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Sermon - When Faith is Challenged - 4th March 2007
Saint Aidan’s West Epping 8:30am
Readings: Genesis 15; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:1-9
In America tonight on the Discovery Channel, viewers will have the opportunity to view a program called “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”. Some of you may have heard or read about it over the last few days. It is produced by the Hollywood director James Cameron, who is probably best known for his film “Titanic”, rather than scholarly documentaries.
The program claims that a burial cave excavated in Jerusalem in the early 1980’s is actually the tomb of Jesus and his family. Around the time of Jesus’ death, it is known that many people wrapped the bodies of their loved ones in shrouds, and placed them in carved rock tombs. After a year, the bones were placed in a container called an ossuary. The names on the boxes referred to in this program are said to include Jesus, Mary, Matthew, Joseph, Mary Magdalene, and Judah son of Jesus. According to statisticians consulted by the producers, it is 99.8% certain that this combination of names belongs to the family of Jesus.
Furthermore, the DNA of these bones indicates that they all belonged to the one family, except Mary Magdalene. The logical explanation is that Mary was married to Jesus.
It sounds quite a find: exciting, and yet rather disturbing for those who hold to the story of Jesus as the New Testament recounts it. For we believe that after his resurrection, Jesus ascended to heaven without experiencing death. There should be no bones of Jesus on earth!
And we thought that the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene being married had been slipped into the file of eccentric ideas where it belongs. Does this find require us, if we’re honest, to abandon our Christian faith, or at least to drastically redefine it?
Over the past few days, I got onto the internet to find out what I could. Someone always asks me questions about these sorts of things when they get raised, and so it is better to know something about them. What I discovered, not very surprisingly, is that the claim that this is Jesus’ tomb is based on a lot of questionable assumptions. Few experts are impressed by the claims of the program, and that includes Christians and non-Christians.
Firstly, the names on the boxes are extremely common. More than one-fifth of the women in Jerusalem at that time were called Mary: no wonder there are a number of women named Mary in the New Testament. Jesus and Joseph were also amongst the most common names. In any case, there is debate as to whether it is actually the name “Jesus” on the container claimed to be his, and the name of Mary Magdalene depends on a very doubtful interpretation of a variation of Mary. We know of no one called Matthew who was a member of Jesus’ family. Statistics are used to claim that the combination of names is extraordinary, but it was actually very ordinary: we all know the line about “lies, damned lies and statistics”!
Furthermore, this method of burial was used by people who were well-off, not peasants like Jesus’ family. And in any case, the family of Jesus came from Galilee, up north, not from Jerusalem. And unless you are still convinced, the DNA is not actually going to tell you anything of significance about who these family members really were.
In the end, this film will probably prove to be a storm in a teacup. But it will disturb some, it will lead some to reject the faith, and perhaps lead others to think that Christianity does not stand up to examination.
I understand that the show will try to tell viewers that the only thing that the discovery undermines is an old-fashioned literalist idea of the ascension. Even if Jesus’ bones were buried in Jerusalem, he could have spiritually ascended into heaven, it is claimed. Others will say that something much more significant is involved.
My guess is that some channel will program the show here on the Easter weekend: that’s the traditional time for such things! So there will probably be a bit of kerfuffle about it in a month.
But would it really matter if someone could actually prove that these were the bones of Jesus? I guess it depends on what you believe Christianity is all about. If Christianity is essentially a moral code based on what we believe is the best of Jesus’ teaching, it probably would not matter at all.
But as you know, I believe that there is much more than that to the Christian faith. Christianity is good news: it offers forgiveness and eternal life. It restores us to fellowship with God our Creator. It opens up the kingdom of heaven to all believers. And it does this through this man called Jesus, the unique Son of God, who died and rose again, conquering sin and death, and has returned to his Father’s side to prepare a dwelling place for his people in the kingdom of God.
How is it that I believe that Jesus is the crucified, risen and ascended Son of God, the Saviour in whom I trust? I grew up in a home in which the Christian faith was seen as the norm, and in which church and Sunday School were an important part of growing up. I was baptized as an infant, confirmed at 14, and involved in a Christian youth group. Of course, as a young person I asked the usual questions about God, faith and life, and had to decide whether I was going to adopt for myself the faith of my childhood. I have experienced no extraordinary miracles, no overwhelming experiences of God, no really dramatic and unmistakable answers to prayer.
At one level, I would say that I am a Christian because the Christian message makes sense. It makes sense of life. It makes sense to me to believe in a creator, and if there is one who created this universe it makes sense that he is interested in us. The teaching of the Bible and the story of Jesus makes sense. And living as a follower of Jesus makes sense: it is often satisfying, it is sometimes difficult or frustrating. But it makes sense to me, and nothing I have experienced or observed or read detracts from its reality to me.
I can’t prove God exists, or that Jesus rose and ascended. But the evidence makes sense. And if I believed the evidence didn’t add up, I would have to reconsider my faith. But it will take more than James Cameron’s conclusions to make me do that!
Our readings today raise questions of faith and how it works. We heard of Abraham and his questioning of God who had made great promises to him. How could he be founder of a great nation when he and Sarah had no children, and they were already old? God granted him a strange but powerful experience to assure him that he would keep his promise. But in the end, he just had to keep trusting God.
The Psalmist, perhaps David himself, also had a struggle. He really believed that the Lord was his light and his salvation. But he had enemies and hardships, and faith was not always easy. God had answered his prayers, but sometimes when the difficulties were great he had to struggle. He needed God’s guidance to know the right way to go. But he would keep trusting and waiting for the Lord.
Jesus was asked about another challenge to faith. Why do terrible things happen to people? What are we to think when corrupt and brutal rulers
massacre people at worship? What are we to think when dreadful accidents happen to a group of ordinary people? The usual assumption in those days was that the bad things that happen to people are God’s punishment for their sins. But Jesus did not take that simplistic approach.
He didn’t give an explanation at all. Bad things do happen to decent people: that is life in this world gone wrong. But instead of giving some sort of rationale, Jesus turned these things into object lessons. These crises, these terrible deaths remind people that death comes to us all, and that there is a judgement, a reckoning to come. Repentance is vital. And so Jesus tells of the farmer and the unfruitful fig tree. The farmer is patient, but the time is coming when the tree will be cut down if it continues to be fruitless. If our faith is real it must bear fruit in our lives: in godly living, in loving service. We will all have an account to give. God is wonderfully gracious and forgiving, but he calls us to account.
And then we come to the Apostle Paul. He also calls us to put our faith into practice, even when so many around us live as if God was not there. In faith we believe that our true home is in heaven, in the fullest presence of God, whom right now we do not see. We live in the light of this faith. As Christ rose and ascended into heaven, so we too will be transformed in God’s time, and share in the fullness of his loving and glorious presence. And so Paul calls on his readers - and us - to stand firm in the Lord: to maintain our faith and to put it into practice in our lives.
In the Letter to the Hebrews we are told that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. Faith hangs on to realities we cannot literally see, or completely demonstrate or prove. But Christian faith is not unreasonable. We ought to have good reasons to maintain our faith. It ought to make sense. And I believe it does.
The supposedly lost tomb of Jesus does not shake my faith, nor need it shake our faith. We will never have all the answers to the questions people may ask. We may not be able to completely repel every challenge to our faith which may come up. But I remain convinced that Christian faith makes sense. There is good reason to keep going, and to live out our faith, trusting in the one who lived, died, rose and ascended for us. We have good reason to keep following the living Jesus, who calls us to trust in him and to follow him into God’s kingdom of light and life.