul himself, Cephas, Peter himself, almost all of the Apostles, they all died rather than deny this fact. They all died. When people say, «Hey, surrender your faith. Forget this crazy story about the risen Jesus,» and they said no. And in fact, the grave marker of one of these people, namely Cephas, is one of the most famous buildings in the world. So St.Peter’s Basilica in Rome, that’s an elaborate gravestone, that’s what that is, is telling you, here’s Peter, here’s this Cepha, this Cephas that Paul’s talking about, who saw him, who saw him. His bones, they’re still under that church in Rome.
Don’t talk to me about illusions and hallucinations and all that nonsense. How about this? Some say, «Well, I mean, you can be a Christian without believing the truth of the Resurrection, right? I mean, you can follow the teachings of Jesus and say he was a great moral figure. I’m trying to live like a Christian. Isn’t that enough»? Listen to Paul: «If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins».
So don’t bore me with this nonsense about, oh, I’m a good Christian because I believe in the ethical teaching of Jesus. Well, I mean, come on. I can believe in all kinds of ethical theories. It doesn’t make me a Christian. «If he’s not been raised, your faith is futile and you’re still in your sins». It’s a very interesting observation to make. See, if Christ has not been raised, that means he was put to death, he’s put in his grave, and he’s still there. So we’re still living in the old world, the old world of sin and death, and the dominance of weak people by the strong and this old world. The whole point of the Resurrection is that a new world has appeared. Sin is no longer dominant. Sin has been conquered by the Resurrection of Jesus. So if he’s not been raised, you’re still in your sins. You’re still living in this old world.
Now, to give it a little more positive content, Paul teaches furthermore in First Corinthians 15, «The risen Jesus is the first fruits of those who have died». It’s a lovely image here. There was a common belief at the time that at the end of the age, the end of time, the righteous dead would rise. What shocked them, as you can sense, it’s still in the pages of the New Testament, what shocked them was what they expected of the righteous dead may be way in the end of time happened to this one Jesus. It happened now in time, in history, and they recognize it. That’s why it’s so important. They recognize it not as a metaphysical one-off of interest to Jesus. No, no, no. They saw he’s the first fruits of those who’ve fallen asleep.
In other words, it’s the harbinger. It’s the sign that what happened to him will also happen to the righteous dead. That it’s happening even now. God has begun the process of bringing us all into a new and higher life. It’s why we find hope in the Resurrection of Jesus, why we look at it again not just as a historical one-off, like, «Well, yeah, how about that? It happened to him a long time ago». No, it’s a sign like the first swallow returning to Capistrano. It’s the sign of what’s going to come. He’s the first fruits of those who’ve fallen asleep. And now Paul goes on, and you can imagine the way Paul’s mind worked. He’s thinking this thing through, probably entertaining questions people had. So he goes on: «How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come»?
Now, here’s some of the comparisons. Paul says, «What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed. And so it is with the resurrection of the dead». So he’s drawing from the agricultural world, and their idea was you put the seed in the ground when the seed dies and then gives rise. I mean, we have, I think, a richer sense that actually makes this comparison even better. The seed goes into the ground and then it explodes outward to give rise to a richer and higher life. Think of that little seed compared to the stalk of corn or of grain. The seed, what’s sown, this little tiny thing, now bursts forth into this magnificent new form of life.
And so what’s sown, as it were, into the ground, think if we die and that our body goes into the ground, what’s sown is perishable, but what bursts forth from that is imperishable. What’s sown is a physical body, but it’s raised as a spiritual body. And there’s a famous term that Paul uses. And you say, «Well, what’s he talking about? It sounds like a contradiction». No. Paul is not a Greek. He’s raised in a Greek culture, that’s true, but his basic thought pattern is always Jewish rather than Greek. Greeks thought about souls escaping from the body. That’s true. We read that in Plato, for example. The soul, the spiritual will escape from the body, leave the body behind. But that’s not a Jewish or biblical perspective. No, I am my body. Therefore, what’s going to happen, Paul says, is not the escape of the soul from the body, but rather the elevation and transfiguration of the body.
This lowly body bursting into life at a higher level as the seed bursts into life. This purely physical body becoming a spiritual body. I would say a body enhanced, raised to a new pitch of perfection. I might’ve shared this with you before, but this image always helps me: imagining a circle on a two-plane system now raised to a sphere in three dimensions. The square in two dimensions raised to a cube in three dimensions. The triangle in two dimensions raised to a pyramid in three dimensions. The square and circle and triangle have not disappeared. They’ve been enhanced. They’ve been raised to a higher pitch. So what’s sown, the physical body, now gives rise to this spiritual body. That’s the resurrection. So then for our reading for today, we have this line: «For this perishable body must put on imperishability. This mortal body must put on immortality».
Notice again, we’re not getting rid of the body, not leaving the body behind, but it puts on something new and higher, enhanced. And then finally, what’s the upshot of all this? «Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ». Now, he’s shifting metaphor from the agricultural to the military, if you want. What reigns over the sinful world but death and the fear of death? But the Lord Jesus Christ in his Resurrection has conquered that fear because he’s conquered death. We Christians are those who live now under his lordship, not under the lordship of sin. Get out your Bibles, First Corinthians chapter 15, walk through that magnificent text, and rejoice in the power of the Resurrection. And God bless you.