Matthew 27:57 – 28:30—The Bones of Jesus

Three years ago, it was “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson’s dark and bloody cinematographic portrayal of the Stations of the Cross. It opened on Ash Wednesday for our Lenten edification. Then last year, you may recall, it was “The Gospel according to Judas,” a third-century copy of a second-century gospel that once was lost but now is found on a website, in a television documentary, two books and the May 2006 issue of National Geographic magazine, just in time for Christian Holy Week (see, previously, "The Trouble with Judas" http://pulpitbytes.blogspot.com/2006/10/matthew-2647-56-trouble-with-judas.html).

And now for this year’s Lenten sensation: the bones of Jesus. The morning after the Academy Awards, Hollywood producer and director James Cameron was the master of ceremonies at the New York Public Library presiding over the American début of a first-century Jewish bone box, an “ossuary” by its technical name, carved from limestone. On the side of this receptacle for bones was inscribed Yeshua bar Yehosef, Joshua son of Joseph. Now, if Joshua the son of Joseph had been a character in the New Testament, his name would be translated “Jesus the son of Joseph,” a name you may find familiar. At least I hope you find it familiar. James Cameron is hoping you find it familiar as well, because the point of the made-for-news-media event at the New York Public Library was to announce the launch of a website, a book and a television special on “the Jesus family tomb,” as it has been called.

It has been called “the Jesus family” because there was more than one ossuary in the tomb. There were 10, in fact, and one of the other nine was also featured in the Monday-morning announcement. The second bone box had inscribed on it Mariamene he Mara, Mariamne the teacher or leader. Mariamne is a Greek variation of the Jewish name Miryam or Miriam or Mary. And so, according to the website, the book and the television special, Jesus of Nazareth and none other than Mary Magdalene were buried together in the same family tomb in Jerusalem. DNA testing on material remaining in those two ossuaries has indicated that this Jesus and this Mariamne were not related on their mother’s side, and therefore they were married, or so it is claimed. Of course, they could as easily have been uncle and niece, aunt and nephew, cousins or in-laws, but that wouldn’t make for nearly as sensational a story, so they must have been married. It’s a case of DNA testing being used to try to bring some kind of pseudo-scientific credibility to a claim that sounds like news, but it’s not news at all.

You see, these two ossuaries along with the other eight were discovered in 1980, twenty-seven years ago this year. In the course of a construction project in the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiyot, a first-century family tomb was uncovered, not an unusual find in Jerusalem. Archeologists were called in to excavate the site. They documented and photographed it and the materials in it and then warehoused them, and the human remains in the ossuaries were buried in unmarked graves according to Orthodox Jewish stipulations. The professional archeologists working on the site saw the names, documented them and found nothing particularly unusual about them. Yeshua is a common name in first-century Jewish families. Why wouldn’t it be? Joshua is one of the greatest heroes in the Jewish Bible. Yehosef is a popular name in the first century. Why wouldn’t it be? Joseph was the favorite of the twelve sons of Jacob, the ancestor whose name was Israel. And Miriamene, less common than Yeshua and Yehosef, is the name Miriam, the sister of Moses, entirely familiar to the professional archeologists. And so they documented the names, photographed them and warehoused the ossuaries until 1996, when the British Broadcasting Company ran a cunning little misdocumentary on the family tomb and made the proposal that this was not just any Jesus of Jerusalem buried in it but Jesus of Nazareth and Mariamne was Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ wife. In 1996, professional archaeologists and scholars offered their objections to this sensationalist claim, yawned and went on about their business.

Now, eleven years later, it’s back. It’s back as though it were news in a publicity stunt at the New York Public Library. We have to give James Cameron, the executive producer of the television program, his due. He knows how to stage an event and attract the press. The location, the lighting, the ambience, the theatrical removal of a black velvet cover from the ossuary at just the right moment. No professional archeologist or biblical scholar would have thought to do it that well. We have to give him his due. Sharing the limelight Monday morning were several archeologists and scholars who do not agree with what the website and the book and the television program are saying. It would never occur to a professional archeologist or biblical scholar to include in their big announcement people who don’t support their interpretation. Professional archeologists and biblical scholars subject their work to a process known as “peer review,” according to which your evidence and your interpretation of it are not considered credible until they have been reviewed and at least grudgingly confirmed by other experts in your field. Because peer review and confirmation are so important to professional archeologists and biblical scholars, it wouldn’t occur to them that controversy and disagreement over your findings are more desirable than agreement because controversy adds to the publicity, multiplies interest and, most of all, increases sales. Include the outsiders as insiders, and you have a bigger story. Professional archeologists and biblical scholars are so stupid. But James Cameron knew what he was doing.

In fact, he made one of the most honest and revealing statements in the entire press conference when he said, “I’m not a biblical scholar. . . . but it seemed pretty darn compelling.” That’s the high standard for the argument in favor of the Jesus family tomb. The only hurdle it has to pass is that it’s “pretty darn compelling” to someone who is not an archeologist or a scholar. I wonder what would have happened if he had stood up in front of the press and said, “Now, I’m not an astrobiologist, but this Canadian filmmaker has discovered life on Mars, and it’s pretty darn compelling.” Would anyone other than the National Enquirer have run the story? What if he had said, “I’m not a viral epidemiologist, but this Canadian filmmaker has discovered an herbal antidote for HIV, and it’s pretty darn compelling”? Star Magazine might run it, but who else would? It’s sad to say, but when it comes to the Bible and the Christian faith, when it comes to religion and a little bit of sex thrown in, what with Mary Magdalene and Jesus, we are so gullible. We are so easy to shake and to rattle. Tabloid-quality claims cause a stir in religion, while science and medicine yawn and go about their business.

So what do we make of the latest Lenten sensation? I know you didn’t come here for some kind of academic rant. I know you came here to be inspired and moved. You came here for some kind of word from God that will address your life with comfort or challenge, with encouragement or correction to help you get over what you went through last week and somehow get you through the week that is ahead of you. I know that’s what you came for. But the bones of Jesus are important, so bear with me, please.

In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul says, “If Christ was not raised, your faith is futile” (v 17). Our proclamation is futile, he says, and our faith is in vain if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead. But if you look at the rest of chapter 15, you will see something fascinating. Paul is talking about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the relation of resurrection to faith in Jesus Christ precisely because there are people inside the church in Corinth who have questions, doubts and reservations about the resurrection. It turns out that in the church in Corinth there was a diversity of conviction something like the diversity of conviction among the people of First Baptist Greenville, some of whom are at least vaguely uncomfortable with the fact that a central tenet of the Christian tradition and a central element of our faith to which we are called is grounded in an event that is contrary to what we have learned about our world from biological science. Organisms live, they die, they decompose, that’s life. Some of us are at least vaguely uncomfortable with the fact that a central tenet of the Christian tradition and the faith to which we are called violates the laws of physics as we know them. Physical bodies do not simply appear and disappear at will or pass through walls. There are some of us here this morning who come with unassailable confidence that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, and there are others of us here who are fundamentally uncomfortable with Paul’s insistence that our faith hangs on such a singularity, such an unprecedented and unrepeatable phenomenon. And there are people who will attempt to capitalize on those questions and doubts and uncertainties. So while I want you to be inspired and moved, comforted and challenged, encouraged and corrected, I also want you to be informed; and I do not want you to be gullible and ignorant about key biblical, theological and historical elements of Christian faith and belief.

So, the bones of Jesus are on the table—or were in the ossuary and are now in an unmarked grave. Or are they? And what does that mean for you, and what does that mean for me? First, the gospel according to Matthew makes it clear that from the very beginning there were all kinds of questions, doubts and uncertainties about the resurrection among the followers of Jesus. While some worshiped him, others doubted (Matthew 28:9,17). They were filled with fear as well as with “great joy” (Matthew 28:5,8,10). According to Matthew’s gospel, there were rumors and counter-rumors, claims and counter-claims about the disposition of Jesus’ remains from the very beginning. The disciples stole the body in order to claim that he had been resurrected, according to the rumor in Matthew 27:64 and Matthew 28:13. According to the resurrection story in the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene says to the angelic figures in the tomb, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” (20:13). And then she turns and says to the one whom she mistakes for the gardener, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (20:15). The search for the body and the bones of Jesus and the questions, doubts, fears and uncertainties are as old as Christ’s resurrection itself. There’s no news there.

But second, if you look at the gospel narratives more closely, you will see that it was not the absence of the body or the emptiness of the tomb that was the catalyst for resurrection faith among the follower of Jesus. The absence of a body and the emptiness of a tomb prove nothing at all, even to the closest followers of Jesus on the first Easter morning. What catapulted them to the faith on which they eventually staked their lives was their sense of the real, continuing and living presence of Jesus Christ their Lord with them, then and there. Did you hear the chorus of the song that our first-through-third-grade choir sang this morning? “For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go.” They didn’t sing bones, bones who’s got the bones? They sang, “For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go.” That was the basis for the disciples’ testimony that Jesus lives. If you have come here to be inspired and moved, if you have come for some kind of word from God this morning, a word of comfort or challenge, encouragement or correction, I suggest to you that the place to find it is right there where the disciples found it first: in the real, continuing, living presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life, with you here and now, so that you can sing with the children, “For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go.”

Now before you find those words too inspiring or moving, comforting or challenging, encouraging or correcting, I have some really bad news for you this morning about the bones of Jesus. The really bad news is that the test of Jesus’ resurrection is not in whether there were bones in that box and whose bones they were. The test of Jesus’ resurrection is in the shape and content of your life. Hear that again: the test of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in the shape and the content of your life. It is in your faith in Jesus Christ. It is in your baptism. It is in your obedience to Christ’s to call. It is in your living a forgiven and joyful life in spite of whoever you are and whatever you have done. It is in your living a forgiving and joyful life in spite of whatever has been done to you. The test of the resurrection is in the character and the quality of your life because to you it’s clear to that Jesus is near everywhere you go.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that the resurrection is not about a physical body at all, a soma psychikon. It’s about a spiritual body, a soma pneumatikon, he says (v 44). So, in the end as at the beginning, Paul says, it’s not about the bones. It’s about the present and active Spirit of a risen and living Lord, so near to you that you have been drawn through baptismal waters, so near to you that you have been drawn into a community of forgiveness and worship and service in Jesus’ name, so near to you that even though you walk through the valley of shadow of death you will fear no evil because the risen Christ is with you. So let this be the Lenten sensation in this congregation: the recognition that the test of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in the character and quality of your life and mine and all of ours together. For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go. Thanks be to God!

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.