Friends
Peace be with you.
A few years ago, the NBC morning show, the Today Show, premiered a shocking discovery around this time of year. They were interviewing a person who claimed to have found a lost burial box from the family tomb of Jesus. They started the show with one of the anchors in an undisclosed location standing among a bunch of clay rectangular boxes called ossuaries. An ossuary is what was used a year or two after a person had died at the time of Jesus to bury the bones of a deceased relative or friend. The particular ossuary has been the subject of much discussion in more recent years from people claiming it is a well done forgery and people claiming it is completely legitimate. On the side of the ossuary is written in Aramaic “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”. There are many problems with knowing for sure whose bones were contained in this box at one time including the appearance of a change in handwriting for the “brother of Jesus” part of the inscription, the fact that the box was located on the antiquities market instead of in the ground, and the fact that all three of the names are incredibly common. But, it was almost comical the way the morning news people handled the story because they acted like, if they did find the burial box of James, the brother of Jesus, they needed to keep its location entirely secret because Christians could want to come and steal it out of fear that the truth would get out. I couldn’t help but wonder why these anchors would think Christians would be worried about knowing that St. James the Lesser, as he is often called in the scriptures, who is called the brother of the Lord in the Bible, died. However, the truth is that it fit into a larger narrative that these anchors felt would rock the Christian world: That they have found the family tomb of Jesus. And, of course, if they have found the family tomb of Jesus, they must be close to finding an ossuary that will contain the bones of Jesus Christ himself and, ultimately, disprove the resurrection. In 1980, so forty years ago, some archaeologists in Israel found what they believe may be the family tomb of Jesus which they call the Talpiot Tomb. It contains some ossuaries which mention the name Yeshua, which we translate into English both as Joshua and Jesus on their sides. The best archaeologists, even those who are not particularly kind to religion, are extremely skeptical of the conclusions these people have drawn. Still, the filmmaker who made Titanic, James Cameron, made a documentary claiming to have found the Lost Tomb of Jesus. The conclusion of the documentary seems to want to push people toward the belief that archaeology will one day find the burial box of Jesus Christ himself and his bones presuming, of course, those nasty Christians didn’t destroy or hide it away.
Yet, I’m here to tell you that they will not find it, not because of some sinister thing like we, Christians, have them hidden deep in the bowels of the Vatican. They will never find the bones of Jesus because…they are not here. They are not on earth. Jesus truly died on Good Friday. It wasn’t simply a case of near death or the temporary stoppage of his heart. His heart was pierced by a soldier’s lance and blood and water poured forth from his side. He was taken down from the cross without brain waves being active. He was put into a tomb, not his family tomb by the way, but in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimithea. He was put into the tomb quickly before a sabbath that commemorated the feast of Passover for the Jews. Everyone thought the story was over. The Gospel of Luke clearly explains what happens when “the women who had come from Galilee…took species they had prepared and went to the tomb.” They couldn’t have anointed his body after his death because of the controversy surrounding it and because they couldn’t violate the sabbath rest. So, early on Sunday morning, the first real time they can get to the tomb, they approach it to anoint his body expecting to find it lifeless on the same slab their friend Joseph had put it on Friday afternoon. However, as we heard, when they get to the tomb, it is empty, a fact that doesn’t say anything to them initially but speaks volumes when two men appear to them in gowns eerily similar to the ones Jesus, Moses, and Elijah wore at the Transfiguration. These men ask, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised.” The men remind them that Jesus had told them what was to happen and then the women remember. So, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, go back to the upper room, the location of the Last Supper, and find the eleven, Judas is gone, to tell them what they saw. How do the disciples of Jesus, the ones who heard exactly how this was going to play out, react to the news that his body is not there? It says, “their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.” Peter goes to the tomb and he notices something that Luke doesn’t say the women noticed, that the burial cloths were still there. This becomes an important detail for the early church, because had people stolen the body of Jesus, they wouldn’t have taken time to unwrap the body first before removing it from the tomb. It would have been easier to leave it all wrapped up and hauled it somewhere else. It’s possible, though not mandatory as far as my faith is concerned, that we still have this burial shroud of Jesus in Turin, Italy. It makes sense to me that, if the early church saw it as important they would have prioritized keeping it safe and that could have included it ending up in Italy. But, again, I’m not basing my faith on the presence of a burial shroud but on the absence of what may have been contained in that shroud: the body of Jesus. That’s why people like James Cameron and the other journalists, who published books at the time the burial box was reported to the media, so badly want to find the tomb and, ultimately, the bones of Jesus of Nazareth: because it would completely disprove the validity of Christianity. Why is faith in Jesus’ resurrection so threatening to them?
I think it’s rather telling that belief in Jesus sometimes means people will not believe us. It’s a hard thing to believe. God sent his son into the world to die on a cross in order to free us from original sin and impart the life of grace on the creatures created in his own image and likeness. Yet, Jesus also rose from the dead to show us that, even that most evil act in all of creation, the destruction of human life, cannot terminate a person living the life of grace. In other words, we may die but, if we have faith and live lives of hope filled with God’s love, we may one day be raised with all the faithful in the resurrection of the dead. We may follow him whose resurrection we celebrate today and Jesus is just the first among us, therefore, to share in this resurrection. It makes sense that people don’t believe this, doesn’t it? To most of the world, it seems like nonsense and they don’t believe us, to paraphrase what St. Luke said. But, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t believe it or share it with others. Jesus has been raised body and soul and we celebrate it today on this Easter Sunday.
Living a life of faith can often seem unbelievable to other people. Just to give one example: As Christians we are called to look at marriage and family life differently than other people. A husband and wife are called to see their sacramental marriage as a different kind of bond than one that starts up at the State Park or in the court house. Christian marriage is not just based on two people who find pleasure in each other or find a soulmate with whom you always get along. Christian marriage is a union of a man and a woman in God’s love, a unique relationship in that it carries with it the possibility of creativity, of making new life. The goal of sacramental marriage, again unlike secular marriage, is to get your spouse and any children you may have, into heaven by leading lives of holiness on earth. That seems like nonsense to the rest of the world and most people won’t believe you but that is exactly what marriage is meant to be.
It can be hard to not be believed by others, to base our life on what the rest of the world so often thinks it can disprove. We may have family and friends with whom we will share an Easter meal that we know don’t believe a single word of it. Yet, isn’t that at least part of the Easter message? They didn’t believe Jesus when he invited them to believe he was the messiah, the apostles didn’t believe the women when they said Jesus had been raised. It’s okay if they don’t believe us. They’ve been trying to disprove the truths of Christianity from its very foundation. Our challenge is to keep the faith, to keep believing despite their unbelief, and keep sharing the story in the hopes that even the deepest skeptic will stop believing this is all nonsense and run to the tomb to see the burial cloths of Jesus and believe.
Alleluia! He is Risen! Alleluia! Amen.
