Robert Barron - Something Happened on Easter
Peace be with you and Happy Easter to everybody. We come to this high point of liturgical year of the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord. Probably a lot of you know that I’ve spent a lot of my life reading texts from philosophers and religious writers and spiritual writers, and Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Anselm, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel. All these people in the course of my studies, I’ve read. And I love those texts, ideas, arguments, fine inspirational notions. What all those figures have in common I would say, ancient modern, is a kind of amusing detachment, is they’re talking about these high ideas. They’re in a philosophical sort of calm frame of mind.
A memory I have when I was a doctoral student in Paris many years ago, my favorite spot to go was right behind Notre Dame Cathedral along the Seine. And I would sit against the wall there and I’d always bring a book with me and probably a baguette. And I would read one of these people, probably I was reading some high philosopher or theologian. I’d look up at the beauty of Notre Dame Cathedral in a contemplative spirit and listening to these calmly musing sages. Well, there’s all that, and then there’s the gospel. I want us to see the contrast between detached, philosophical musing, as beautiful as that is… Look, I’m a philosopher, I love that stuff, but there’s a contrast between all of that and the gospels. Gospel, God’s spell. It’s a rendering of euangelion, good news. Good news.
Now, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Anselm, okay, they’re interesting and they’re wonderful, and they’re full of deep ideas but it’s not exactly newsy. It’s not texts that you want to say, «Hey, let me tell you about this, something happened». But then there’s the gospels. Yes, they’ve inspired philosophers, and yes, they’ve inspired spiritual teachers. All that’s true. But at their heart they’re not abstracted, philosophical musing. They’re the urgent conveying of news, something happened, something happened and I need you to know about it. Now, with that in mind, look at our first reading for today from one of Peter’s speeches in the Acts of the Apostles. He begins this way, «You know what happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee with the baptism that John preached».
So right away, he’s not like Kant or Hegel or Aristotle, he’s not dealing in philosophical abstractions. He’s not trading in mythic narrative. He’s saying, «Hey, did you hear what happened? Let me tell you about this Jesus, this person». And so the audience is meant to say, «Oh, yeah, I remember that». He goes on, «…how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power». It’s going to be about Him, this guy, this Jesus whom you’ve heard about. Maybe some of you heard Him, maybe some of you saw Him. I want to tell you about Him. And then this man, God raised on the third day after our leaders put Him to death. Wow, now, that’s a story, that He was a preacher and you heard about Him. Yeah, and our leaders put Him to death.
Well, sad end to the story, I guess. No, the story is just beginning because God raised Him from the dead. We’re not talking about myths here, we’re not talking about vague abstractions. Oh, it’s a story about the dying and rising of the crops. Come on, that’s not what he’s doing here. He’s talking about this Jesus whom he knew, and maybe some of you heard about Him and knew Him and something happened to Him. And then everyone… This line which though I come across it every single Easter takes my breath away. He says, «He became visible to us who ate and drank with Him after he rose from the dead».
What? What are you talking about? So God raised Him from the dead, and then he appeared to you not as a ghost or a hallucination or something. They knew about that. They knew about that sort of phenomenon, psychological projections, dreams, ghosts even. No, we who ate and drank with Him after he rose from the dead. Something happened, something happened, Easter, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Now, with all that in mind, I wanted to use that as a preparation for our gospel which is taken from St. John’s account of the resurrection. Here’s what struck me, and I’ve been reading this, of course for many, many years, preaching on it for years. But it struck me just this most recent preparation, how much running is going on in this story?
Mary Magdalene runs to the apostles. Peter and John run to the tomb. In fact, it’s emphasized that John ran faster than Peter. There’s a lot of running going on in this story. I don’t know about you, but I can’t really even imagine Aristotle or Plato or Kant or Hegel running. I see them sitting at a desk, maybe teaching a class at the university, maybe walking around with their disciples. Running? Why do people run? They run because they got something to tell you. There’s something urgent going on. If suddenly I ran out of the studio, people would say, «Hey, what’s going on with him»? People run because they’re not just trading in nice edifying abstractions. They run because they got something to communicate, something to say.
So look now how the story unfolds. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early on Sunday morning. I love the detail of this story. It has that vivid sense of something remembered, the little details. When you’re telling a story, not just an abstract sort of mythic thing, but you’re telling a story about something that happened to you, you remember these details. She comes early and says, when it was still dark, so very early in the morning, «Why has she come»? Well, why anyone comes to a cemetery or a grave, she’s come to mourn. She’s probably crying. She’s come to remember what Jesus meant to her. She comes in that spirit. What does she find though? A stone rolled away. The stone, this giant stone they put in front of this cave-like a tomb. Well, something happened, obviously. Something happened. who would’ve rolled that stone or how would the stone get rolled? But something happened here and so she runs.
Notice too, this strikes me, all these people were running, they’re pretty young. I ran a lot when I was a kid. Right now running is not something I do a lot of. When you reach a certain age, you don’t run. How old were these people? St.Peter, we think died around the year like '64. And they speculate he was in his mid-60s, which means at this time he was maybe in his early 30s. We don’t think of Peter that way, do we? We think of this old man with a long beard? John, younger still, probably in his early 20s. Mary Magdalene running, how old was she? In her 20s somewhere. Anyway, she runs to tell them, «Hey, they’ve taken the Lord away».
And so the two disciples run to the tomb. You know this detail that John outpaces him, the younger John, not surprisingly outpacing the older St.Peter, it’s a detail that contributed to the conversion of Graham Greene. You know the great English novelist convert to the faith. And he said one of the things that contributed to it was this story, because his novelist eye caught this fact that, well, why would they have remembered that? If they’re trading in some myth or abstraction or some made-up story, they wouldn’t have remembered. They wouldn’t have put that in. They put that in because it was vividly remembered. They get to the tomb, John first but he waits. And then Peter catches up to him. They look in.
Now, Mary Magdalene noticed the stone rolled away. But now they look in, what do they see? Jesus is gone. The body is gone, but the burial cloths remain. And first of all, that’s weird because if the body had been stolen, why would they bother unwrapping Him? Wouldn’t they have just picked Him up and taken Him? They want to get out of there as quickly as possible. Would they have meticulously unwrapped the body before stealing it? So that in itself is weird that the burial cloths are there. But secondly, they’re neatly arranged, and the cloth that went around his head is rolled up neatly. It says in its own place.
First of all, notice the vivid remembrance, these little details. But you see what struck them as so strange, let’s say the grave robbers took the burial cloths off, why would they bother arranging them beautifully on the burial shelf there? Why would they fold up the cloth around His head in a neat… It doesn’t make any sense. Something happened. Something very weird happened in this tomb. It says that John when he looked in and he saw what I’ve just described, he believed, he believed. What did he come to believe? Not that someone had broken into the tomb, that was Mary Magdalene’s assumption. They’ve taken the body of the Lord. Not that someone had broken in, but the far weirder fact that somebody had broken out.
Resurrection faith begins in this startling moment when they realize that death does not have the final word. These followers of Jesus that loved Him, they were His friends, they were amazed at Him, they were convinced He was the Messiah of Israel. But His death on that Roman cross; that dashed their hopes. Remember the road to Emmaus story? It’s all about that. We thought He was the one. But his death on a Roman cross, someone’s put to death by the enemies of Israel, there’s no way he’s the Messiah.
Not only do we mourn Him, but we’re mourning our own lost faith. We’re mourning the fact that we’ve wasted these years of our lives. We’re mourning because we’re so deeply hurt and disappointed, all of that, every bit of that. But when John looks in and he sees the empty tomb and he sees those burial cloths, and he comes to believe someone broke out of a tomb because God’s love, everybody, is more powerful than death itself. God’s love, God’s mercy is more powerful than death itself. And this means, and now we come to the heart of Easter faith, this means that all of our assumptions have to be rearranged. This means everything we’ve assumed is true about the nature of things has got to be undone. This means the world has been turned upside down.
There’s a revolution in that literal sense of a turning around, turning upside down of all expectations. We live now in a new world. It’s the only way to understand the first Christians and their message. They are not like the disciples of Confucius or the disciples of Aristotle who say, «Let me tell you about this new teaching I’ve.». «No, nothing as bland as that». They’re telling you the world has changed. And that’s called to this day evangelization, euangelion, good news, something happened. And now, listen to me. It’s time for all of us to run out to the world with that great message. God bless you and Happy Easter.