Original subtitles

There's an "either/or" in regard to Jesus.

Either He is who He says He is, or He's a bad man.

What's ruled out is the middle ground that a lot of people take today,

which is, well, I don't think He's God,

but He's a very interesting, inspiring religious teacher.

Actually He's not.

Actually He's sort of a dangerous strange figure.

So as He Himself said,

"Either you're with Me or you're against Me.

Either you gather with Me or you scatter."

He compels a choice the way no other religious founder does.

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It all begins really with a joke.

The essence of humor is the coming together of opposites,

the meeting of incongruous things.

The central claim of Christianity is that God became human.

God became one of us, taking to Himself a human nature.

And to the make the humor even more acute,

God didn't first appear in some great cultural center.

He didn't appear in Rome.

He didn't appear in Athens or Babylon.

He appeared here in Bethlehem.

Even today, a simple humble place, even more so in Jesus' time.

St. Paul said of Jesus,

"Though He was in the form of God,

Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped.

Rather, He emptied Himself and took the form of a slave."

The Master of the Universe became, out of love, our slave,

and the joke is marvelously on us.

Jesus grew up in obscurity.

We know almost nothing about the first 30 years of His life,

except that most likely He was trained as a carpenter.

He was not a member of a rabbinic school.

He was not a scribe or a Pharisee or a temple priest.

He was, if you will, a layman.

But He emerged on the scene, around the year 30 AD,

in the most extraordinary way.

In the hills of Galilee, this carpenter began to preach

with an unprecedented and unnerving boldness,

claiming personal authority over the Torah itself,

which was the divine law that was considered the court of final appeal

for any faithful rabbi.

He also performed great miracles of healing

and demonstrated a mastery over the very forces of nature.

The Gospels tell us that the crowds came at Him from all sides,

most of them wondering just who this man was.

One of my great fears is that Jesus becomes domesticated.

So He's a nice, gentle figure.

I understand His moral teaching. He's like many other figures.

And then, see, I probably forget about Him,

'cause He's like everybody else.

He's an echo of a lot of other spiritual figures.

And the minute that happens, then the whole thing falls apart.

Jesus was, in His own lifetime, and then after the Resurrection,

He was a deeply disconcerting figure.

He was -- He was a subversive figure.

And so I want to recover that.

At a certain point, after His emergence on the public scene,

Jesus travelled with his disciples

to the far northern reaches of the Promised Land

to the region of Caesarea Philippi, near the present-day Golan Heights.

Today, one can see the ruins of a temple to the god Pan

that stood on this site in Jesus' day.

It was here that He asked them a very peculiar question.

And that question was, "Who do people say that I am?"

Jesus didn't ask, "What do people think of my teaching?"

Or, "What impression am I making?"

Reasonable enough questions.

He asked, "Who do people say that I am?"

It would be hard to imagine any other great religious founder

asking such a question.

The Buddha wouldn't focus on himself,

and I say it to his credit.

He would say, "There's a way I've discovered.

I want you to know it."

Mohammad wouldn't focus on himself.

He'd say, "There's a revelation I've received. I want you to know it."

Confucius wouldn't say, "It's about me."

He'd say, "It's about this path that I found."

Then there's Jesus.

His question is, "Who do you say that I am?"

The whole Gospel really hinges on this point.

Jesus' identity personally is what it's about.

Because throughout the Gospels,

He consistently speaks and acts in the very person of God.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says,

"Unless you love Me more than your very life,

more than your mother and father, you're not worthy of Me."

You might imagine a religious teacher saying,

"Unless you love God more than your very life,"

but to say, "Unless you love Me more than the highest goods in the world?"

Jesus says to the paralyzed man, "My son, your sins are forgiven."

Right away, the bystanders say,

"Who does this man think He is? Only God can forgive sins."

Now, here's the point.

Jesus compels a choice the way no other religious founder does.

"Either you're with Me," He said, "Or you're against Me."

You see why?

If He is who He says He is,

then we have to give our whole life to Him.

If He is God, then He must be the center of our lives.

If He's not who He says He is, He's not a good man,

He's a dangerous, misguided fanatic.

Jesus, more than any other figure,

more than any other religious founder,

compels us to make a choice.

There's a strange passage in the tenth chapter of Mark's Gospel

that's rarely commented upon.

Jesus and His disciples are making their way from Galilee in the north

to Jerusalem in the south.

Mark says this,

"And they were going up to Jerusalem,

and Jesus went before them.

And they were amazed.

And as they followed, they were afraid."

This obscure fragment is, I think, very telling.

One might be intrigued by a religious teacher.

One might be captivated by a spiritual leader.

But amazed and afraid?

Then we recall that in the Old Testament,

awe and fear are two standard responses to God.

Having grasped this uniqueness of Jesus,

we can begin to look at His preaching and action

with greater understanding.

He was God in the flesh, Yahweh moving among His people.

Jesus is strange.

You know, I'm going to resist the tendency to domesticate Him

and turn Him into, "Yeah, He's like, you know, an ancient Deepak Chopra,

you know, who had interesting spiritual insights.

And the Gospel writers

told these kind of cool stories to exemplify that."

I think He was strange.

And so people say they were amazed and afraid.

I don't think anyone's really amazed and afraid of Deepak Chopra.

They might find him insightful and helpful,

but I doubt they're amazed and afraid.

But when someone takes five loaves and two fish and feeds 5,000,

that's a little scary.

And I think if we domesticate Jesus too much,

we take away that dimension from Him.

They were intensely interested

in the fact that Jesus drove out demons,

that He performed miracles, that He healed people.

Even like the calming of the storm at sea....

You know, when that's over they say, "Who is this?

Who is this man who can calm the...?"

I mean, they knew all about spiritual gurus.

They had rabbis and teachers and insightful people.

But He was so far beyond that. "Who...?

Who is this who's calming the sea?"

The ancient lsraelites ardently expected that Yahweh

would accomplish four great things:

He would gather and shepherd His people,

He would gather and shepherd His people,

He would purify the holy Temple in Jerusalem,

He would overcome the enemies of lsrael,

and He would reign as the Lord of the nations.

What startled the first followers of the Lord

was that Jesus himself accomplished precisely these things,

but in the most unexpected way.

I'm standing by the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

I'm in Jesus' home country.

It's in these hills here that He preached for the first time.

And His theme was simple and direct:

the Kingdom of God is at hand.

the Kingdom of God is at hand.

Now, oceans of ink have been spilled over the centuries

by scholars trying to explain what "Kingdom of God" meant.

It might be good to ask,

"What did people in these hills understand by that term?"

They would have understood the tribes are being gathered.

They would have understood the tribes are being gathered.

Throughout the Old Testament,

God is portrayed as a great gathering force.

God forms a people, lsrael, after His own heart

and then endeavors to use the lsraelites

as a magnet to gather the rest of the nations.

How did Jesus, Yahweh in the flesh, do this?

He practiced open-table fellowship,

inviting to His festive meals sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors,

inviting to His festive meals sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors,

the sick, and the forgotten.

He was not simply exemplifying the virtue of "inclusivity."

He was Yahweh gathering in His people.

This also explains why He healed so many.

This also explains why He healed so many.

In the society of His time,

physical illness was construed as a kind of curse,

and in many cases, sickness or deformity

prevented one from worshipping with the rest of the community.

Curing the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the leprous,

Curing the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the leprous,

Jesus was Yahweh binding up the wounds of His people

and restoring them to communion.

Jesus turned upside-down

many of the social conventions of His time and place.

many of the social conventions of His time and place.

In the Palestine of the first century, men didn't speak to women publicly,

but Jesus spoke openly to the woman at the well.

A pious Jew of that time

would have been rendered ritually unclean by touching a dead body,

would have been rendered ritually unclean by touching a dead body,

but Jesus touches the dead body of the daughter of Jairus

as He raises her back to life.

In Jesus' time, as in ours,

places of honor were sought at public banquets,

but Jesus told His disciples to take the lowest places.

but Jesus told His disciples to take the lowest places.

All of this was in service of building up the Kingdom,

gathering in the tribes.

We're looking down at one of the most sacred places on the planet,

the Temple Mount,

sacred to Jews and Christians and Muslims.

It is such a holy place because for a thousand years,

It is such a holy place because for a thousand years,

right at that spot,

where now you see the beautiful Muslim sanctuary

of the Dome of the Rock,

on that spot was the great temple to Yahweh the God of the lsraelites.

It was the center of lsraelite liturgical, religious, cultural life.

It was the center of lsraelite liturgical, religious, cultural life.

Well, to that place, at the climax of His life, came Jesus.

He took a rope of cord, the Gospel said,

and He drove out the money changers,

turned over the tables,

and then He said,

"l will tear down this place and in three days rebuild it."

"l will tear down this place and in three days rebuild it."

Well, it would be hard to imagine in our terms what this was like,

because religion, society, and culture

were so tightly bound in Jesus' time.

This was upsetting everything.

This was the most radical sort of thing you could do,

This was the most radical sort of thing you could do,

and it's probably what led most directly to Jesus' crucifixion.

Well, what in the world was He doing?

What did these words mean?

To understand it more fully,

we have to understand what the Temple meant.

Once again, we recall that ancient lsrael

expected Yahweh to cleanse the Temple,

to gather His people into right praise.

A simple but very significant spiritual teaching is this:

A simple but very significant spiritual teaching is this:

we become what we worship.

We conform ourselves to what we consider the highest good.

God wanted His people to praise Him so that they might become like Him.

This is why the Jerusalem Temple --

the place where Yahweh was worshipped --

was so central to ancient lsrael.

The hope was that all the nations of the world

would be attracted to God,

precisely through the right worship of the lsraelites.

precisely through the right worship of the lsraelites.

The prophet lsaiah put it this way,

"The mountain of the Lord of Hosts

will be raised above the other mountains,

and to it all people will stream."

But the lsraelites fell again and again

But the lsraelites fell again and again

into the worship of false gods,

sometimes the gods of the surrounding nations,

but also the gods of wealth, power, nationalism, and pleasure.

And this is why the great prophets

continually summon the nation back to the worship of the true God.

continually summon the nation back to the worship of the true God.

The false worship of lsrael

came to be symbolized for the prophets

in the corruption of the Jerusalem Temple.

Ezekiel imagined that God's glory had left His Temple

and would one day return when the place was purified.

and would one day return when the place was purified.

And when it did, water would flow from its side

for the renewal of the world.

Now we can begin to understand

some of Jesus' enigmatic sayings and actions in regard to the Temple.

some of Jesus' enigmatic sayings and actions in regard to the Temple.

When He said, in reference to Himself,

"You have a greater than the Temple here,"

He was designating Himself as the new place of worship,

as the Temple where divinity and humanity meet.

as the Temple where divinity and humanity meet.

When He cleansed the Temple,

he was not simply a 1960s-style radical,

railing against the establishment.

He was pronouncing judgment on the old Temple

and establishing Himself as the new place of right praise.

and establishing Himself as the new place of right praise.

In John's Gospel, Jesus specifies that after destroying the old Temple,

He would in three days rebuild it.

He was referring to the temple of His body.

He was referring to the temple of His body.

After Jesus' crucifixion, when the Roman soldier pierced Jesus' side,

blood and water flowed out.

This represents the fulfillment of Ezekiel's great prophecy,

This represents the fulfillment of Ezekiel's great prophecy,

that when the glory of Yahweh would return to the Temple,

water would flow from its side for the restoration of the world.

Probably the main point to realize

Probably the main point to realize

is that Jesus Himself is the new Temple.

He says, "I'll tear down this old one and in three days rebuild it,"

talking about the temple of His own body.

So Jesus, risen from the dead and now the Lord of the Church,

remains the place of right praise.

remains the place of right praise.

Jesus is Himself pure.

Now, the Church participates in that.

The Church shares in the lordship of Jesus.

And so in its sacraments, in its saints,

in its essential structures,

the Church also remains pure, the place of right praise.

the Church also remains pure, the place of right praise.

But the Church is also made up of sinful human beings.

So up and down the centuries,

you're going to see lots of bad behavior,

Iots of corruption, lots of negativity.

Paul says, "We hold this treasure in earth and vessels."

So the treasure is Christ, who Himself is the new Temple,

the treasure of the sacraments, the liturgy, the saints.

But they're held in these weak fragile vessels.

That's where the corruption comes in.

And, yes, that church always needs to be cleansed.

And, yes, that church always needs to be cleansed.

And it's Christ operating within the Church

who effectively cleanses it.

One of the most evocative themes in the Old Testament

is the portrayal of God as a warrior.

is the portrayal of God as a warrior.

Yahweh fights against the enemies of lsrael.

Nevertheless, lsrael was not the supreme nation of the world.

On the contrary.

It was, in the course of its history,

It was, in the course of its history,

enslaved by Egypt, attacked by the Philistines,

exiled by the Assyrians and the Babylonians,

overrun by the Greeks and the Romans.

And so, lsraelites began to dream

that one day God would definitively battle the enemies of the nation

that one day God would definitively battle the enemies of the nation

and make it the dominant power in the world.

And so we shouldn't be the least bit surprised

that when Jesus comes,

speaking and acting in the very person of God,

He comes to fight.

He comes to fight.

But what a strange warrior He was.

Our first glimpse of Jesus the fighter

is at Bethlehem in the stable

over which the Church of the Nativity stands today.

The Christmas story is not just a charming tale we tell to children.

It's full of this motif of Jesus the warrior,

the One who's come to fight.

C.S. Lewis, the great English writer,

said that Jesus came so quietly in this unobtrusive way

because he was meant to slip clandestinely behind enemy lines.

If we look in Luke's account of the Nativity,

If we look in Luke's account of the Nativity,

we see these warrior motifs quite clearly.

How does that story open up?

By invoking two of the most powerful people of the time.

It said, "While Quirinius was the governor of Syria.

And when Caesar Augustus was the King of the World,

And when Caesar Augustus was the King of the World,

a census was called."

Quirinius. Caesar Augustus.

Two of the most prominent, powerful people in the ancient world.

Well, that's how you'd expect great poems and stories

in the ancient world to begin, by invoking the high and mighty.

But then St. Luke pulls the rug out from under us

because he says, "My story is not primarily about them.

My story is about this little couple making their way

from one dusty outpost of Augustus' empire to another.

About Mary and Joseph coming here to Bethlehem.

About Mary and Joseph coming here to Bethlehem.

And the story will unfold now as a tale of two emperors.

Augustus in Rome and the true and new emperor, Christ Jesus."

We hear that Mary came to Bethlehem to this place.

There was no room at the inn.

So He was born in a cave, a stable, with the animals around Him.

Who was the best-protected person in the ancient world?

It had to be Caesar Augustus in Rome.

But the true emperor, the new emperor arrives unprotected.

Imagine a newborn baby, too weak even to hold up His own head,

and now wrapped up in swaddling clothes.

Can you imagine an image of greater weakness, vulnerability?

Who'd be the most powerful person in the ancient world?

Caesar Augustus in Rome.

The new emperor, the true emperor,

is not powerful in that worldly way,

but someone who's willing to be wrapped up

and vulnerable in love.

Who was the best-fed person in the ancient world?

It had to have been Caesar Augustus.

Snap his fingers, get any sensual pleasure he wanted,

and most of us would think that's essential to the good life.

But the true emperor, the new emperor,

is not one who is fed,

but Who becomes food for the world,

placed in that manger where the animals eat.

One more detail from that story.

We hear that an angel appeared to shepherds

in these hills surrounding Bethlehem.

Don't get romantic about the angels.

The typical reaction to an angel in the Bible was fear.

Imagine this reality from another dimension,

this higher power,

and suddenly breaking into this world,

fear is the proper reaction.

The angel announces the good news, and then it says,

"With that angel there appeared a stratias of angels."

We often translate that word as "host", but that word means "army."

Our word "strategy" and "strategic" come from that.

"With that angel there appeared an army of angels."

Who had the biggest army in the ancient world?

Caesar Augustus, which is why he was able to dominate it.

You see what Luke is saying?

His army is nothing compared to the army of this baby king,

this stratias, this army of angels,

who will fight not with the puny weapons of the world,

but will fight with courage

and with justice and with nonviolence.

But the baby king has got the bigger army.

There's a line in the prophet lsaiah that says, "When the Messiah comes,

it'll be like Yahweh baring His holy arm."

That meant rolling up His sleeve

and bearing His powerful arm for conquest.

Here's a great detail, that holy arm of Yahweh

is the arm of the baby Jesus coming out of the crib.

Who would have expected the power of God to arrive in that way?

But the battle that begins here,

this lining up of the two emperors, comes to its fulfillment on the cross,

and it's there that this baby king now come of age

will engage in His final battle.

Part of the poetry of the Bible is that God is so unexpected,

that God is love.

That's a strange message. That's not a common message at all.

That God would be powerful and lordly and judgmental,

that seems much more natural.

That God is love, and therefore, self-emptying.

That God would come as a child

is part of the grace and poetry of Christianity.

They got that, the first Christians saw that,

and they kind of delighted, I think, in the poetry and the paradox of it.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered the holy city

hailed as the Son of David.

He came as a Davidic warrior.

Then, as we saw,

He went up to the Temple precincts and there He picked a fight.

As Holy Week unfolded,

it's as though all the powers that had opposed Him

from the time of His birth

came out in full force to meet Him.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem

is built over the very sites of the crucifixion

and burial of Jesus.

It commemorates and preserves, therefore,

the battlefield where Jesus the warrior

engaged in His ultimate struggle.

When you read those densely textured

passion narratives in the Gospels,

you see all forms of human dysfunction on display.

Jesus is met by hatred, by denial, by betrayal, by violence,

by stupidity, by institutional injustice,

by incomparable cruelty.

It's as though all of human darkness comes out to meet Him.

And here, on Mt. Calvary, He does His final battle.

But He responds not with more violence.

Rather, He allows all of this darkness to wash over Him.

He takes upon Himself the sins of the world, and He says,

"Father, forgive them. They know not what they do."

It's as though on the cross,

Jesus interrupts that terrible play of violence and counter-violence,

of vengeance and counter-vengeance,

which has bedeviled the human race from the beginning.

It's as though God the Father takes that cross,

and He puts it in the works to interrupt this terrible process.

Jesus takes away the sins of the world,

and that's how He fights.

What prevents us from saying

that Jesus wasn't simply a failed revolutionary?

An inspiring idealist, but as Albert Schweitzer said,

"Ground under by the wheel of history."

What prevents us from saying that is the stubborn

and unnerving fact of the Resurrection.

The New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says,

"Simply from an historical standpoint,

it's practically impossible to explain the emergence of Christianity

as a messianic movement, apart from the Resurrection."

If you wanted the clearest indication

that someone was not the Messiah of lsrael,

it would be his death at the hands of lsrael's enemies.

We've seen the Messiah was supposed to gather the tribes,

he was supposed to lead the nation and defeat the enemies of lsrael.

Therefore, the clearest indication possible

that someone was not the Messiah

was that he was crucified by the Romans.

In the year 132, Bar-Kochba led a revolution.

Many said he was the Messiah.

They minted coins saying "Year One of Bar-Kochba."

His revolution was put down,

he was put to death by the Romans,

and nobody thinks he is the Messiah.

But yet, these first Christians proclaim precisely that.

Paul says, "Jesus Christos, Jesus Christos!"

Simply his Greek version of Yeshua Mashiach,

Jesus the Messiah.

The first disciples went to their deaths,

they went to the ends of the world

proclaiming that He is the Messiah of the Jews.

How can you explain that,

apart from this fact

of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead?

Far too many contemporary scholars try to explain away the Resurrection.

"Oh, it's a myth, it's a legend, it's a symbol,

it's a sign that Jesus' cause goes on,

that He's a great man that now lives with God."

Come on.

Nobody in the first century would have found any of that

the least bit convincing.

Can you imagine Paul tearing into Corinth and saying,

"l want to proclaim a dead man who's very inspiring."

No one would have taken him seriously.

Instead, what Paul said in Corinth over and over again was,

"Anastasis, Anastasis! Resurrection, resurrection!"

That was the first great Christian message.

The Gospels tell us that the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples

in the upper room.

He did two things.

First, He showed His wounds.

Don't forget what the sin of the world did.

But then He says, "Shalom. Peace."

This is the peace that the world can't give.

God's love is more powerful than our greatest enemies,

which are sin and death.

This is precisely why Paul, once he had seen the risen Christ,

could say, "l am certain that neither death nor life,

neither angels nor principalities,

neither height nor depth nor any other power

can ever separate us from the love of God."

How does Paul know that?

Because we killed God and God returned in forgiving love.

You're seeing the installation of the Latin patriarchs,

the one who's a bishop of this church,

which in some ways is the mother church

of all of Christianity in Jerusalem.

And that they're marching in in this military way

into this church of nonviolence.

So Jesus the warrior won His battle, but by fighting sin and death.

And so it's kind of beautiful and appropriate

that we accompany that with a military march.

But it's not the customary manner,

it's this new way of fighting that was won right here on this spot.

Yeah, I just love that image of Jesus the warrior,

because He's a weird warrior.

He's a very unusual warrior, not in the expected way.

But He's come to fight.

He's come to fight the power of evil and the power of violence,

the power of hatred.

And the great revelation is

that He fights with the weapon of the cross.

And He's....

You know, there's this mano-a-mano with Pontius Pilate going on.

And we saw that from the very beginning,

it's Jesus and the Roman emperor kind of going mano-a-mano.

And at the end, Pilate thinks he's won.

But in fact, it's Pilate who's been overwhelmed

by the power of the cross.

And that's proclaimed all over the world

whenever the cross is held up.

Because a cross? Why would you hold up a cross?

If you're in the first century, you're holding up a cross,

they think you're out of your mind.

They think that you're a lunatic.

You're holding up this brutal instrument of torture.

But that's just an irony, it's an in-your-face,

and it's a taunt, it's a taunt.

Like, "You think that scares us? You think we're afraid of that?"

The whole world's afraid of that.

That's the most frightening thing you can imagine,

and we're saying,

"I'm not afraid of it because God's conquered it."

In the light of the Resurrection,

the first Christians understood

that there was a new King of the nations.

They therefore saw their task

as announcing this fact to all the world.

If someone today had a message

that he wanted to get out as widely as possible,

he would head for New York or Los Angeles or London.

The first believers in Jesus went, with a similar hope, to Rome.

In the Roman Forum stands the Arch of Titus,

which was built to commemorate

the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD.

You can see on the inside of the arch a depiction of Roman soldiers

carrying the menorah from the Temple.

Those soldiers and those who made the arch

probably thought, "That's the end of the Jewish religion.

That's the end of the God of lsrael."

The supreme irony was that at that very moment,

as people like Peter and Paul and their Christian companions

came here to Rome,

the God of lsrael was coming in the person of Jesus to Rome,

and through Rome to all the world.

St. Paul, once he had seen the risen Christ,

understood this immediately.

And that's why in all of his letters we find this phrase: "Jesus Kyrios.

Jesus is the Lord."

To us, that sounds like a rather bland, spiritual statement.

But in Jesus' time, those were fighting words.

Because a watchword of the era was "Caesar Kyrios,

Caesar is the Lord."

Caesar is the one to whom final allegiance is due.

The message Paul had to the world was, "No, not Caesar.

Jesus Kyrios. Jesus is the Lord."

On the slopes of the Capitoline Hill, St. Mark lived.

And Mark wrote around the year 70 the first Gospel.

It was written a few years after Mark's friend's Peter and Paul

had been brutally put to death.

And Mark wrote this in the opening line of his Gospel,

"The good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God."

Again, it sounds spiritual enough to us.

But those too were fighting words.

"Euangelion. "

That's the Greek he used, "glad tidings,"

was a word used to describe an imperial victory.

When Caesar won a great battle,

he sent messengers ahead with the word "Euangelion!"

"There's good news about this victory."

See what Mark is saying and how subversive it was?

The real good news hasn't a thing to do with Caesar.

It has to do with someone that Caesar put to death

and that God raised from the dead.

It has to do with Jesus Christ.

And then, just to rub it in, he calls him "ho huios tou theou,"

"The Son of God."

That was an imperial title.

Caesar was the son of God.

Mark is saying, "Not Caesar, but rather Christ."

And imagine now, he's in the belly of the beast.

He's in the heart of the empire that killed his friends,

and he says these subversive, revolutionary things.

In the April of 2005, Pope Benedict XVl was elected.

He came out here on the front loggia of St. Peter's,

and then gathering around him

came all the Cardinals who had just elected him.

The cameras caught the remarkably pensive expression

of Francis Cardinal George of Chicago.

When Cardinal George got home, the reporters asked him,

"What were you thinking of as you were looking out

from the loggia of St. Peter's?"

Here's what he said.

He said, "l was gazing over towards the Circus Maximus,

toward the Palatine Hill

where the Roman emperors once reigned,

where they looked down upon the persecution of Christians.

And I thought, 'Where are their successors?

Where's the successor of Julius Caesar?

Where is the successor of Marcus Aurelius?'

And finally, 'Who cares?'

But if you want to see the successor of Peter,

he's standing right next to me, smiling and waving at the crowds."

Jesus Christ is Lord.

That means Caesar isn't Lord.

That means none of Caesar's descendants are lord.

Jesus Christ risen from the dead

is the one to whom we owe final allegiance.

And so Jesus fulfilled the four tasks of the Messiah.

He gathered the tribes.

He cleansed the Temple.

He dealt with the enemies of lsrael.

And now, He is reigning as Lord of the Nations.

Yeah, I'm always moved when I come in here to the Colosseum.

I always think, "We won!"

This was a place where Christians, not the earliest Christians --

this didn't exist until the second century --

but in later persecutions,

Christians were tortured to death here in this place.

But, see, the spiritual is always more powerful than what's in the world.

It doesn't seem that way.

It always looks like, "Oh, we can handle that."

Like Pius Xll said something critical of Stalin.

And Stalin said, "Pius Xll! How many divisions does he have?"

Well, of course, the great irony is

the successor of Pius Xll defeated the successor of Stalin

and without a single division, but with the power of the Spirit.

And that's what this place to me sort of speaks.

Every Good Friday, the Pope comes in here carrying the cross.

Because the cross was the symbol of Roman power.

It meant, "lf you cross us," pun intended,

"that's where we'll put you."

That's how, you know, secular power tends to maintain itself,

through threats of violence.

But then we use the symbol of the cross

to taunt Rome and all of Rome's successors,

because, from that cross came forth the victory of God,

which is a victory of non-violence and compassion

and love and forgiveness,

and that's more powerful than anything in the world,

because that's the power by which the world was created.

God made the world, not in violence, but in love,

and so love is always more enduring and powerful than hatred,

even though it seems otherwise.

That's the great lesson of the Church.