Faith Matters 36: For The Gardner News, March 31, 2007
“The Lost Tomb of Jesus”
Like many viewers, I watched the Discovery Channel’s recent program The Lost Tomb of Jesus with healthy skepticism. Supposedly a rock-cut tomb discovered in a Jerusalem suburb in 1980 contained ten ossuaries, limestone boxes for the bones of the dead. Unnoticed at the time of their discovery was the significance of inscriptions in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, identifying the ossuaries as containing the bones of Jesus, Jose, Maria, Mariamne, names attributed to family members of Jesus.
It has been an article of Christian faith for centuries that the resurrection of Jesus was a physical event. Scripture recounts how Jesus was raised from the dead in bodily form, appearing to his disciples, inviting them to touch him and his wounds, even sharing meals with them. Scripture goes to great length to affirm the corporal nature of his resurrection. But, as Elaine Pagels and many others have pointed out, the scriptural witness is not clear cut. Jesus appears and disappears, walking through locked doors, appearing in ways that confuse and confound his followers. Luke tells how on the first Easter, two of his followers walked along side of him for many miles, conversed with him, and yet didn’t recognize him. Their hearts burned with his presence as they heard the words of scripture reinterpreted in the light of his death and resurrection, but it was only at the moment of breaking bread that they recognized him. At that point, the risen Christ disappeared. The reality of the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ or Messiah, was shared by the early followers of Jesus. They were all Jews, worshipping in the Jerusalem Temple, meeting in homes and synagogues. But they were not of one mind as to the form in which Jesus was resurrected. Even the Apostle Paul weighs in on this, stating that the resurrection body was a spiritual body, rather than a physical body.
And so, as archaeologists debate whether this particular tomb was the resting place of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, I find my faith in the resurrected Christ unshaken. Scholar John Dominic Crossan states it this way, referring to the appearance of the risen Christ to the disciples on the road to Emmaus: if someone had a video camera and followed those two disciples that day, they probably wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual. But if you asked them, they would have told a very different story. They had an encounter with the risen Christ that changed their direction and changed their lives. The story may not be “objectively true”, and yet, for millions of faithful Christians, the story resonates with their own real encounters with the risen Christ.
We will probably never know if, in fact, this was the tomb of Jesus. There are at least two other tombs in Jerusalem that purport to be the place where his body was laid out after his death. But watching the program I was at times filled with tenderness and the desire to approach and touch the resting place of the One who is at the center of our lives. Whether this tomb is the place where Jesus’ body was laid to rest or not, I believe that the desire to draw close to and touch the divine is itself holy, planted in us by God to draw us ever closer. The quest for the tomb of Jesus, like the quest for the Holy Grail, is one more expression of our deep desire for God. Our charge is to let that desire lead us to the One who is the ultimate source of our lives.