# Amazed and Afraid - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 22 Aug 2026, 50 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733592/amazed_and_afraid.mp3



## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: There's an either or in regard to Jesus. Either he
[0:07] Speaker 1: is who he says he is, or he's a bad man.
[0:11] Speaker 1: What's ruled out is the middle ground that a lot
[0:13] Speaker 1: of people take today, which is, but I don't think
[0:15] Speaker 1: he's God. But he's a very interesting, inspiring religious teacher.
[0:19] Speaker 1: Actually he's not. Actually he's a sort of a dangerous,
[0:23] Speaker 1: strange figure. So as he himself said, either you're with
[0:27] Speaker 1: me or you're against me. Either you gather with me
[0:30] Speaker 1: or you scatter, he compels the choice.
[0:35] Speaker 2: The way no other religious founder does.
[2:05] Speaker 1: It all begins really with a joke. The essence of
[2:09] Speaker 1: humor is the coming together of opposites, the meeting of
[2:13] Speaker 1: incongruous things. The central claim of Christianity is that God
[2:22] Speaker 1: became human. God became one of us, taking to himself
[2:28] Speaker 1: a human nature. And to make the humor even more acute,
[2:35] Speaker 1: God didn't first appear in some great cultural center. He
[2:39] Speaker 1: didn't appear in Rome. He didn't appear in Athens or Babylon.
[2:44] Speaker 1: He appeared here in Bethlehem, even today, a simple, humble place,
[2:49] Speaker 1: even more so.
[2:50] Speaker 3: In Jesus' time.
[2:54] Speaker 1: Saint Paul said of Jesus, though.
[2:56] Speaker 3: He was in the form of God.
[2:58] Speaker 1: Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped. Rather,
[3:03] Speaker 1: he emptied himself and took the form of a slave.
[3:10] Speaker 1: The master of the universe became out of love our slave,
[3:15] Speaker 1: and the joke is marvelously on us. Jesus grew up
[3:43] Speaker 1: in obscurity. We know almost nothing about the first thirty
[3:50] Speaker 1: years of his life, except that, most likely he was
[3:54] Speaker 1: trained as a carpenter. He was not a member of
[3:59] Speaker 1: a benic school. He was not a scribe or a
[4:04] Speaker 1: pharisee or a temple priest.
[4:08] Speaker 3: He was, if you will, a layman.
[4:14] Speaker 1: But he emerged on the scene around the year thirty
[4:16] Speaker 1: a d in the most extraordinary way. In the hills
[4:27] Speaker 1: of Galilee. This carpenter began to preach with an unprecedented
[4:33] Speaker 1: and unnerving boldness, claiming personal authority over the Torah itself,
[4:39] Speaker 1: which was the divine law that was considered the court
[4:42] Speaker 1: of final appeal for any faithful rabbi. He also performed
[4:48] Speaker 1: great miracles of healing and demonstrated a mastery over the
[4:53] Speaker 1: very forces of nature. The gospels tell us that the
[5:00] Speaker 1: crowds came at him.
[5:01] Speaker 3: From all sides, most of them.
[5:03] Speaker 1: Wondering just who this man was. One of my great
[5:14] Speaker 1: fears is that Jesus becomes domesticated. So he's nice, gentle figure,
[5:19] Speaker 1: I understand his moral teaching. He's like many other figures,
[5:22] Speaker 1: and then see, I probably forget about him because he's
[5:24] Speaker 1: like everybody else. He's an echo of a lot of
[5:26] Speaker 1: other spiritual figures. And the minute that happens, then the
[5:30] Speaker 1: whole thing falls apart. Jesus was in his own lifetime,
[5:34] Speaker 1: and then after the Resurrection, he was a deeply disconcerting figure.
[5:38] Speaker 1: He was a subversive figure, and so I want to
[5:41] Speaker 1: recover that. At a certain point after his emergence on
[6:08] Speaker 1: the public scene, Jesus traveled with his disciples to the
[6:11] Speaker 1: far northern reaches of the Promised Land, to the region
[6:15] Speaker 1: of Cesarea Philippii, near the present day Golan Heights. Today
[6:20] Speaker 1: one can see the ruins of a temple to the
[6:22] Speaker 1: god Pan that stood on this site in Jesus' day.
[6:28] Speaker 1: It was here that he asked them a very peculiar question,
[6:35] Speaker 1: and that question was who do people say that I am.
[6:39] Speaker 1: Jesus didn't ask what do people think of my teaching?
[6:42] Speaker 1: Or what impression am I making? Reasonable enough questions, He
[6:46] Speaker 1: asked who do people say that I am? Be hard
[6:49] Speaker 1: to imagine another great religious founder asking such a question.
[6:53] Speaker 1: The Buddha wouldn't focus on himself, and I say it
[6:56] Speaker 1: to his credit, he would say there's a way I've discovered.
[6:58] Speaker 1: I want you to know it. Mohammad wouldn't focus on himself.
[7:02] Speaker 1: He'd say there's a revelation I've received, I want you
[7:04] Speaker 1: to know it. Confucius wouldn't say it's about me. He'd say,
[7:07] Speaker 1: it's about this path that I found. Then there's Jesus.
[7:12] Speaker 1: His question is who do you say that I am?
[7:17] Speaker 1: The whole Gospel really hinges on this point. Jesus' identity
[7:22] Speaker 1: personally is what it's about, because throughout the Gospels he
[7:27] Speaker 1: consistently speaks and acts in the very person of God.
[7:40] Speaker 1: In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, unless you love
[7:43] Speaker 1: me more than your very life, more than your mother
[7:47] Speaker 1: and father, you're not worthy of me. You might imagine
[7:53] Speaker 1: a religious teacher saying, unless you love God more than
[7:56] Speaker 1: your very life. But to say, unless you love Me
[8:01] Speaker 1: more than the highest goods in the world, Jesus says
[8:05] Speaker 1: to the paralyzed man, my son, your sins are forgiven
[8:10] Speaker 1: right away. The bystanders say, who does this man think
[8:13] Speaker 1: he is? Only God can forgive sins? Now here's the point.
[8:20] Speaker 1: Jesus compels a choice the way no other religious founder does.
[8:27] Speaker 1: Either you're with me, he said, or you're against me.
[8:30] Speaker 1: Do you see why? If he is who he says
[8:33] Speaker 1: he is, then we have to give our whole life
[8:35] Speaker 1: to him. If he is God, then he must be
[8:38] Speaker 1: the center of our lives. If he's not who he
[8:41] Speaker 1: says he is, he's not a good man. He is
[8:44] Speaker 1: a dangerous, misguided fanatic. Jesus, more than any other figure,
[8:51] Speaker 1: more than any other religious founder, compels us to make
[8:55] Speaker 1: a choice. There's a strange passage in the tenth chapter
[9:19] Speaker 1: of Mark's Gospel that's rarely commented upon. Jesus and his
[9:23] Speaker 1: disciples are making their way from Galilee in the north
[9:26] Speaker 1: to Jerusalem in the south. Mark says this, And they
[9:32] Speaker 1: were going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them,
[9:37] Speaker 1: and they were amazed, And as they followed, they were afraid.
[9:44] Speaker 1: This obscure fragment is I think very telling. One might
[9:50] Speaker 1: be intrigued by a religious teacher, one might be captivated
[9:55] Speaker 1: by a spiritual leader, but amazed and afraid, then we
[10:01] Speaker 1: recall that in the Old Testament, awe and fear are
[10:06] Speaker 1: two standard responses to God. Having grasped this uniqueness of Jesus,
[10:14] Speaker 1: we can begin to look at his preaching and action
[10:17] Speaker 1: with greater understanding. He was God in the flesh Yahweh,
[10:24] Speaker 1: moving among his people. Jesus is strange. You know, I'm
[10:34] Speaker 1: going to resist the tendency to domesticate him and turn
[10:36] Speaker 1: him into Yeah, it's like you know, an ancient the
[10:39] Speaker 1: depact Chopra. You know, we had interesting spiritual insights, and
[10:41] Speaker 1: the gospel writers told these kind of cool.
[10:43] Speaker 3: Stories to exemplify that.
[10:45] Speaker 1: I think he was strange, and so people say that
[10:47] Speaker 1: they were amazed and afraid. I don't think anyone's really
[10:50] Speaker 1: amazed and afraid of depac Chopra. They might find him
[10:52] Speaker 1: insightful and helpful, but I doubt they're amazed and afraid.
[10:56] Speaker 1: But when someone takes the five loaves and two fish
[10:58] Speaker 1: and feeds five thousand, that's a little scary. And I
[11:02] Speaker 1: think if we if we domesticate Jesus too much, we
[11:05] Speaker 1: take away that dimension from them. They were intensely interested
[11:10] Speaker 1: in with that that Jesus drove out demons, that he
[11:13] Speaker 1: performed miracles that he healed people, even like the calming
[11:16] Speaker 1: of the storm at sea. When that's over, they see,
[11:20] Speaker 1: who is this? Who is this man who can calm
[11:23] Speaker 1: the I mean, they knew all about spiritual gurus. They
[11:25] Speaker 1: allot rabbis and teachers and insightful people. But he was
[11:28] Speaker 1: so far beyond that. Who is this who's calming the seed?
[11:55] Speaker 1: The ancient Israelites ardently expected that Yahweh would accomplish four
[12:00] Speaker 1: great things. He would gather and shepherd his people, he
[12:07] Speaker 1: would purify the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, he would overcome
[12:12] Speaker 1: the enemies of Israel, and he would reign as the
[12:17] Speaker 1: Lord of the nations. What startled the first followers of
[12:22] Speaker 1: the Lord was that Jesus himself accomplished precisely these things,
[12:27] Speaker 1: but in the most unexpected way. I'm standing by the
[12:37] Speaker 1: shore of the Sea of Galilee. I'm in Jesus' home country.
[12:42] Speaker 1: It's in these hills here that he preached for the
[12:45] Speaker 1: first time, and his theme was simple and direct. The
[12:50] Speaker 1: Kingdom of God is at hand. Now. Oceans of ink
[12:54] Speaker 1: have been spilled over the centuries by scholars trying to
[12:56] Speaker 1: explain what Kingdom of God meant. It might be good
[13:00] Speaker 1: and to ask what did people in these hills understand
[13:02] Speaker 1: by that term, they would have understood the tribes are
[13:09] Speaker 1: being gathered. Throughout the Old Testament, God is portrayed as
[13:15] Speaker 1: a great gathering force. God forms a people Israel, after
[13:20] Speaker 1: his own heart, and then endeavors to use the Israelites
[13:23] Speaker 1: as a magnet to gather the rest of the nations.
[13:28] Speaker 1: How did Jesus, Yahweh in the flesh do this. He
[13:34] Speaker 1: practiced open table fellowship, inviting to his festive meals sinners, prostitutes,
[13:41] Speaker 1: task collectors, the sick, and the forgotten. He was not
[13:45] Speaker 1: simply exemplifying the virtue of inclusivity. He was Yahweh gathering
[13:52] Speaker 1: in his people. This also explains why he healed so many.
[13:59] Speaker 1: In the society of his time, physical illness was construed
[14:03] Speaker 1: as a kind of curse, and in many cases, sickness
[14:07] Speaker 1: or deformity prevented one from worshiping with the rest of
[14:09] Speaker 1: the community. Curing the blind, the death, the lame, and
[14:14] Speaker 1: the leprous, Jesus was Yohweh, binding up the wounds of
[14:18] Speaker 1: his people and restoring them to communion. Jesus turned upside
[14:26] Speaker 1: down many of the social conventions of his time, and place.
[14:31] Speaker 1: In the Palestine of the first century, men didn't speak
[14:34] Speaker 1: to women publicly, but Jesus spoke openly to the woman
[14:38] Speaker 1: of the well. A pious Jew of that time would
[14:42] Speaker 1: have been rendered ritually unclean by touching a dead body,
[14:46] Speaker 1: but Jesus touches the dead body of the daughter of
[14:49] Speaker 1: Jyrus as he raises her back to life. In Jesus' time,
[14:54] Speaker 1: as in ours, places of honor were sought at public banquets,
[14:59] Speaker 1: but Jesus told his disciples to take the lowest places.
[15:05] Speaker 1: All of this was in service of building up the kingdom,
[15:10] Speaker 1: gathering in the tribes. We're looking down at one of
[15:56] Speaker 1: the most sacred places on the planet, the Temple Mounts,
[16:00] Speaker 1: acred to Jews and Christians and Muslims. It is such
[16:03] Speaker 1: a holy place because for a thousand years, right in
[16:06] Speaker 1: that spot where now you see the beautiful Muslim sanctuary
[16:09] Speaker 1: of the Dome of the Rock, on that spot was
[16:12] Speaker 1: the great Temple to Yahweh, the God of the Israelites.
[16:15] Speaker 1: It was the center of Israelite liturgical, religious, cultural life.
[16:21] Speaker 1: Well to that place, at the climax of his life
[16:25] Speaker 1: came Jesus. He took a rope of cords the gospel said,
[16:29] Speaker 1: and he drove out the money changers, turned over the tables,
[16:33] Speaker 1: and then he said, I will tear down this place
[16:37] Speaker 1: and in three days rebuild it. Well, it would be
[16:40] Speaker 1: hard to imagine in our terms what this was like,
[16:44] Speaker 1: because religion, society, culture were so tightly bound in Jesus' time.
[16:48] Speaker 1: This was upsetting everything. This was the most radical sort
[16:51] Speaker 1: of thing you could do, and it's probably what led
[16:54] Speaker 1: most directly to Jesus' crucifixion. Well, what in the world
[16:58] Speaker 1: was he doing? What did these words mean? To understand
[17:02] Speaker 1: it more fully, we have to understand what the temple meant.
[17:11] Speaker 1: Once again, we recall that ancient Israel expected Yahweh to
[17:15] Speaker 1: cleanse the temple to gather his people into right praise.
[17:21] Speaker 1: A simple but very significant spiritual teaching is this, we
[17:25] Speaker 1: become what we worship. We conform ourselves to what we
[17:29] Speaker 1: consider the highest good. God wanted his people to praise
[17:35] Speaker 1: him so that they might become like him. This is
[17:40] Speaker 1: why the Jerusalem Temple, the place where Yahweh was worshiped,
[17:44] Speaker 1: was so central to ancient Israel. The hope was that
[17:49] Speaker 1: all the nations of the world would be attracted to God.
[17:53] Speaker 1: Precisely through the right worship of the Israelites. The prophet
[17:58] Speaker 1: Isaiah put it this way, the mountain of the Lord
[18:02] Speaker 1: of Hosts will be raised above the other mountains, and
[18:05] Speaker 1: to it all people will stream. But the Israelites fell
[18:13] Speaker 1: again and again into the worship of false gods, sometimes
[18:18] Speaker 1: the gods of the surrounding nations, but also the gods
[18:21] Speaker 1: of wealth, power, nationalism, and pleasure. And this is why
[18:26] Speaker 1: the great prophets continually summon the nation back to the
[18:30] Speaker 1: worship of the true God. The false worship of Israel
[18:34] Speaker 1: came to be symbolized for the prophets in the corruption
[18:37] Speaker 1: of the Jerusalem Temple. Ezekiel imagined that God's glory had
[18:42] Speaker 1: left his temple and would one day return when the
[18:45] Speaker 1: place was purified, and when it did, water would flow
[18:49] Speaker 1: from its side for the renewal of the world. Now
[18:55] Speaker 1: we can begin to understand some of Jesus' enigmatic sayings
[18:59] Speaker 1: and actions in regard to the temple. When he said,
[19:03] Speaker 1: in reference to himself, you have a greater than the Temple.
[19:07] Speaker 1: Here he was designating himself as the new place of worship,
[19:13] Speaker 1: as the temple where divinity and humanity meet. When he
[19:19] Speaker 1: cleansed the temple. He was not simply a nineteen sixty
[19:22] Speaker 1: style radical railing against the establishment. He was pronouncing judgment
[19:27] Speaker 1: on the old temple and establishing himself as the new
[19:31] Speaker 1: place of right praise. In John's Gospel, Jesus specifies that
[19:38] Speaker 1: after destroying the old temple, he would in three days
[19:43] Speaker 1: rebuild it. He was referring to the temple of his body.
[19:51] Speaker 1: After Jesus' crucifixion, when the Roman soldier pierced Jesus' side,
[19:57] Speaker 1: blood and water float out. This represents the fulfillment of
[20:03] Speaker 1: Ezekiel's great prophecy that when the glory of Yahweh would
[20:08] Speaker 1: return to the temple, water would flow from its side
[20:12] Speaker 1: for the restoration of the world. Probably the main point
[20:21] Speaker 1: to realize is that Jesus himself is the new temple.
[20:25] Speaker 1: He says, I'll tear down this old one and in
[20:27] Speaker 1: three days rebuild it, talking about the temple of his
[20:30] Speaker 1: own body. So Jesus risen from the dead, and now
[20:34] Speaker 1: the Lord of the Church remains the place of right praise.
[20:37] Speaker 3: Jesus is himself pure.
[20:40] Speaker 1: Now the church participates in that. The church shares in
[20:45] Speaker 1: the lordship of Jesus, and so in its sacraments, in
[20:48] Speaker 1: its saints, in its essential structures. The Church also remains pure,
[20:53] Speaker 1: the place of right praise. But the Church is also
[20:56] Speaker 1: made up of sinful human beings. So up and down
[20:59] Speaker 1: the center you're going to see lots of bad behavior,
[21:02] Speaker 1: lots of corruption, lots of negativity. Paul says, we hold
[21:06] Speaker 1: this treasure in earthen vessels. So the treasure is Christ,
[21:11] Speaker 1: who himself is the new Temple, the treasure of the sacraments,
[21:14] Speaker 1: the liturgy, the saints, but they're held in these weak,
[21:18] Speaker 1: fragile vessels. That's where the corruption comes in. And yes,
[21:23] Speaker 1: that church always needs to be cleansed, and it's Christ
[21:26] Speaker 1: operating within the Church who effectively cleanses it. One of
[21:51] Speaker 1: the most evocative themes in the Old Testament is the
[21:55] Speaker 1: portrayal of God as a warrior. Yeh fights against the
[22:00] Speaker 1: enemies of Israel. Nevertheless, Israel was not the supreme nation
[22:07] Speaker 1: of the world. On the contrary, it was, in the
[22:11] Speaker 1: course of its history enslaved by Egypt, attacked by the Philistines,
[22:18] Speaker 1: exiled by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, overrun by the
[22:23] Speaker 1: Greeks and the Romans, and so Israelites began to dream
[22:29] Speaker 1: that one day God would definitively battle the enemies of
[22:32] Speaker 1: the nation and make it the dominant power in the world.
[22:37] Speaker 1: And so we shouldn't be the least bit.
[22:38] Speaker 3: Surprised that when Jesus comes.
[22:42] Speaker 1: Speaking and acting in the very person of God, he
[22:45] Speaker 1: comes to fight. But what a strange warrior he was.
[23:06] Speaker 1: Our first glimpse of Jesus the Fighter is at Bethlehem,
[23:10] Speaker 1: in the stable over which the Church of the Nativity stands. Today,
[23:18] Speaker 1: the Christmas story is not just a charming tale we
[23:21] Speaker 1: tell to children. It's full of this motif of Jesus
[23:25] Speaker 1: the warrior, the one who's come to fight. C. S. Lewis,
[23:31] Speaker 1: the great English writer, said that Jesus came so quietly
[23:35] Speaker 1: in this unobtrusive way because he was meant to slip
[23:40] Speaker 1: clandestinely behind enemy lines. If we look in Luke's account
[24:21] Speaker 1: of the Nativity, we see these warrior motifs quite clearly.
[24:28] Speaker 1: How does that story open up by invoking two of
[24:31] Speaker 1: the most powerful people of the time, It said, while
[24:34] Speaker 1: Quirinius was the governor of Syria, and when Caesar Augustus
[24:38] Speaker 1: was the king of the world, a census was called
[24:43] Speaker 1: Quirinius Caesar Augustus, two of the most prominent powerful people
[24:46] Speaker 1: in the ancient world. Well, that's how you'd expect great
[24:49] Speaker 1: poems and stories in the ancient world to begin by
[24:52] Speaker 1: invoking the high end mighty. But then Saint Luke pulls
[24:55] Speaker 1: the rug out from under us, because he says, my
[24:58] Speaker 1: story is not primarily about them. My story is about
[25:02] Speaker 1: this little couple making their way from one dusty outpost
[25:06] Speaker 1: of Augusta's empire to another, about Mary and Joseph coming
[25:10] Speaker 1: here to Bethlehem. And the story will unfold now as
[25:13] Speaker 1: a tale of two emperors, Augustus in Rome and the
[25:18] Speaker 1: True and new Emperor Christ Jesus. We hear that Mary
[25:27] Speaker 1: came to Bethlehem to this place. There was no room
[25:31] Speaker 1: at the inn, so he was born in a cave
[25:36] Speaker 1: stable with the animals around him. Who was the best
[25:41] Speaker 1: protected person in the ancient world? It had to be
[25:44] Speaker 1: Caesar Augustus in Rome. But the true Emperor, the new Emperor,
[25:48] Speaker 1: arrives unprotected. Imagine a newborn baby two week even to
[25:55] Speaker 1: hold up his own head, and now wrapped up in
[25:58] Speaker 1: swabbling clothes. Can you imagine an image of greater weakness vulnerability?
[26:06] Speaker 1: Who'd be the most powerful person in the ancient world Caesar,
[26:09] Speaker 1: Augustus and Rome. The new Emperor, the true Emperor. It's
[26:15] Speaker 1: not powerful in that worldly way, but someone who's willing
[26:18] Speaker 1: to be wrapped up and vulnerable in love. Who is
[26:26] Speaker 1: the best fed person in the ancient world had to
[26:28] Speaker 1: have been Caesar Augustus, snap his fingers, get any sensual
[26:31] Speaker 1: pleasure he wanted, and most of us would think that's
[26:34] Speaker 1: essential to the good life. But the True Emperor, the
[26:38] Speaker 1: New Emperor, is not one who is fed, but who
[26:41] Speaker 1: becomes food for the world, placed in that manger where
[26:45] Speaker 1: the animals eat. One more detail from that story. We
[26:51] Speaker 1: hear that an angel appear to shepherds and these hills
[26:54] Speaker 1: surrounding Bethlehem. Don't get romantic about the angels. The typical
[27:01] Speaker 1: reaction to an angel in the Bible was fear. Imagine
[27:05] Speaker 1: this reality from another dimension, this higher power suddenly breaking
[27:10] Speaker 1: into this world. Fear is the proper reaction. The angel
[27:13] Speaker 1: announces the good news, and then it says, with that angel,
[27:16] Speaker 1: there appeared a stratias of angels. We often translate that
[27:21] Speaker 1: word as host, but that word means army. Our word
[27:25] Speaker 1: strategy and strategic come from that. With that angel. There
[27:29] Speaker 1: appeared an army of angels who had the biggest army
[27:35] Speaker 1: in the ancient world, Caesar Augustus, which is why he
[27:38] Speaker 1: was able to dominate it. You see what Luke is saying.
[27:41] Speaker 1: His army is nothing compared to the army of this
[27:44] Speaker 1: baby king, this Stratias, this army of angels, who will
[27:48] Speaker 1: fight not with the puny weapons of the world, but
[27:50] Speaker 1: will fight with courage and with justice and with nonviolence.
[27:54] Speaker 1: But the baby king has got the bigger army. There's
[28:02] Speaker 1: a line in the prophet Isaiah that says when the
[28:04] Speaker 1: Messiah comes, will be like Yahweh bearing his holy arm.
[28:08] Speaker 1: That meant rolling up his sleeve and bearing his powerful
[28:12] Speaker 1: arm for conquest. Here's a great detail. That holy arm
[28:17] Speaker 1: of Yahweh is the arm of the baby Jesus coming
[28:21] Speaker 1: out of the crib. Who would have expected the power
[28:23] Speaker 1: of God to arrive in that way. But the battle
[28:27] Speaker 1: that begins here, this lining up of the two emperors,
[28:32] Speaker 1: comes to his fulfillment on the cross, and it's there
[28:36] Speaker 1: that this baby king, now come of age, will engage
[28:39] Speaker 1: in his final battle. Part of the poetry of the
[28:47] Speaker 1: Bible is that God is so unexpected that God is
[28:51] Speaker 1: love that's a strange message, that's not a common message
[28:54] Speaker 1: at all. That God would be powerful and lordly and judgmental,
[28:59] Speaker 1: much more natural, that God is love and therefore self emptying,
[29:03] Speaker 1: that God would come as a child as part of
[29:05] Speaker 1: the grace and poetry of Christianity. They got that. The
[29:09] Speaker 1: first Christians saw that, and they kind of delighted, I
[29:12] Speaker 1: think in the poetry and the paradox of it.
[30:16] Speaker 3: On Palm Sunday, Jesus.
[30:18] Speaker 1: Entered the Holy City hailed as the son of David.
[30:22] Speaker 1: He came as a dividic warrior. Then, as we saw,
[30:29] Speaker 1: he went up to the temple precincts, and there he
[30:32] Speaker 1: picked a fight. As Holy Week unfolded, It's as though
[30:37] Speaker 1: all the powers that had opposed him from the time
[30:40] Speaker 1: of his birth came out in full force to meet him.
[30:55] Speaker 1: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is built
[30:58] Speaker 1: over the very site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.
[31:05] Speaker 1: It commemorates and preserves, therefore the battlefield where Jesus the
[31:10] Speaker 1: Warrior engaged in his ultimate struggle. When you read those
[31:17] Speaker 1: densely textured passion narratives in the Gospels, you see all
[31:22] Speaker 1: forms of human dysfunction on display.
[31:26] Speaker 3: Jesus is met.
[31:27] Speaker 1: By hatred, by denial, by betrayal, by violence, by stupidity,
[31:33] Speaker 1: by institutional injustice, by incomparable cruelty. It's as though all
[31:38] Speaker 1: of human darkness comes out to meet him, and here
[31:44] Speaker 1: on Mount Calvary he does this final battle. But he
[31:49] Speaker 1: responds not with more violence. Rather, he allows all of
[31:55] Speaker 1: this darkness to wash over him. He takes upon himself
[32:01] Speaker 1: the sins of the world, and he says, Father, forgive them.
[32:07] Speaker 3: They know not what they do.
[32:11] Speaker 1: It's as though on the cross Jesus interrupts that terrible
[32:17] Speaker 1: play of violence and counter violence, of vengeance and counter vengeance,
[32:22] Speaker 1: which has bedeviled the human race from the beginning. It's
[32:25] Speaker 1: as though God the Father takes that cross and he
[32:28] Speaker 1: puts it in the works to interrupt this terrible process.
[32:35] Speaker 1: Jesus takes away the sins.
[32:39] Speaker 3: Of the world, and that's how he fights.
[33:58] Speaker 1: What prevents it from saying that Jesus wasn't simply a
[34:01] Speaker 1: failed revolutionary an inspiring idealist, but, as Albert Schweitzer said,
[34:07] Speaker 1: ground under by the wheel of history. What prevents us
[34:13] Speaker 1: from saying that is the stubborn and unnerving fact of
[34:20] Speaker 1: the Resurrection. The New Testament scholar Nt Wright says, simply,
[34:24] Speaker 1: from an historical standpoint, it's practically impossible to explain the
[34:29] Speaker 1: emergence of Christianity as a Messianic movement apart from the Resurrection.
[34:36] Speaker 1: If you wanted the clearest indication that someone was not
[34:39] Speaker 1: the Messiah of Israel, it would be his death at
[34:43] Speaker 1: the hands of Israel's enemies. We've seen the Messiah was
[34:46] Speaker 1: supposed to gather the tribes. He was supposed to lead
[34:49] Speaker 1: the nation and defeat the enemies of Israel. Therefore, the
[34:52] Speaker 1: clearest indication possible that someone was not the Messiah was
[34:56] Speaker 1: that he was crucified by the Romans. In the year
[35:00] Speaker 1: one thirty two, bar Kokpa led a revolution. Many said
[35:04] Speaker 1: he was the Messiah. They minted coin saying year one
[35:08] Speaker 1: of bar Kokpa, his revolution was put down. He was
[35:11] Speaker 1: put to death by the Romans, and nobody thinks he
[35:14] Speaker 1: is the Messiah. But yet these first Christians proclaim precisely, then,
[35:22] Speaker 1: Paul says, Jesus Christos, Jesus Christos, simply his Greek version
[35:27] Speaker 1: of Yeshuah Mashiach Jesus the Messiah. The first Disciples went
[35:32] Speaker 1: to their deaths. They went to the end of the
[35:34] Speaker 1: world proclaiming that he is the Messiah of the Jews.
[35:38] Speaker 1: How can you explain that apart from this fact of
[35:42] Speaker 1: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Far too many
[35:48] Speaker 1: contemporary scholars try to explain away the resurrection. Oh, it's
[35:52] Speaker 1: a myth, it's a legend, it's a symbol, it's a
[35:55] Speaker 1: sign that Jesus cause goes on that he's a great
[35:57] Speaker 1: man who now lives with God. Come on, Nobody in
[36:01] Speaker 1: the first century would have found any of that the
[36:03] Speaker 1: least bit convincing. Can you imagine Paul tearing into Corinth
[36:07] Speaker 1: and saying, I want to proclaim a dead man who's
[36:10] Speaker 1: very inspiring. No one would have taken him seriously.
[36:13] Speaker 3: Instead, what Paul said in.
[36:15] Speaker 1: Corinth over and over again was anos anostesis, resurrection, Resurrection.
[36:20] Speaker 1: That was the first great Christian message. The Gospels tell
[36:26] Speaker 1: us that the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples in
[36:30] Speaker 1: the Upper room. He did two things. First, he showed
[36:34] Speaker 1: his wounds. Don't forget what the sin of the world did.
[36:41] Speaker 1: But then he says, shalom.
[36:46] Speaker 3: Peace.
[36:48] Speaker 1: This is the peace that the world can't give. God's
[36:52] Speaker 1: love is more powerful than our greatest enemies, which are
[36:56] Speaker 1: sin and death. This is precisely why Paul, once he
[37:01] Speaker 1: had seen the risen Christ, could say, I am certain
[37:05] Speaker 1: that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither
[37:09] Speaker 1: height nor death, nor any other power can ever separate
[37:13] Speaker 1: us from the love of God. How does Paul know that?
[37:15] Speaker 1: Because we killed God and God returned in forgiving love.
[37:45] Speaker 1: You're seeing the installation of the Latin patriarchs are the
[37:48] Speaker 1: one who's the bishop of this church, which in some
[37:50] Speaker 1: ways is the mother church of all the Christianity, or Jerusalem,
[37:53] Speaker 1: and that they're marching in in this military way into
[37:56] Speaker 1: this church of nonviolence. Or Jesus the Warrior one is
[38:00] Speaker 1: battles but by fighting sin and death, and so it's
[38:03] Speaker 1: kind of beautiful and appropriate that we accompany that with
[38:06] Speaker 1: a military march. But it's not the customary manner. It's
[38:10] Speaker 1: this new way of fighting that was one right here
[38:14] Speaker 1: on this spot. Yeah. I just love that image of
[38:24] Speaker 1: Jesus the Warrior because he's a weird warrior. He's a
[38:27] Speaker 1: very unusual warrior, not in the inspected way. But he's
[38:30] Speaker 1: come to fight. He's come to fight the power of evil.
[38:34] Speaker 1: And the power of violence, the power of hatred, and
[38:36] Speaker 1: the great revelation is that he fights with the weapon
[38:39] Speaker 1: of the cross, and he's you know, there's this mano
[38:42] Speaker 1: a mano with Pancha's Pilot going on, and as we
[38:45] Speaker 1: saw that from the very beginning, it's Jesus and the
[38:48] Speaker 1: Roman emperor kind of going manoamano, and at the end,
[38:51] Speaker 1: Pilot thinks he's won, but in fact it's Pilot.
[38:53] Speaker 3: Who's been overwhelmed by the power of the cross.
[38:56] Speaker 1: And that's proclaimed all over the world whenever the cross
[38:58] Speaker 1: is held up, because cross, why would you hold a cross?
[39:01] Speaker 1: If you're in the first century, you're holding across. They
[39:03] Speaker 1: think you're out of your mind. They think you were
[39:06] Speaker 1: a lunatic. You're holding up this brutal instrument of torture.
[39:10] Speaker 1: But that's just the iron. It's in your face, and
[39:13] Speaker 1: it's a taunt. It's a taunt like you think that
[39:15] Speaker 1: scares us, You think we're afraid of that. The whole
[39:17] Speaker 1: world's afraid of that. That's the most frightening thing you
[39:19] Speaker 1: can imagine. And we're saying I'm not afraid of it
[39:21] Speaker 1: because God's conquered it. In the light of the resurrection.
[40:07] Speaker 1: The first Christians understood that there was a new king
[40:10] Speaker 1: of the nations. They therefore saw their task as announcing
[40:14] Speaker 1: this fact to all the world. If someone today had
[40:24] Speaker 1: a message that he wanted to get out as widely
[40:27] Speaker 1: as possible, he would head for New York, or Los
[40:30] Speaker 1: Angeles or London. The first believers in Jesus went with
[40:37] Speaker 1: a similar hope to Rome. In the Roman Forum stands
[40:58] Speaker 1: the Arch of Titus, which was built to commemorate the
[41:01] Speaker 1: destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in seventy eighteen. You
[41:06] Speaker 1: can see on the inside of the arch a depiction
[41:09] Speaker 1: of Roman soldiers carrying the Manora from the temple. Those
[41:13] Speaker 1: soldiers and those who made the arch probably thought, that's
[41:17] Speaker 1: the end of the Jewish religion, that's the end of
[41:20] Speaker 1: the God of Israel. The supreme irony was that at
[41:29] Speaker 1: that very moment, as people like Peter and Paul and
[41:32] Speaker 1: their Christian companions came here to Rome, the God of
[41:36] Speaker 1: Israel was coming in the person of Jesus to Rome
[41:40] Speaker 1: and through Rome to all the world. Saint Paul, once
[41:45] Speaker 1: he had seen the risen Christ, understood this immediately, and
[41:49] Speaker 1: that's why in all his letters we find this phrase
[41:52] Speaker 1: Jesus curios, Jesus is the Lord. Now to us that
[41:57] Speaker 1: sounds like a rather bland spiritual state, but in Jesus'
[42:01] Speaker 1: time those were fighting words, because a watchword of the
[42:05] Speaker 1: era was kaiser curios Caesar is the Lord. Caesar's the
[42:10] Speaker 1: one to whom final allegiance is due. The message Paul
[42:13] Speaker 1: had to the world was no, not Caesar, Jesus, curios,
[42:17] Speaker 1: Jesus is the Lord. On the slopes of the Capitoline Hill,
[42:24] Speaker 1: Saint Mark lived, and Mark wrote around the year seventy
[42:28] Speaker 1: the First Gospel. It was written a few years after
[42:33] Speaker 1: Mark's friends Peter and Paul had been brutally put to death,
[42:36] Speaker 1: and Mark wrote this in the opening line of his gospel,
[42:41] Speaker 1: the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Again.
[42:45] Speaker 1: It sounds spiritual enough to us, but those two were
[42:48] Speaker 1: fighting words. He won gellion, that's the Greek he used.
[42:53] Speaker 1: Glad tidings was a word used to describe an imperial victory.
[42:58] Speaker 1: When Caesar won a great battle, he sent messengers ahead
[43:00] Speaker 1: with the word ewan gellion, there's good news about this victory.
[43:04] Speaker 1: See what Mark is saying, and how subversive it was.
[43:07] Speaker 1: The real good news hasn't a thing to do with Caesar.
[43:10] Speaker 1: It has to do with someone that Caesar put to
[43:13] Speaker 1: death and that God raised from the dead. It has
[43:16] Speaker 1: to do with Jesus Christ. And then just to rub
[43:18] Speaker 1: it in, he calls him with us tootha ou the
[43:22] Speaker 1: son of God. That was an imperial title. Caesar was
[43:27] Speaker 1: the son of God. Marcus saying, not Caesar, but rather Christ.
[43:31] Speaker 1: And imagine how he's in the belly of the beast.
[43:33] Speaker 1: He's in the heart of the empire that killed his friends,
[43:36] Speaker 1: and he says these subversive, revolutionary things. In the April
[43:43] Speaker 1: of two thousand and five, Pope Benedict the sixteenth was elected.
[43:47] Speaker 1: He came out here on the front logi of Saint Peter's,
[43:50] Speaker 1: and then gathering around him came all the cardinals who
[43:52] Speaker 1: had just elected him. The cameras caught the remarkably pensive
[43:56] Speaker 1: expression of Francis, Cardinal George of Chicago. When Carl George
[44:01] Speaker 1: got home, the reporters asked him, what were you thinking
[44:04] Speaker 1: of as you were looking out from the loads of
[44:06] Speaker 1: Saint Peter's. Here's what he said. He said, I was
[44:10] Speaker 1: gazing over toward the Circus Maximus, toward the Palatine Hill
[44:14] Speaker 1: where the Roman emperors once reigned, where they looked down
[44:17] Speaker 1: upon the persecution of Christians. And I thought, where are
[44:21] Speaker 1: their successors? Where's the successor of Julius Caesar, Where's the
[44:25] Speaker 1: successor of Marcus Aurelius? And finally who cares? But if
[44:29] Speaker 1: you want to see the successor of Peter, he's standing
[44:32] Speaker 1: right next to me, smiling and waving at the crowds.
[44:43] Speaker 1: Jesus Christ is Lord. That means Caesar isn't Lord. That
[44:48] Speaker 1: means none of Caesar's descendants are Lord. Jesus Christ, risen
[44:52] Speaker 1: from the dead, is the one to whom we owe
[44:54] Speaker 1: final allegiance. And so Jesus fulfilled the four tasks of
[45:02] Speaker 1: the Messiah. He gathered the tribes, he cleansed the temple,
[45:12] Speaker 1: he dealt with the enemies of Israel, and now he
[45:17] Speaker 1: is reigning as Lord of the nations. Yeah, I'm always
[45:39] Speaker 1: moved when I come in here to the Colosseum. I
[45:41] Speaker 1: always think we won said this was a place where Christians,
[45:46] Speaker 1: not the earliest Christians. This didn't exist till the second century,
[45:48] Speaker 1: but in later persecutions Christians were tortured to death. Here
[45:53] Speaker 1: in this place, I see the spiritual is always more
[45:57] Speaker 1: powerful than what's.
[45:58] Speaker 4: In the world.
[45:59] Speaker 1: Doesn't seem that way. It always looks like, oh, we
[46:02] Speaker 1: can handle bad like Pious the twelfth, you know, said
[46:05] Speaker 1: something critical of Stalin, and Stalin said Pious the twelfth,
[46:08] Speaker 1: how many divisions does he have? Well, Chris, the Great
[46:11] Speaker 1: Irony is the successor of Pi is the twelfth defeated
[46:13] Speaker 1: the successor of Stalin and without a single division, but
[46:16] Speaker 1: with the power of the spirit. And that's what this
[46:18] Speaker 1: place to me sort of speaks. Every good Friday, the
[46:25] Speaker 1: Pope comes in here carrying the cross, because the cross
[46:29] Speaker 1: was the symbol of Roman power. It meant if you
[46:31] Speaker 1: cross us pun intended, that's where we'll put you. That's
[46:34] Speaker 1: how you know. Second, the power tends to maintain itself
[46:37] Speaker 1: through threats of violence. But then we use the symbol
[46:40] Speaker 1: of the cross to taunt Rome and all of Rome's successors,
[46:44] Speaker 1: because from that cross came forth the victory of God,
[46:47] Speaker 1: which is a victory of non violence and compassion and
[46:49] Speaker 1: love and forgiveness. And that's more powerful than anything in
[46:52] Speaker 1: the world, because that's the power by which the world
[46:54] Speaker 1: was created. God made the world not in violence, but
[46:56] Speaker 1: in love, and so love is always more enduring and
[47:01] Speaker 1: powerful their hatred, even though it seems otherwise. That's the
[47:04] Speaker 1: great lesson of.
[47:05] Speaker 4: The church, as S S.
[48:26] Speaker 5: S step its S S scar with no mo SAR
[49:18] Speaker 5: call spot cas

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