Transcript

What matters most about Jesus?

The Creed centers not on his ministry, his teachings, his miracles, or his words, but on the great drama of the Paschal Mystery: the Son of God's descent into God-forsakenness, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, and ascension.

The risen and ascended Christ, the Creed tells us, is King of the universe, ruler of the Church, and judge of all.

One day, he will fully inaugurate his eternal kingdom.

So, we've been talking about the Logos, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father—this high metaphysical reality.

But then the Creed told us that for us and for our salvation, this Logos came down from heaven, became flesh, became one of us.

Well, now the downward trajectory of the Logos continues as the Creed lays out the next article: for our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

There are three human beings mentioned in the Creed: Jesus, Mary, and Pontius Pilate.

Now, why would Pontius Pilate, this first-century Roman governor, play such a prominent role in this basic statement of Christian faith?

Well, I think one simple reason is this: it grounds the story of Jesus very much in history.

See, there's always a temptation or a tendency to take a story like the New Testament and say, Well, it's one myth among many.

It's like the myth of Osiris or the myth of, you know, Hercules or whatever.

But he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, a figure that we can name, a real historical figure.

There are inscriptions with his name on it, there are coins with his name and his title, and so on.

It grounds the story of Jesus in real history, and that matters.

This is not a dream or a fantasy or a lovely elevating story; it happened.

It happened.

Pilate grounds the story.

But secondly, and even more importantly, Pontius Pilate presides over the crucifixion and death of Jesus, and upon this awful fact, so much of Christianity depends.

So much of our preaching and teaching revolves around this truth.

Now, let me try to get at it this way: the Bible is, in many ways, a book of battles.

What I mean is, it's the story of how God's ways in the world are often opposed.

Think even of the very first verse of the Bible, as the Spirit of God hovers over—in that lovely Hebrew phrase—the tohu v'bohu, which means the formless chaos.

From that formless, watery chaos, God brings forth creation.

Well, the tohu v'bohu resurfaces a lot during the Bible.

Think of the flood of Noah.

Think of the Red Sea that has to be parted.

Think even of the stormy waters upon which Jesus walks.

The tohu v'bohu is also incarnated in various opponents of Israel.

I mean, think of everybody from the Egyptians to the Philistines, the Amalekites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans—all these ancient opponents of Israel stand for or sum up the opposition to God's ways.

See, here's a basic spiritual principle: a fallen world will always resist its own healing.

So we say, For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.

Well, don't think, though, that we're just going to welcome him with open arms.

On the contrary, we sinners resist our own salvation; we resist the ways of God.

So, in some way, Pontius Pilate, who presides over the crucifixion of Jesus, even though he's not the worst person to ever live—I can give you a lot worse candidates than Pontius Pilate—functions as a kind of convenient symbol of all the forces that stood opposed to God's purposes, and more precisely, opposed to Christ.

Go right back to the beginning of Christ's life: Herod and all Jerusalem tremble in anxiety when he comes.

In fact, Herod tries to stamp him out, leading to the massacre of the innocents.

Jesus is compelled to go into exile even as a child.

From the time he emerges on the public scene, he's opposed by forces—political, religious, spiritual.

Keep in mind, before he commences his public work, he spends forty days in the desert and then does battle with hosatanas, the Satan, ho diabolos, the scatterer.

He does battle with a fallen spiritual power who is seen as operative in and through and behind all the dysfunctional political, economic, and cultural fallen powers.

Jesus' whole life is a kind of agonia; it's a sort of struggle.

Does Pontius Pilate, as I say, function as a symbol, a summary of all these forces that stand athwart Jesus?

Bishop, it seems every time someone mentions the devil, exorcisms, or the dark powers, people sit on the edge of their seats.

Why are people—and the whole culture, really—so fascinated by the devil?

Well, you know, my first answer is that maybe they shouldn't be.

I'm kind of sympathetic with Karl Barth, the Protestant theologian, who said the devil is just not that interesting.

There's something right about that, and there's a kind of, oh, I don't know, exaggerated fascination with the sort of special effects of exorcism.

Now, having said all that, I would say on the other side that the Bible is very interested in the devil.

The New Testament is very interested in Jesus' struggle with him, and that's the deepest level battle that he engages in.

So the Bible knows about personal sin; certainly, it knows about institutional sin, political, systemic sin.

But it also knows about this deepest dimension that is derived from the fall of a spiritual creature that stands behind, in some ways, the dysfunction of the world.

So the Church takes that battle seriously because Jesus took it seriously.

The exorcism of demons is part of his ministry; the struggle against this dark power is, in some ways, the opening move of his public life.

So I guess somewhere in between those two—a sort of prurient fascination with the details of exorcism—to me, that's not called for.

But taking seriously that struggle?

Yeah, that's worth thinking about.

We hear in the Creed that he suffered death.

You know, we're so accustomed to seeing religious symbols of the crucifixion.

We see it on the walls of our churches, we wear it as a pendant around our necks.

It's an object of our pious speculation, but we've probably lost a sense of just how horrific crucifixion was for the people of Jesus' time, for those living in the Roman Empire where this form of execution was practiced.

It was about the worst thing you could imagine; it probably frightened people more than anything else.

You know, for the first several centuries of the Church's life, the crucifixion is not depicted.

In fact, the earliest one we have—if you go to the Church of Santa Sabina in Rome, this old wooden door, I think it's from the fifth century, and it's covered in these little squares, little kind of bas-reliefs—up in the corner, maybe it's this big, if that big, is a little depiction, almost like a tossed-off image of the crucifixion.

I think it was just too vividly real for people.

For so long, they remembered; they had cultural memories of how horrific a crucifixion was, so they were reluctant—even Christians—reluctant to depict it.

I think the Romans inherited the practice from ancient Persia, but I think it's fair to say that the Romans perfected it.

The condemned man was usually compelled to carry the crossbeams.

You talk about Jesus carrying his cross; maybe you don't think he was dragging the entire instrument, but the crossbeam.

He'd bring it to the place of torture, where there probably were upright beams already fixed in the ground.

He was stripped naked—that was part of the humiliation of crucifixion—and then fixed to the crossbeam with nails or ropes, or maybe both.

We know about the nails because we have archaeological evidence; they extracted these bones with a terrible nail through them.

They then put the crossbeam on top of the upright beam, and there the condemned person was left.

The terrible torture of crucifixion was the slow asphyxiation involved as the person was struggling to breathe.

He had to raise himself up on his crucified feet and on his crucified hands or wrists, producing in the process pain literally excruciating.

So that word of ours, from excruciate, in Latin, meaning from the cross, the word for the worst kind of pain, is derived from the experience of the cross.

The process of dying would last, well, in some cases, maybe several hours, but more likely several days and nights, the person left, of course, without food or drink.

And when, mercifully, he finally died, his body was left there for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the field, left as a sign of, Do this, cross, Rome, pun intended, and we'll do this to you.

Due to its horrific nature, crucifixion was reserved for the lowest of the low and for the worst enemies of the Empire.

It was a humiliating, deeply embarrassing way to die.

Now, remember something too: Jesus claimed to be the Mashiach of Israel.

The new David, the one who had set his people free, the one who has come to set things right—the clearest sign possible in that time and place that you were not the Mashiach of Israel would be your death at the hands of Israel's enemies.

Because the Mashiach was supposed to conquer the enemies of Israel and restore the fortunes of the nation.

So, Jesus' death on a cross?

Humiliating, embarrassing, confounding in the deepest possible way.

Bishop, one of the most puzzling lines in the entire Bible for me has always been when Jesus says on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

It sounds like here on the cross, Jesus admits that he isn't God, and he's talking to somebody else.

How could he forsake himself?

Yeah, you know, we've got to be really careful with that.

It's a tricky business because getting the language and conceptuality right is hard.

St. Augustine said sometimes we speak of the Logos in his divine form; other times, we speak of him in the form of a slave.

So he's following Philippians there, that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, took the form of a slave; he became incarnate.

So when we speak of the Logos in its humble incarnate state, we use language like that.

Other times, the Gospels speak of the Logos in its very exalted state.

Now, what's the humblest point to which the Logos goes?

Well, it's the Passion.

When he goes into the feeling of abandonment by God, he goes into suffering, goes into death, goes into burial.

So the Logos takes the form of a slave and then goes all the way down, dies the death of a slave, and then goes all the way down, buried.

Even so, the point there is we can speak of the Logos in that humble form.

So when Jesus on the cross says, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

think of it as the second person of the Trinity, but in this humblest condition—the second person of the Trinity having gone to the limits of God-forsakenness, the second person of the Trinity going to the furthest limit away from God.

See, if Jesus were just a human being who at the end of his life met this tragic end and felt abandoned by God, you’d say, Well, yeah, okay, all right, I get it.

What's really dramatic and interesting about the image you bring up there is that it is God who...

Feeling abandoned by God, so as Chesterton said, on the cross it's as though God becomes an atheist.

Marvelous, isn't it?

That God, the second person, willingly embraces the state of feeling alienated from God so as to identify, yes, even with the worst of sinners, the most abandoned of sinners.

So the real drama there is preserved when you remember that the one who speaks is God.

The drama goes away if it's just an ordinary human being saying, You know, God, why have you abandoned me?

It's God having gone to the limits of God-forsakenness.

That's what's really interesting about that moment.

The Creed goes on: he suffered death and was buried.

Now, in Jesus' case, he was not left on the cross.

The Sabbath was approaching, and he had friends in high places who arranged for his body to be removed from the cross, so he was spared that ultimate humiliation.

But burial, more than anything else, probably signifies the end.

So, the downward trajectory of the Son of God: For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven; he became one of us.

But then he accepted death, as Paul puts it in Philippians, even death on a cross.

And Paul knew what that meant.

And then he was buried.

You see how God from God, light from light, true God from true God has made the downward journey all the way to the limits, we might say, of God-forsakenness.

Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped, but rather emptied himself and took the form of a slave—that's Paul again to the Philippians.

Well, the downward trajectory reaches its lowest point in the burial of Christ.

You know, I'm always reminded here of that marvelous but disturbing picture done by the great Renaissance artist Hans Holbein, who is famous for his vividly realistic paintings.

But it's a painting of the dead Christ.

Dostoevsky saw it and fell into a kind of depression upon seeing it.

He recreates that scene in one of his novels.

The character in the novel says, Why, a man's faith might be ruined by looking at that picture.

What's the picture?

It's not the dead Christ looking like he's just having a peaceful sleep; it's someone who has endured the torture of crucifixion, rigor mortis setting in, the ghastly wounds on his body.

The Creed, in its own spare language, wants to invite us into this reality: he suffered death, death on a cross, and was buried.

What must have looked to any of Jesus' followers like the bitterest of bitter ends had happened in this process: their friend, their teacher, the Mashiach they thought of as Israel, crucified, died, buried.

But the Creed goes on, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

Now, friends, with this, we come to the fulcrum upon which all of Christian faith turns.

If Jesus has not been raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.

If Jesus has not been raised from the dead, we should all go home and get honest jobs.

Christianity falls apart if Jesus has not been raised from the dead.

Keep something, first of all, in mind, and this is not just from a theological standpoint but simply from an historical standpoint: extremely interesting.

There were lots of people in Jesus' time who claimed to be the Messiah.

Many of them got pretty big followings.

In almost every case, eventually, the Romans cracked down on them; they were arrested and put to death.

And what happened?

Well, their movements just died away again because death at the hands of Israel's enemies was the clearest sign you were not the Messiah.

Here's what's so interesting even historically about Christianity: the first Christians burst forth from Jerusalem, but then they go careening all over the world with what message?

That this Jesus—yes, whom you crucified—they're not covering it up; they're not denying it for a minute.

They know the full horror and shame and embarrassment of the crucifixion.

They knew what that meant.

But yet they say that Jesus, whom you crucified, he is the Mashiach of Israel; he is who he said he was.

Think of Paul now going into every city he can find in the Greek-speaking world.

What does he announce?

Jesus Kyrios—Jesus is Lord.

What do you mean, Lord?

He was put to death in the most humiliating way by the enemies of Israel.

Yeah, I know, Paul says.

I know one thing: Christ and him crucified.

I know all about it, and yet, and yet he is Jesus Kyrios.

He is Jesus the Lord; he is the Mashiach of Israel.

How do you explain that?

I say it even to the most skeptical of critics: how do you explain that, even on historical grounds?

Apart from this fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, something happened that was so extraordinary, so unexpected, so world-changing that these first witnesses of it went all over the world, and yes, in practically every case, to their deaths, affirming the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

So how can we get our minds around it?

First of all, let me try to clarify what the resurrection is not.

First of all, it's not like the coming again to life of the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, or Lazarus.

So, cases described in the New Testament of Jesus bringing someone back from death.

What I mean here is, yeah, they came back from death through the power of Christ, but they died again.

These people don't now live deathlessly forever.

No, they returned to this ordinary life, and they all died again.

That's not what's being claimed: that Jesus simply is resuscitated for a time.

It doesn't mean that Jesus has gone to the shadowy underworld.

So many Jews—not all Jews, but many Jews of Jesus' time—would have believed that after death, we go to a shadowy place, Sheol.

They're not claiming that; they claim they saw him, they touched him, they ate and drank with him.

He's not some shade in some fantastic underworld; he's back in their midst with them.

They don't mean that, Well, sure, as part of the general resurrection at the end of time.

Many Jews believe that at the end of time, all the righteous dead would arise.

They're not saying that.

They're saying, No, no, we saw him.

If anything, what was expected of all the righteous at the end of time, they're saying has happened in the case of this man here and now, in time and space.

Something we notice in almost all the accounts of the resurrection: yes, they see him, yes, they eat and drink with him, they touch him.

But there's also something very strange about the risen Jesus because very often they'll express puzzlement or, you know, some wondered and some doubted, and no one dared to ask, Is that really him?

Because they knew it was Jesus.

All right, what's being communicated there is the reality of it, yes indeed, the physical density of it, but also something strange and elusive about the risen Jesus.

Indeed, passing through walls, though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst.

He comes and he goes at will.

He's in space and time, but yet beyond them.

And I think the Gospels are witnessing to, if you want to put it this way, something happening on an event horizon—a place where the two dimensions meet, this one and the heavenly dimension.

And the resurrected Christ appears, so to speak, at the meeting place of those two dimensions.

Okay, much more we could say about the resurrection, but I want to just draw some implications from it.

Here’s the first one: I think you see it on practically every page of the New Testament.

The resurrection is the ratification of Jesus' claims about himself.

As we saw, Jesus speaks and acts in the person of God.

Well, mad people do that sometimes, right?

You might find insane people who claim to be God.

Some thought Jesus was insane.

Any doubts?

Cast aside in light of the resurrection.

Now they know he is who he said he is.

He really is God from God, light from light, true God from true God.

The resurrection ratifies his claim to divinity.

I love this in St. Paul, of course, who knew the Hebrew Scriptures so well.

Jesus, he says, is the yes to all the promises made to Israel.

So God makes all these covenants and promises to Israel; he draws them forward, lures them.

They endured periods of confusion and disappointment, but finally, in the risen Christ, ratified as Son of God, risen from the dead, they see that all the promises made to Israel have come true.

He’s the yes.

Secondly, the resurrection allows them to understand the meaning of the crucifixion.

As I said, nothing more confounding to Jesus' disciples than the crucifixion.

They might have thought, I guess he’s not who he said he was; he’s not the Mashiach of Israel.

He was, at best, a kind of inspiring teacher, but his life story has come to this just tragic end.

How else could you read it?

They must have felt that way, don’t you sense it too in that wonderful story on the road to Emmaus?

These two disciples talking about Jesus, and they say, Well, we thought he was the Mashiach of Israel, but you know, obviously he’s not.

Well, now in light of the resurrection, they look at the cross with entirely fresh eyes.

What do they see?

I love how the Church Fathers put this: they see Christus Victor—Christ the Victor.

What happened on that awful cross, presided over by Pontius Pilate?

All of the tohu v'bohu, all of the watery chaos of opposition to God came at him.

Read those Passion narratives; stupidity and violence and cruelty and hatred and institutional injustice—all of human dysfunction comes at him, washes over him, brings him to the cross, to Calvary.

Think of Jesus now, nailed to that awful cross, bearing the sins of the world.

It’s as though the world did its worst.

But now in the resurrection, that same Jesus, having borne all the dysfunction of the world and still bearing the wounds of his struggle, says to his disciples, who had betrayed him, denied him, abandoned him in his moment of greatest need, he says to them, Shalom—peace.

He offers a word of forgiving love.

What does that show?

It shows that God's mercy and love are victorious times over anything that is in the world.

I mean, we’re under the weight of these same things, aren’t we?

We feel the weight of the tohu v'bohu all the time.

Those same forms of dysfunction overwhelm us.

What do we see in the resurrection of Jesus?

It is his victory.

God's love is more powerful than anything that’s in the world, more powerful than our sin—yes, more powerful than death itself.

More powerful than anything that even the dark spiritual power can throw at us.

And that’s why Paul, who got this truth in his bones—he’s the father of Christian theology—can say, Neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither height nor depth, nor anything else can separate us from the love of God.

He knows it because of the victory of Jesus on the cross.

That’s why we venerate that awful cross; that’s why we hold it up.

You see too, we hold it up as a kind of taunt.

You think this scares us?

Yeah, that’s the most frightening thing you could imagine.

It terrified the ancient world.

Yet Paul says, I know one thing: Christ and him crucified.

I know all about it, and I’m going to display that to you.

Why?

Because I know that God’s love is more powerful than that.

And so you can’t control me anymore; you can’t intimidate me anymore.

There’s the liberating message of the Gospel that echoes up and down the centuries to this day.

You know that word Gospel I just used?

It’s the English rendering of euangelion in the Greek.

Remember I mentioned how an angel takes his name from that term angelos, which means messenger?

What’s the euangelion?

It’s the good message, good news.

Good news!

When Caesar won a battle in the ancient world, he would send evangelists ahead of him: Good news!

Everybody, Caesar won!

Good news!

Let me tell you about it.

All those edgy first Christians, though they were a tiny minority up against this mighty empire, said, No, no, no, we’ve got the real evangelion.

It’s not about Caesar; actually, it’s about someone whom Caesar put to death and whom God raised from the dead.

That’s the real good news, and it shows that Caesar’s not the Lord.

Jesus' curiosity—Jesus, risen from the dead, is the Lord.

Subversive message?

Uh-huh.

Still subversive?

Yep.

That’s the Church.

That’s the Church now that goes forth with this same message of resurrection.

Here’s a third implication from the resurrection: I think it indicates, as dramatically as possible, that God has not given up on his creation.

We saw, I mean, in the very beginning of the Bible, that God brings forth creation in all of its splendor, variety, and wonder.

From the highest spiritual beings to the things that crawl upon the earth, they’re all good, and the ensemble of them is very good.

Ah, but the world is compromised by sin.

Yes, indeed, the tohu v'bohu of sin is always washing over God’s world.

But God sent a rescue operation to call the people of Israel, offering salvation, a way out.

And that rescue operation came to full expression when God from God, light from light, true God from true God, came down and became one of us for our salvation, accepting even death—death on a cross and burial.

But now, risen from the dead—risen, mind you, in his body—and in his body means the material order.

God has not given up on his world but has the ultimate purpose of saving his creation.

That too, I think, is implied in the resurrection.

Bishop, how do we know the resurrection actually happened and that it wasn’t a metaphor, a hallucination, a legend, or a hoax put on to propagate what the apostles wanted to believe?

Yeah, of course, from time immemorial, people have been proposing just those explanations for the resurrection, trying to explain it away.

In the ancient world, you find those; you find them in the contemporary world.

Metaphor—like when I was going through school, there was a tendency to kind of turn the resurrection into a literary device.

It’s a symbol of, you know, Jesus' cause going on.

I just say, give me a break!

Imagine St. Paul coming into Corinth with the earth-shattering message that a dead guy taught something that Paul found kind of inspiring.

They would have said, Well, get lost; get in line.

You know, instead, Paul’s message was anastasis—it was resurrection.

We have to avoid the tendency to flatten out the resurrection because it does violence to the witness of the first Christians.

That, to me, is the best argument.

You’ve got these people who went all over the world and, in most cases, to their deaths defending this claim, given every opportunity to say, You know what I’m talking about here is a legend; it’s a myth; it’s a symbol.

No, no, they proclaimed, Christ risen from the dead, and they went to their deaths defending it.

You know, we who ate and drank with him after his resurrection from the dead—we find that line in the Acts of the Apostles.

How do we find that breathtaking?

You know, here’s the thing: I can get on a plane right now, and in about ten hours, I can get to the place where I can point right to where that guy is buried—where Peter, who said, I ate and drank with him after his resurrection, and who died on that spot in Rome because he was defending this teaching.

To me, that’s a compelling argument for the reality of the resurrection.

I always find the attempts to explain it away are just sort of comically pathetic.

Hallucination?

Well, maybe one person, but this whole range of people—including, as Paul says, 500 at once.

What?

So 500 people at once have a hallucination about the same person?

I mean, come on!

There are such pitifully rationalistic attempts to deal with what’s the most obvious explanation: that Jesus rose from the dead, was seen by these people who proclaimed him to the world, and died proclaiming it.

To me, that’s a very compelling argument for the reality of the resurrection.

The Creed goes on: He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

Notice he came down from heaven for us and for our salvation.

In fact, he came all the way down into burial, crucifixion, and burial.

Raised from the dead, he begins his journey back.

The journey comes to completion here, where he ascends into heaven.

He goes down, listen now, so as to draw us up.

The purpose of his going all the way down was to reach heaven—even the worst of sinners who’ve wandered as far away from God as they can—to reach even them, so now to bring them back up to a share in the divine life.

Let me say just a couple more things about the ascension of Jesus.

Here’s the wrong way to think about it: Well, I guess at the end of his work on earth, Jesus went up, up, and away.

Up he goes, there goes Jesus, goodbye.

No, no, don’t think of it that way.

Don’t use that metaphor.

Maybe if I could be a little bold, I’ll use a military metaphor.

This is maybe not as true today, but let’s say we go back to the 19th century.

What generals wanted to do was always find the high ground because from the high ground, they could see the whole field of battle.

They could dig in their own troops, but they could see and command the whole battlefield.

It gave them the best point of vantage.

Think of the ascended Jesus now not as gone away, but rather having gone to that heavenly place, the divine place.

Remember, God, actus purus, who is present to all of space and all of time.

Jesus, now having ascended to that heavenly place, assumes this high point of vantage from which he directs operations.

Now read the Acts of the Apostles, which begins with the ascension and then shows us, Hey, here’s what the risen and ascended Jesus is about.

He’s about sending his Spirit into his apostles so they can continue his work.

Still true, still true 2,000 years later: the ascended Jesus still directs the work of the Church from that heavenly place.

He’s seated, the Creed says, at the right hand of the Father.

Now, what does that mean?

Don’t think of a chair up in the sky, but rather, it’s a symbol of his authority.

The one who would sit at the right hand of the king had the king's full authority and was able to command with his power.

So now, the ascended Son of God, seated at the right hand of his Father, has full authority to command work on earth.

That’s what the session of Christ—to use a technical term, the seating of Christ—means.

And then let me bring this talk to a close by looking at this next article of the Creed: He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

He came down, indeed, all the way down to reach all of us sinners.

In the resurrection and ascension, he goes back, assuming his place of command to guide the work of his Church.

But the story will come to its ultimate conclusion when he comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

What does this mean?

Jesus is meant to be the consummation of all things.

He’s the judge of the living and the dead, meaning he’s the criterion by which we determine right from wrong, by which we distinguish a good life from a bad life.

Jesus is the criterion.

At the end of time, in accord with the criterion of his own being, he will bring all things to their consummation and fulfillment.

Now, I know especially today we have a hard time with the word judgment.

The one thing we don’t like is someone who is judgmental.

Stop judging me!

So the claim that Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead probably makes us a little bit uncomfortable.

Let me stress one dimension of it: think now in our world that is still so marked by violence, by deep injustice, harm to innocent people.

Sometimes, through our efforts, we can kind of set things right.

Sometimes good people are rewarded, and evil people are punished.

Sometimes a great crime is addressed, but let’s face it, a lot of the time that’s not the case.

A lot of times, good people don’t flourish; they don’t prosper in this world.

Very often, wicked people do very well.

Terrible deeds go unpunished; people go to their graves either insufficiently rewarded or insufficiently punished.

Given that the Church exalts in the fact that Jesus, the criterion of right and wrong, will judge the living and the dead, he will finally set things right for those who long for justice.

Don’t tell me you don’t want someone who will judge the living and the dead.

No, no!

Thank God for Christ, who, by the criterion of his own being, sets the world right.

Just a last thought: Christianity is not a sort of philosophy of the circular—things just kind of go round and round in endless repetition.

No, no!

Christianity has a linear and purposeful sense of history.

God is guiding his creation; he brought it into being from nothing.

As I said, he’s always providentially present to it, guiding it.

He sends the great prophets to Israel; he sends the patriarchs, the law, the covenant, the temple.

He brings Israel to fulfillment when he sends his own Son—God from God, light from light—who comes for our own salvation, comes all the way down, and then in the resurrection and ascension brings us back up.

God’s purpose is that he save his creation.

The Creed declares our great faith in the fact that Jesus is this gathering point of all of space and all of time and all of history.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and when that happens, when things are set right, his kingdom will have no end.

Bishop, why does God permit a fallen world to continue to exist even after the resurrection?

Why not a new heaven and a new earth right now?

Well, God seems to delight in using secondary causes—that’s Thomas Aquinas' language.

I mean, couldn’t God just take care of all this by himself and just get the whole thing over with?

Well, yeah, he could, but then we wouldn’t have the great joy and privilege of participating in it.

So the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is, as Paul says, the first fruits of those who’ve fallen asleep.

He’s the inauguration of the Kingdom; he’s the firstborn of the dead.

Well, now under his leadership, the Church continues his work in the world.

Could God just, you know, snap his fingers and get the work done?

Yeah, I suppose, but then I don’t have the privilege; I don’t have the joy of participating in it.

So, I mean, I would say in a humble way, our doing this film series is an attempt to propagate the Gospel, an attempt to do the work of the Lord.

And God gives me, and you, and this whole crew the privilege of participating in that.

So, like, just take care of it, get it done?

Well, then, you know, I don’t have a chance to be a saint, and that’s the one thing that really matters.