# Confronting the Powers That Be - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 17 Jul 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733593/confronting_the_powers_that_be_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you. Now is the winter of our
[0:03] Speaker 1: discontent made glorious summer by this son of York. The
[0:07] Speaker 1: famous opening line of Richard Third, the Duke of Gloucester,
[0:11] Speaker 1: expressing his disappointment over his situation. That line, in some
[0:16] Speaker 1: way sums up the whole of the play. The line
[0:18] Speaker 1: gives sets the tone for the whole play. Or think
[0:22] Speaker 1: of this one midway on the journey of our life,
[0:25] Speaker 1: I woke to find myself alone and lost in a
[0:28] Speaker 1: dark wood, the famous opening line of Dante's Divine Comedy.
[0:32] Speaker 1: In many ways the whole epic poem summed up in
[0:36] Speaker 1: those words. How about this one from Aristotle, All men
[0:39] Speaker 1: by nature desire to know the opening line of his metaphysics.
[0:44] Speaker 1: In a way, the book is just an unfolding of
[0:46] Speaker 1: the implications of that line. Or how about call my
[0:50] Speaker 1: Ishmael the great American novel Moby Dick. In a way,
[0:54] Speaker 1: unpacking that line will be the work of the entire book.
[0:58] Speaker 1: Great writers, here's my put a lot into the opening
[1:03] Speaker 1: line of their work. It often sets the tone for
[1:06] Speaker 1: the whole thing. The privilege we have this week, everybody
[1:09] Speaker 1: in the Gospel, is we have the very opening of
[1:14] Speaker 1: the Gospel of Mark, And there's a scholarly consensus that
[1:18] Speaker 1: Mark is the first of the Gospels, written somewhere probably
[1:22] Speaker 1: around the year seventy. Mark is a kind of literary
[1:29] Speaker 1: and spiritual and theological genius, setting the tone for the
[1:33] Speaker 1: other gospels that would follow his Listen to his opening line,
[1:40] Speaker 1: the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son
[1:47] Speaker 1: of God. Now can I suggest to you Mark And again,
[1:52] Speaker 1: the scholars aren't entirely clear who he was, but the
[1:55] Speaker 1: ancient tradition is that Mark was a companion of Saint Peter,
[2:00] Speaker 1: accompanying Peter in Rome with him as Peter would preach
[2:05] Speaker 1: the Gospel. And one clue there is that Peter's life
[2:10] Speaker 1: features very prominently in the Gospel of Mark. Likely he
[2:14] Speaker 1: was not someone who spoke and wrote Greek as his
[2:17] Speaker 1: first language, because his Greek is kind of rough and ready.
[2:20] Speaker 1: It's not the polished Greek of let's say, Luke's Gospel.
[2:24] Speaker 1: So is Mark a Jew who came from Palestine following Peter,
[2:29] Speaker 1: ending up in Rome. Likely, if he writes the gospel
[2:33] Speaker 1: sometime before the year of seventy, he's writing it precisely
[2:40] Speaker 1: in the wake of the crucifixion. Of Peter and the
[2:43] Speaker 1: beheading of Paul. Think about that, these two great patriarchs
[2:47] Speaker 1: of the Christian Church. Peter brutally put to death, Paul
[2:52] Speaker 1: brutally put to death. Mantion moll was like for the
[2:56] Speaker 1: first Christians, those early Christians living in that and at
[3:01] Speaker 1: that time, at that moment, Mark again writes the beginning
[3:09] Speaker 1: of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
[3:14] Speaker 1: Can I suggest now in the manner of Shakespeare and
[3:17] Speaker 1: Aristotle and Herman Melville, this line matters a lot. In fact,
[3:22] Speaker 1: every bit of it matters. The opening word, the beginning,
[3:29] Speaker 1: the beginning, our ka and the Greek there. But if
[3:32] Speaker 1: you're in a Jewish framework, you hear beginning, you're thinking bearasheth.
[3:38] Speaker 1: Bearasheth is the opening word of the Scriptures, in the beginning,
[3:44] Speaker 1: in the beginning, the beginning of Genesis. Yeah, but it's
[3:47] Speaker 1: the beginning of all things. If a Jew here is beasheth,
[3:52] Speaker 1: our k the beginning, what's he thinking of? He's thinking
[3:56] Speaker 1: of the great creative act by which God brought order
[4:01] Speaker 1: out of chaos, because beasheth in the beginning, when there
[4:04] Speaker 1: was this watery chaos, God spoke his word and from
[4:09] Speaker 1: the chaos came order. What's the story Mark is going
[4:14] Speaker 1: to tell. It's the story everybody of a new creation
[4:21] Speaker 1: of chaos. And read the Gospel Mark with that in mind.
[4:25] Speaker 1: Remember that old Hebrew term tohuva bohu that means the
[4:28] Speaker 1: watery chaos. It means disorder, what's opposed to God's purpose.
[4:33] Speaker 1: There's plenty of tohuva boho in the Gospel of Mark,
[4:36] Speaker 1: culminating in that awful Roman cross on which Jesus is
[4:41] Speaker 1: put to death. There's plenty of tohuv aboho. But the
[4:44] Speaker 1: opening line of the Gospel our ka beginning barashath, that
[4:48] Speaker 1: means God, by his word is going to bring order
[4:54] Speaker 1: out of chaos. That's the story that Mark is going
[4:59] Speaker 1: to tell. Then he says the beginning of the Gospel.
[5:05] Speaker 1: Now we hear the word gospel, and right away we
[5:08] Speaker 1: think of, you know, sacred texts, and we think maybe
[5:10] Speaker 1: of gospel music or proclaiming the gospel, and we see
[5:14] Speaker 1: in very kind of spiritualized, even religiously institutional terms. But
[5:20] Speaker 1: go back to the first century. The Greek euwon geleon
[5:26] Speaker 1: eu epsilon upsilon, and Greek means good on gellion message
[5:34] Speaker 1: that's why an angoloss is just a messenger, a good message,
[5:40] Speaker 1: good news, a good announcement. Well, at that time and
[5:47] Speaker 1: in that place, that was a term used either of
[5:52] Speaker 1: a general of the Roman Empire or of the emperor himself,
[5:58] Speaker 1: when they'd accomplished some great victory. We have euwan Gelion
[6:05] Speaker 1: for you. We've got the glad tidings of this great
[6:08] Speaker 1: military conquest, this great imperial accomplishment. Imagine the irony here
[6:18] Speaker 1: the edgenus of this. Here's this figure writing, perhaps in
[6:24] Speaker 1: Rome itself and the belly of the beast, right after
[6:29] Speaker 1: his friend Peter had been put to death brutally, the
[6:33] Speaker 1: church under siege, probably from the environing society. And yet
[6:39] Speaker 1: he says, I'm going to tell you from the beginnings
[6:43] Speaker 1: of the story of New Creation. But now I'm going
[6:45] Speaker 1: to tell you a story about a military and imperial victory,
[6:52] Speaker 1: not in the part of Caesar or any of his generals,
[6:55] Speaker 1: but in fact, on the part of someone who was
[6:57] Speaker 1: put to death by Caesar and at the hands of
[7:01] Speaker 1: Roman soldiers. I'm going to tell you the real story
[7:06] Speaker 1: of victory has nothing to do with the clash of arms.
[7:10] Speaker 1: What it has to do with is the resurrection of
[7:16] Speaker 1: this Jesus from the dead. Yes, done to death by
[7:22] Speaker 1: the powers of the world, but now raised to life
[7:27] Speaker 1: through the ever greater power of God the Father. And
[7:33] Speaker 1: this means that Roman power, indeed all worldly power, is eclipsed.
[7:42] Speaker 1: There's a greater authority. There's a greater army, if you will,
[7:49] Speaker 1: it's a nonviolent army led by this crucified and risen Lord. Again,
[7:58] Speaker 1: how edgy it was. It's always struck me when you
[8:02] Speaker 1: read the beginning of Mark at a time when Christians
[8:06] Speaker 1: had no institutional support. There there were no dioceses and
[8:12] Speaker 1: you know, hospitals and schools, and they didn't have great
[8:15] Speaker 1: cultural influence. On the contrary. But yet yet Mark and say,
[8:20] Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you a story about the true
[8:23] Speaker 1: good News, the true imperial victory. So the beginning of
[8:30] Speaker 1: the Gospel. Now listen of Jesus Christ. Now in his Greek,
[8:36] Speaker 1: he says, Jesus Christos. But that's just a rendering and Greek.
[8:40] Speaker 1: We presume Mark was was a Jew. Yeshua Mashiach is
[8:46] Speaker 1: what he was probably thinking, Yes, Shua Mashiach, Jesus Christ.
[8:54] Speaker 1: We say, yes, sure, what's that sound like to our ears?
[9:00] Speaker 1: It sounds like Joshua, and that's right, the same name.
[9:04] Speaker 1: Who is Joshua someone who won a great victory, a conqueror,
[9:10] Speaker 1: if you will. This Jesus that Mark announces is also
[9:15] Speaker 1: a conqueror, though not using the weapons of the world.
[9:19] Speaker 1: But his purpose is indeed to conquer, to become the
[9:23] Speaker 1: lord of the whole world. Yeshuah Mashiach Mashiak means the
[9:30] Speaker 1: anointed one, hence Christos and Greek and Christ for us.
[9:36] Speaker 1: Who is the Mashiach? David David, member of the prophet
[9:41] Speaker 1: Samuel anoints David and then says the spirit of God
[9:45] Speaker 1: rushed upon David, and David becomes the greatest king of Israel,
[9:49] Speaker 1: indeed a conqueror. So again Marcus saying, I'm going to
[9:53] Speaker 1: tell you a story about a conqueror. He's won an
[9:58] Speaker 1: imperial victory. It it amounts to the recreation of the world,
[10:03] Speaker 1: but has nothing to do with Caesar or any worldly power.
[10:06] Speaker 1: It has to do with this crucified and risen lord,
[10:11] Speaker 1: Yeshuah Mashiah. That's the story that unfolds. And then this
[10:17] Speaker 1: is the last one, which I find fascinating. He calls
[10:20] Speaker 1: him the son of God. Then so the beginning of
[10:24] Speaker 1: the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. And
[10:27] Speaker 1: again we say, all right, that's a nice religious term.
[10:30] Speaker 1: And if we're theologically plugged, enemy might say, oh, that's
[10:33] Speaker 1: a trinitarian reference. There's the Father, the Son, and the
[10:36] Speaker 1: Holy Spirit and all that's true obviously, But go back
[10:39] Speaker 1: to Mars time first century. If you said in his
[10:43] Speaker 1: Greek wit ost tuta u the son of the God,
[10:47] Speaker 1: and that's the exact phraseology. He uses the ost tuta
[10:51] Speaker 1: u the son of the God. That meant the emperor.
[10:56] Speaker 1: Because remember when Julius Caesar was put to death in
[10:58] Speaker 1: forty four, be seen well, he was then raised to
[11:02] Speaker 1: a divine status. He was DeVos kaisar. He was he
[11:06] Speaker 1: was divine Caesar. And then Caesar had adopted his his
[11:09] Speaker 1: relative Octavian, who becomes Augustus Caesar right the emperor, and
[11:16] Speaker 1: he assumed the title because he was Caesar's adopted son
[11:21] Speaker 1: of wos to Thuh. He was son of the God,
[11:27] Speaker 1: and that becomes an imperial title. The Emperor of Rome
[11:30] Speaker 1: is the son of the God. Again, this fascinating edgy figure,
[11:38] Speaker 1: Saint Mark I got good news about about an imperial victory.
[11:44] Speaker 1: It's about a new David, and he's meant to be conqueror,
[11:48] Speaker 1: and he's the real Emperor. It's not Tiberius or not,
[11:55] Speaker 1: that's not the real emperor. This is the real Emperor.
[11:58] Speaker 1: And again he had no institutional support at all, There
[12:01] Speaker 1: was no political support for him at that point. But
[12:04] Speaker 1: yet he had the panache and the strange confidence to say,
[12:10] Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the story about the true Emperor. Now.
[12:13] Speaker 1: Can you see, by the way, everybody, why they put
[12:17] Speaker 1: almost all these first Christian evangelists to death. He says,
[12:21] Speaker 1: we will spiritualize this language in a kind of harmless way.
[12:25] Speaker 1: But they didn't. When they heard people like this speaking,
[12:28] Speaker 1: they knew what they were saying, which is why the
[12:31] Speaker 1: powers that be rose up against them. Okay, may we
[12:37] Speaker 1: recover here's my advent prayer for you. May we recover
[12:42] Speaker 1: some of this wonderful edginess that we find in the
[12:46] Speaker 1: opening line of Marx Gospel and move into the power
[12:50] Speaker 1: of this proclamation. And God bless you.

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