Bishop Barron's Easter Sunday sermon on the Resurrection as a world-shaking historical event
Bishop Robert Barron delivers an Easter Sunday sermon arguing that the Resurrection of Jesus is not a myth or fairy tale but a real, disorienting, history-anchored event.
Summary
In this Easter Sunday sermon, Bishop Robert Barron preaches on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the central and non-negotiable foundation of Christian faith. Drawing on Matthew's Gospel account, he develops two primary images — the earthquake and the angel's light — to argue that the Resurrection is not a comfortable myth but a disorienting, historically grounded event that overturns every assumption about death and reality. He warns against the tendency, ancient and modern, to domesticate Easter into a harmless folk tale, arguing that the first disciples' testimony — rooted in specific places, people, and the physical experience of eating and drinking with the risen Jesus — demands to be taken with full seriousness.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Easter Greeting and the Central Claim of Christianity
Bishop Robert Barron: Peace be with you, and happy, blessed Easter to everybody. We've come to the great day, the high point of the Church's liturgical year — the reason why we are Christians at all. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then our faith is in vain. St. Paul told us that. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, Christianity is a waste of time. This is the hinge point. This is the standing or falling point of Christianity. Taking Easter seriously is the source of our joy, the source of our hope. Everything else is secondary to the great declaration of our Easter faith. That's how important it is.
The Earthquake — A Personal Experience
In light of that, let me talk to you about earthquakes, because we hear in Matthew's account that with the arrival of the angel and the rolling back of the stone over the tomb of Jesus, it was like a great earthquake — or rather, it was an earthquake.
The first time I felt an earthquake was in California, not surprisingly. I spent most of my life in Chicago, where you don't ever feel an earthquake. I was over in Europe and never felt one there either. It was one morning, very early. I was up and sitting in a chair in my bedroom, and there was this thump — this boom — and my only frame of reference was that the house had been hit by a truck. Not even a car. It was bigger than that. The whole house, in one moment, just shook. I thought, we must have been hit by a truck. I was about to spring down the stairs to see what happened, and then it occurred to me: ah, that must be an earthquake. And I discovered that is indeed one type of earthquake — this boom, like that. It shook the whole house. But more than that, it shook my consciousness. It shook my frame of reference. I didn't know what to make of it.
A couple of years later, on the Fourth of July, I'm at my house, sitting on the back porch, and out across from me on the lawn in a lawn chair is my nephew. My sister was visiting with her family, and he must have been nineteen or twenty at the time. We're just talking away, and I didn't really feel this earthquake that much, but he did. This was not a boom earthquake. It was the second type — rolling. It's like the surface of the earth just rolls. I remember we were just talking normally, and then he suddenly got up and said, "What was that?" He looked at me and said, "I don't like that." And I get it. He was another Chicago person. He'd never experienced an earthquake before. It's disconcerting. What is going on? I don't know how to understand this. And maybe most importantly, the thing I thought was most fundamental — the ground, the earth, terra firma — is rolling like the ocean. Are you kidding me? What can I possibly rely on? My whole world has turned upside down. I don't like this.
The Resurrection as Earthquake
Well, can I suggest to everybody: the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an earthquake. It's something that takes us by surprise, that overwhelms us, that unnerves us, that lies outside of our frame of reference. We're tempted to say, like my nephew, "I don't like this. I don't know what to make of this."
There has been a tendency from ancient times — and you can see it very strongly in modern times — to turn the Resurrection of Jesus into a calm, tidy, and safe little myth. Oh yes, a nice story from long ago about a man who died but came back from the dead. It's like a myth. It's like a fairy tale. It's under our control. I can understand that. It's like other stories of a similar stripe.
Notice, please, everybody: in myths we talk about "once upon a time." It's nothing real. It's a story that evokes certain abstract truths. I love the myths — they're great. But "once upon a time" — or, to update it, "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" — see what that does. I'm not frightened by that. It doesn't cause me to rearrange my thinking. It's a safe little distance, a literary exercise.
No. That is not the story they're telling here. As C.S. Lewis said so memorably, those who think the Gospel is trading in myth have not read many myths. The Gospel story of the Resurrection is not set in a galaxy far, far away. It's not "once upon a time." It's not a safe, cozy fairy tale.
The Historical Grounding of the Resurrection
Listen: in Acts chapter 10, when St. Peter gives this accounting of the Resurrection — very typically — how does he begin? He reminds the listeners of the first utterances of Jesus up in Galilee. "Oh, I know where that is — it's up north of Jerusalem." He says, "After the baptism that John announced." "Oh yes, John the Baptist — I remember him." So I've situated it historically now. He goes on to say that he and the other disciples were eyewitnesses of all that Jesus did, both in Judea and Jerusalem. "Okay, I know where those are. I've spent a lot of time in Jerusalem." A myth? No — he's naming particular places and people.
Then it says Jesus was handed over by the authorities to this brutal death. And then, without changing tone or register or anything, he says, "God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear to us who were chosen as witnesses." Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, John the Baptist — I've situated this fellow in a historical context. And then: he rose from the dead.
Then this line — I know I've said this before, but to me it remains breathtaking in its simplicity and its straightforwardness. He says, "We" — referring to himself and the disciples — "we who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead."
We're not talking "once upon a time" here. That's the point. We're not talking "galaxy far, far away." We're not talking about a neat little story. We are talking about an earthquake.
Can you imagine these people? They knew Jesus. They heard him. They touched him. They knew him. They saw him die on the cross — and then they ate and drank with him.
The Film Risen and the Centurion's Encounter
I don't know if you know the movie Risen. It came out about five years ago. Joseph Fiennes is in it. He plays a Roman centurion who presided at the crucifixion of Jesus. So he sees Jesus put to death, and he's a hardened Roman soldier who knows a lot about death and has seen many dead bodies. He has to verify — because it's his job — that this man is dead. So he goes up and looks into the face of the dead Christ on the cross. Yep. He's dead.
And then what I love about that movie is this: after the news of the Resurrection, this centurion has been sent to quell the whole thing and figure it out. He bursts into a room where the disciples of Jesus are gathered. He's looking around at their faces — and then he sees him. There, sitting around the table with the others, is Jesus, unmistakably the one he saw dead on the cross. He knew what a dead person looked like. But there he is.
At that moment, the centurion is up against the wall, his sword drawn — and he just slides down to the ground, utterly stupefied. Earthquake. It was like an earthquake. It turned everything upside down. It was beyond his frame of reference. He couldn't take it in. What is this?
It's a turning upside down of all of our expectations. What we think is terra firma — the fact of death, the finality of death — is no longer true, because God has raised Jesus from the dead.
The Burial Cloths and the Shroud of Turin
In Matthew's account — which I've been looking at — and in St. John's account, there is a great stress placed on the burial cloths. And it's fascinating, isn't it? Why would they have remembered that detail?
Peter and John get to the tomb, they look in, and they see these cloths. And the reason it's so striking to them is: something has happened. Well, if people were stealing his body, they wouldn't bother unwrapping it. You'd grab the body and get rid of it as quickly as you can — you're not going to unwrap it. That was an elaborate process, by the way, wrapping a dead body. So why are the cloths just sitting there? That's what struck them as so odd.
And I remember so vividly — in 2010, I had the opportunity to see the Shroud of Turin. I was over in Rome, and it was on display up in Turin. A group was going up there and I went with them. At one point they allowed you to go in close — I was perhaps fifteen feet away from the Shroud of Turin. And I remember thinking: is this the burial cloth that Peter and John saw on the morning of the Resurrection? Again, this is not a myth, everybody. I was able to look upon what those disciples looked upon that Easter morning. The reality of the Resurrection is an earthquake that turns everything upside down.
The Angel's Light — Heaven Breaking Into Earth
Now, here's the second image I want to share with you. Go back to Matthew. It says the angel descended from heaven and sat upon the stone. I love that detail, by the way — because the stone that was supposed to keep that tomb closed forever, the angel rolls it back and sits on it. Like: don't think this is going to control me.
But then we hear: his appearance was like lightning, his clothing was white as snow. He's an angel — angelos means "messenger" in Greek. Hence euangelion means "good message," "good news." So a messenger has appeared — but not from Galilee, or from Rome, or from Athens. No. A messenger has come from a higher world, from this world of light.
I was thinking, as I reread this, of Spielberg — how often Spielberg uses light in a very creative way in his movies. Think of Close Encounters. Think of E.T. Light coming from under a door, light coming from around an object, light behind a mountain — light indicating some mysterious world beyond the one we can immediately see. There's something else. There's something more going on, and the light signals it.
Well, the angel — the angelos, the messenger from a higher realm — is the light that signals the breakthrough of this higher world into our world. Think of Jesus's whole life, everybody. What is it but heaven breaking into earth? Not lifting us up out of the earth, not negating or destroying the earth, but rather transfiguring and illuminating the earth. Heaven and earth meeting.
The Bodily Resurrection and Its Meaning
Well, the Resurrection is that moment par excellence when heaven and earth meet. The fact that Jesus rises in his body is exceptionally important. We don't say his soul ran up to heaven. We don't say, "Oh, he's left the earth behind and now lives in some other realm." No. What we say is: his body — this body that they touched, that they knew, this Jesus, their friend who died — yes, and now has been transfigured and elevated into a higher pitch of existence. We call that the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And what it means is an earthquake, a new world, the finality of death overcome. Something else is the case. A higher world can rescue and transform this fallen world of ours.
That's the earthquake. That's the light.
A Warning Against Domesticating Easter
Don't allow them to domesticate Easter. That's my message to my fellow Christians listening to me. Don't let them domesticate Easter into one more little charming folk tale. It's not a folk tale.
And mind you, the tyrants have always wanted Easter to be a folk tale, because if you make it a harmless story, it threatens nobody. But you tell the story of Easter the way the first disciples did — the breakthrough of a higher world into this one, overcoming the finality of death — that gives rise to a whole new vision of things.
Don't domesticate Easter. Allow it to be light. Allow it to be an earthquake. And God bless you.