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April 08, 2007
Whose Bones are in that Bone Box?
Job 19: 20-27/John 20: 1-18
April 8th, 2007 (Easter)
Let me get right to an answer to the question you read in the bulletin: “Whose bones are in that bone box?” I take it you know what I’m talking about—the announcement much in the news recently that the remains of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were found in an ossuary near Jerusalem.
I’m never sure how seriously it is my duty to treat this kind of news. The wheel that squeaks loudest gets the grease. When the news is of this kind pastors are supposed to say something. The information I have is the same as you have. We’re told that Professor Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who supervised the discovery twenty-seven years ago denied the idea that is now catching everyone’s notice. “It is impossible. It’s nonsense.”
On a somewhat less serious level, I’m reminded of two fellows who grabbed public notice in Scotland in 1842 claiming they were the long-lost grandsons of a Polish princess and Bonnie Prince Charlie, Charles Edward Stuart, the pretender to the throne of England who escaped to Rome after the crushing defeat of his pathetic forces at Culloden Moor in 1745. Kilt-wearing and other tokens of Scots identity were forbidden for thirty-seven years.
That unhappy time passed. The 19th century was dominated by Queen Victoria (1819-1901,) who had a beloved personal servant, Mr. Brown, who was a Highlander. He usually wore a kilt. The queen loved to see men dressed in kilts. So she promoted kilt-wearing and bagpipe playing.
So these two self-proclaimed grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie, noticing how popular kilt-wearing had become, published a book with a Latin title: Vestiarium Scoticum, based on documents they “discovered” dating back to the 16th century. This book grabbed a lot of public interest. It granted the panache of antiquity to Scots pride in wearing kilts. Well, the documents were proved forgeries. The upshot of all this is that I must inform you the red tartan you see on the Advent wreathe here may not be all that old. But no harm is done since it is charming to see.
Of more consequence is this business of playing with peoples’ faith with bogus information. Perhaps this is a good place to say I am convinced that as Christians we have no duty to try to debunk other peoples’ deeply felt beliefs. This is not the Jesus-way. Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you—but take no delight in wounding the religious sensitivities of other. We do not add to the appeal of the Gospel by trying to prove other peoples’ religions defective. This is as offensive to them as the bone-box idea is to you. In matters of belief it is not like a court of law where brute facts alone matter. Deep feelings as well as truth are the terrain of belief. Harm the feelings and the truth is not attractive. Live out the Gospel and the truth is attractive. Live by the Gospel and the Truth is attractive.
But back to the bone-box which is apparently evidence that Jesus died like every other person. There were no bones in that ossuary. Nobody knows to whom the residue belongs that was found. The names attached to the residue of dust were announced on the basis of the names scratched on the exterior of the box. Though the names are not altogether clear, publicists have inferred that there is a one in ten million chance that they do not belong to the holy family.
That the bones of three members of a poor family from Galilee, who died years apart, were found in an ossuary in Jerusalem, in a part of the city that probably held the ossuaries of aristocrats, is unlikely. Matthew’s Gospel tells us the first attempt to persuade people that Jesus did not rise from death. The guards posted at Jesus’ tomb were bribed to say His body was stolen by His disciples as the guards were sleeping.
Other ideas have been advanced explaining away Jesus’ resurrection. Some have proposed Jesus was drugged on the cross and did not die. He was resuscitated from his drug-induced stupor.
Perhaps most troubling is the view one commonly hears that “the Easter Faith” was only a conviction that took over His disciples that Jesus was spiritually alive. It was this Easter Faith that took over the disciples that made them willing to face death (and extinction) as they proclaimed the Gospel that has so affected the world.
We are here this morning because we believe that on the first day of the week after Passover in about the year AD 30, Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified the Friday before, came out of the tomb alive.
There are two truths I hope you may remember after this morning. First, the account we just read from John’s Gospel, that has parallels in the other three Gospels, makes clear the earliest followers of Jesus not only saw an empty tomb, but they saw Jesus alive whom they knew had been in that tomb. Second, the resurrection of Jesus, that the Apostle Paul calls “the first fruits of them that sleep,” is in keeping with the clear teaching of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible of the ancient Jews.
First, the resurrection of Jesus’ body was an event as sure as His birth. If you allow your mind to travel back to the scene John describes you can envision Mary Magdalene’s frame of mind. Jesus had given her life after she was tormented by demonic possession. Racked with the horrors of this condition she felt such gratitude to Jesus that she was the first to come care for Jesus’ body early the morning of the first day after the Sabbath. The Sabbath was reckoned from evening to morning so to come when she did was no violation of the Sabbath. Even good deeds like anointing the bodies of deceased loved ones were forbidden on the Sabbath.
When she arrived at the tomb, in the darkness of the early morning she saw the stone that covered the mouth of the tomb was not in place. In a panic she ran to find the disciples to announce the only inference she could draw: His body had been stolen. Peter and John raced to the tomb, John arriving first. Inside the tomb they saw the linen wrap that had been around Jesus’ body lying in place. Near by was the head-wrap. They saw nothing else. They went back home in a dither. Mary stayed on, weeping.
She had not yet gone into the tomb as Peter and John did. But now she stooped to look inside. Then she saw two angels dressed in white, one at the head and one at the foot of the slab. Maybe she didn’t recognize them as angels because when they asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” she answered very reasonably. The sight of something so spooky as this at a tomb usually doesn’t promote rational discourse. Without waiting for further reply Mary stood up and turning around saw someone indistinctly. He too asks, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She didn’t answer His question. Instead she seems to have turned away and said, “Sir, if you have taken Him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take Him away.”
I find chills running up and down my spine as I visualize what came next. This unknown man, this stranger she thought was a gardener, said one word. “Mary.” And that voice she heard behind her triggered an immediate response. She turned toward that voice and uttered a word of affection that still rings down through time, “Rabboni,” My teacher. My rescuer. My most beloved friend. This Friend of sinners who had befriended her. She wanted to embrace Him as we all do those we love, particularly after times like this.
Jesus gave Mary Magdalene the first missionary command: “Go to my brethren and say to them I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Perhaps she could no longer see Him. Mary went to the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord.” It seems they both believed her and did not trust what they had heard. From then on the Easter story is about the slow realization that the disciples had that Jesus had really come to life again. Thus the Christian Faith began with trust that Jesus really became alive again after He was crucified.
But let me get to my second point that Jesus’ resurrection was in keeping with the teaching of the Hebrew Bible and the classic beliefs of the Jewish people.
Mike read from the Book of Job Job’s confession of faith that has been made popular in Handel’s oratorio, “Messiah.” The contralto aria, “I know that my redeemer liveth,” has cemented in our minds this Old Testament verse. In context it seems that Job did not intend to make a Messianic prophecy. Instead He was affirming his trust that there was someone who would prove he was not guilty of deeds that warranted his suffering. “Redeemer” here may simply mean “vindicator,” the one who would defend his cause when family and friends failed him.
But we do not have to rely only on this beloved witness that Christians have seen among many broad hints in the Old Testament that Jesus was God’s promised Messiah. A Jewish professor at Harvard, Jon Levinson, published a book last year in which he argues that the belief of God’s people, the ancient Israelites, and then their successors, the Jews, has always been that God would grant to them the resurrection of the body. The “Amidah,” the eighteen-fold prayer devout Jews offer three times a day, has as its second blessing,
“You, O Lord, are mighty forever, You are the Reviver of the dead, You are greatly able to save. You sustain the living in loving kindness, You revive the dead with great compassion, You support the falling, heal the sick, set free the bound and keep faith with those who sleep in the dust. Who is like You, O Master of mighty deeds? Who compares to You, a king who puts to death and restores to life, and brings forth salvation? And You are faithful to revive the dead. Blessed are You, O Lord, who revives the dead.”
Levenson confronts the view that has taken over Jewish thinking as well as much Christian thinking that the idea of the resurrection was a late import into Jewish thinking, drawn from Zoroastrianism. When I was in seminary we were shown how apocalyptic literature, the successor to the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, introduced the idea of the resurrection of the body. The prophets, it was maintained, taught the resurrection of Israel as a nation, but not of individual Israelites who had died.
Not so, Levenson shows persuasively. There isn’t time to unfold his honest argument, but let me propose one clue. God promised to Abraham that in him and in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. The promise was not only to Abraham’s descendants, but also to him. God said, “My covenant is with you” before saying it was with his descendants. This is the first of numerous broad hints that have been overlooked, interpreted away, because of the assumption that dead bodies just don’t rise again. Abraham will be able to see the fulfillment of this promise. He will come to life again. God is the God of the living and not the dead.
The Apostle Paul, heir to this heritage realized that Jesus was the first evidence of God’s promise to Abraham not only of blessing, but also of personal resurrection from death. Jesus was the “first fruits” of them that sleep. A great harvest will follow.
A popular Gospel song we sang some years ago had these words, “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future life is worth the living because He lives.” Why? Because we can face the future with trust that we too will live. Don’t erase this promise from the Gospel.
Think of what this means. It is a promise that if we are in Christ, we will come to life after we die, changed for the better in a way we cannot imagine. Your best self will look at you in the mirror in the morning. All you wish you were and more will come to pass but recognizable as you.
This also means that our bodies are of enormous significance now, not just as the repositories of our souls, but as an indelible part of what we are. Therefore, we should live in these bodies now with great respect and great joy, knowing they are all the evidence we can see of what God will cause to be for us when His work of grace is completed.
Whose bones were once in that bone box? Not Jesus’ bones. We’ll never know. But the reason why bones were preserved was that the Jews in those days wanted to help God out in the resurrection by keeping the basic framework of bodies together. It would be helpful to God to have at least the bones in one place. It was more than a sign of respect. It was a sign that they believed God’s promises in the Hebrew Bible that our bodies count. He will bring His people back to life again.
Let this promise fortify us to live with purpose, glorifying God in our bodies. Let us live out our lives in joy and gratitude, enjoying God’s good gifts, and giving of ourselves to fulfill His loving purposes to others through His grace channeled through us.
Let us pray: O Lord, for such a great and grand promise as the resurrection of our bodies, we give you thanks. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at April 8, 2007 02:23 PM