By now most of you have heard the announcement that James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici are releasing a documentary titled, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” to be aired on the Discovery Channel on March 4th. The film asserts that the tomb of Jesus may have been found in Jerusalem. It’s not really new news--the tomb was discovered in 1980. A BBC documentary about it was aired in 1996. Serious archeologists have largely dismissed a real connection to the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Justin Taylor points us to helpful responses from Ben Witherington, Paul Maier , and Time Magazine's Middle East blog. Also, CNN has a helpful, brief overview.
This announcement got me to thinking about the church. If the assertion is proven true, of course, Christianity has hit the mother of all icebergs and will sink like the Titanic. But the world has good reason to be very cautious in the pronouncement of the church’s demise. Man’s unsinkable ship failed catastrophically on the first collision. But the church of Jesus Christ has rammed into one iceberg after another for 2,000 years: derision, persecution, moral failure, hypocrisy, heresy, internal corruption, political manipulation, cultural and linguistic barriers, and on and on. Sometimes it has looked very fragile, barely seaworthy. Over and over its imminent sinking has been pronounced, only to see it rise back up larger, stronger, and faster than before. It’s mind-blowing. Even if you’re a skeptic, you have to appreciate the amazing resiliency of the church over two millennia. There is nothing quite like it in all of history.
The church is God’s unsinkable ship. He will keep her afloat and sailing on until the gospel has been preached to every people group. Then the end will come. But it’s not the church that will sink.