Robert Barron - Everything Has Changed
Peace be with you, friends. We now enter the Easter season and come to the second Sunday of Easter. Here’s what I want you all to know: we misunderstand Easter dramatically when we think primarily of it as a spring festival—when the weather gets nicer, with Easter bunnies and Easter bonnets, and all that. I mean, it’s great, but if you don’t understand Easter as a revolution, you have not understood it. Unless you see it as an earthquake that has changed everything, you don’t truly grasp it. It always strikes me—even though I’ve been reading these things for years and preaching on them during the Easter season—when we read the great Easter accounts and then read from the Acts of the Apostles, or the Book of Revelation, you are struck by it.
These people want to communicate that the entire world has changed. This is not a little spring festival that any culture could enjoy; that’s all fine, but that’s not Easter. Everything has been shaken to its foundations. All our assumptions are thrown up for grabs—our understanding of power, relationships, all of it has changed because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I want to show this by looking at all three of our readings today. They’re all wonderful: one from the Gospel of John, one from the Acts of the Apostles, and then one from the Book of Revelation.
So let’s start with John. He brings us to the upper room on the night of Easter. The apostles are terrified, and we know why. Their leader has been put brutally to death. I don’t mean he just died; he was publicly executed in the most brutal way possible by the forces of the established state—Jewish, Roman, etc. They backed the wrong horse; their man was put to death. You know, when The Passion of the Christ came out years ago, there were so many complaints about its violence. I mean, that movie probably gave you a slight taste of what the violence of a Roman crucifixion looked like. That’s what happened to Jesus; that’s what happened to their leader. Were they psychologically devastated?
Well, of course. They lost their great friend and leader, but more than that, they were terrified. You sense it here; they’re in the upper room, and the doors are locked—of course they were—for fear that the same people who came after Jesus would come after them. That was not an unfounded fear; it was a very realistic fear they had. Imagine one of the worst times in your life when you were really afraid. Something had happened, something had bottomed out; your enemies were aligned against you, and things were really scraping bottom in your life. That’s where they are as this story opens up. The dark powers of the world, which threaten all of us in different ways, were threatening them massively. And what do we hear? Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, «Peace be with you.»
Now the risen Christ, oh, he’s like Lazarus, you know, coming back from the dead, who will die again. He’s like the son of the widow of Nain, who came back to life in this world and will die again. No, no, if that were all, if he were just resuscitated only to die again, the world would still be basically the same. What do we find now in the risen Christ? The overcoming of death itself. Jesus, risen from the dead, now outside of space and time, transcendent to space and time. Listen now; he is more powerful than anything that exists in the world. All the powers of the world are nothing compared to the power of the risen Christ.
What has every single tyrant in history used to oppress his people? The fear of death! That’s exactly what wicked people wield when they want to compel others to do something; they threaten them with death. The fear of death looms over all of us, but it is used in a particularly cynical way by tyrants throughout the centuries. What do they see here? He has overcome death itself; therefore, everything is different. Everything has changed! The power structure that we imagine in place is gone now. God’s love is more powerful than anything in the world; in fact, it overcomes our greatest fears.
So when the risen Jesus says to them — and he would have said «Shalom, » that beautiful word that runs like a motif throughout the scriptures — shalom means peace, well-being, what we all want, the deepest desire of the heart. What fear opposes is shalom. When Jesus, risen from the dead, says «Shalom» to them, it means our fears are overcome; the dark powers are on the run. God is Lord of the world. I mean, all of that is contained in the resurrection. And then, at this decisive moment, he said to them again, lest they miss the message, «Shalom! Peace be to you.» And then, «As the Father has sent me, so I send you.» And then he breathed on them and said, «Receive the Holy Spirit.»
Look, this is the church; this is the spiritual life. Everyone, as the Father sent me as a bearer of shalom to the world, now I send you. Same mission, same message. See again, our Christianity is not for us; it’s for the world. Does that make sense? It’s not primarily that I might have a more edifying, you know, spiritual experience; that’s fine, it does mean that, but its deepest sense is that it’s for the world. I’ve been sent now as a bearer of shalom to everybody I meet. I wonder, during this Easter season, could we start thinking about our Christian lives that way? As I make my way through the day, my purpose is to be a bearer of the shalom of the risen Jesus to everybody I meet. As the Father sent me, I send you. He breathed on them.
See, when do we receive the Holy Spirit? At our baptism; in all the sacraments, there’s a reception of the Holy Spirit that we might now become a bearer of that Spirit to the world. Okay, so with that in mind, the Gospel: let’s look at reading one from the Acts of the Apostles. Apostellein means to send, so this is about all of us. We’re all apostles in that sense; we’ve all been sent by the risen Christ into the world. What do we hear? Many signs and wonders were done among the people at the hands of the apostles. This is something I find, as you look through church history, often when evangelists come into a new region or country for the first time, they preach indeed, but very often we hear stories of the miraculous, the amazing, and the extraordinary.
I’m not really surprised by that; when God wants to plant the Gospel, He’ll inspire words, of course, but He’ll also act powerfully. The Spirit will act powerfully through those who bear the word. In the beginning of the Church, I think there were extraordinary signs. We hear it’s such a beautiful thing that as Peter walked by, they wanted to place the sick and the lame so that his shadow might pass over them. Well, that means they were experiencing through the apostles this power of healing—the Spirit breaking into the world.
Now, there are indeed today people who have the charism of physical healing, but think about this: you’ve received the Holy Spirit; your job is now to breathe that Spirit into the world. That has a healing power—healing at the psychological level, healing at the intellectual level, healing at the interpersonal level. Think of your life that way. That’s what you’re meant to do: breathe the Spirit that overcomes all fear. The same Spirit the apostles received, you breathe that now into the world in a saving way. You know, as Peter passes by, they know he’s a bearer of this spiritual power; it should be that way with all of us Christians. I don’t mean to puff up our egos; I just mean that should be an ordinary state of affairs: as we go by, people recognize in us the Spirit that we’ve received.
Okay, and I’ll say much more about the Acts of the Apostles as we move through the Easter season, but I want to glance now at the second reading, which is from the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. We’re going to be reading it all during the Easter season. Could I encourage all of you to get out your Bibles during these days of Easter? Read through the book of Revelation, where the whole Bible, in a way, comes to its fulfillment. I want to point out a couple of things we hear now from the very beginning of Revelation today.
Listen to this: «I, John,"—so here’s the author of the book speaking—"found myself on the island called Patmos.» Now, we might say, «Well, that’s a mildly interesting geographical specification, » but in the ancient world, they knew what that meant. Patmos was a kind of penal colony; it was off the coast of Asia Minor, where enemies of the Roman state were sent to do their time at hard labor, to put it in our terms. This place is closed, but if someone were to say, «I found myself on Alcatraz, » say, back in the 1940s or something—Alcatraz, the island prison in the San Francisco Bay—to find myself on Alcatraz meant one thing: I was in one of the worst kinds of prisons.
Well, that’s where this author finds himself at the beginning of this book. He’s there because the Roman power had arrested him. Why? He tells us, «Because I proclaimed God’s word and gave testimony to Jesus. What makes the tyrants tremble? News of the resurrection.» That’s why—I’ve said this to you before—you’ll find in faculty lounges all over the Western world attempts to turn the resurrection into a bland myth, or symbol, or legend—a nice way of talking about how Jesus goes on. Well, see, the tyrants don’t mind that at all. That’s why they advance people like that to higher academic positions, because that doesn’t make them tremble at all, that little bland Easter bunny-like message.
What makes them tremble is the word of the resurrection, God’s word, and I gave testimony to Jesus. He testified to the risen Christ; it scared them enough to send this man to this penal colony prison. Ah, but there’s no chaining the word of God, is there? St. Paul knew that; they sent him to prison after prison, but he knew there’s no chaining the word of God. The word of the resurrection going out from these first witnesses has indeed changed the world, has indeed overcome our fear, and has indeed made the tyrants tremble, as it always has. His testimony goes on; now he’s telling us about being on Patmos, and he has a vision of the risen Lord. It’s beautiful; it’s a temple vision. He’s wearing the robes of a temple priest, walking amidst the seven lampstands—well, that’s that great menorah, the great candelabrum in the Holy of Holies.
So, all these temple references. Here’s what he hears, though: The Lord says, «Do not be afraid.» There’s that message again. See, shalom—peace—don’t be afraid. «I am the first and the last, the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I’m alive forever and ever.» Once I was dead—well, I didn’t just die; I was put to death in the most brutal way by the Roman authorities, in collusion with the Jewish authorities and all the power structures. They put me to death brutally. I was dead; I was killed. But now I’m alive, and I love how it kind of rubs it in: forever and ever. In other words, this is the Lord of history, not any of the tyrants of the world. This is the Lord of history; this is the one whose spirit has been breathed into the Church, and the Church’s job now is to breathe that spirit more and more into the world. Friends, read all three of these readings together, and you’ll see the earthquake that is Easter. You’ll see the revolution that is Easter. God bless you.