by Paul L Maier
His opening line was predictable: “Hello, Dad. Your prodigal son has returned.” The Reverend Erhard Weber was stunned only momentarily, and then threw his arms around Jon. His mother openly wept for joy as she hugged him. “O Jonathan, my Jonathan, you’ve finally returned.”
“Sorry I haven’t stayed in better touch, Mom. You know the situation—”
“Of course, of course!” She was instantly crest-fallen. But soon the slender, graying woman with patrician features and twinkling blue eyes revived and served up Sunday dinner in the grand old style Jon had missed for years.
He spent much of the afternoon with his father, listening to how America was responding to Rama. “Oh, Jon, you can’t believe what’s happening to our beloved church. And the other churches, for that matter! Pastors are leaving the ministry, congregations are leaving their pastors, seminaries are closing down. And the agnostics and the atheists are howling their ‘See? We were right’ line. Four A—the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism—has revived . . . well, not only revived, but its membership is exploding. Oh, and, of course, every liberal theologian in the country is crowing, even in the Bible Belt.”
“What’s been the Jewish response?” Jon wondered.
“Restraint. Admirable restraint. I think, though, that some Jewish leaders may feel that a great opportunity is opening for them. They’re ready to declare that atheism is not a proper response to this crisis, and that Judaism may well be.”
“Understandable! You can’t blame them for that, though it’s still too premature.” There was that adjective again. Jon was beginning to hate it.
“Rabbi Judah Weiss at Hebrew Union in Cincinnati made a telling comment. He said, ‘Christianity became vulnerable the moment it claimed that God took on flesh in the person of Jesus. Judaism has never exposed itself that way. Only God is God. No one else.’”
Jon nodded. “By the way, how’s the ‘electronic church’ dealing with this?”
“The TV evangelists? They’re basket cases! You’d think they’d have learned from the Jim Bakker affair, or the Jimmy Swaggart scandals, but no, one’s worse than the next.”
“You mean they’re in a panic? Flaking out? Giving up the faith?”
His father smiled. “No, not giving up the faith, but yes, ‘flaking out,’ as you put it. They’re more hysterical than ever with all their sensationalism and showmanship. Oh, they’ll ‘save’ the faith for sure, and right over Jesus’ dead body.” He suddenly winced and whispered, “I can’t believe I said that.”
“What’s Melvin Morris Merton saying?”
“You mean ‘Millennial Mel’? ‘Three M’s for the Master’? He’s the worst of the lot. End-of-the-world pronouncements . . . ‘Touch your TV set so we can hold hands in prayer!’ . . . ‘Send for my prayer cloths!’ . . . ‘Heal! Heal!’ . . . ‘Sell what you have and send me some of the proceeds for this great crisis!’ Why, you’re the best thing that ever happened to that scoundrel, Jon! Although,” he chuckled, “he’s quite sure you’re either the Antichrist or his First Lieutenant. Not a show of his goes by that he doesn’t rebuke the evil spirits inside you and Professor Jennings. In fact, he wants to perform an exorcism on you in Israel. Atop the Mount of Olives, no less!”
“Oh? He’s the con artist who needs the exorcism, and I’d pound the devil out of that bilious geek if he ever laid a finger on me!”
“I feel the same way about any leech who tries to profit from the crisis, Jon, and many of them are. Maybe you don’t see it so much in New England, but ever since cable hit the rest of the country, we’re bombarded with sleazy Christianity on some of the channels not only every day, but some of them are on twenty-four hours a day with their terrible perversions of the gospel. Down South you even have to fight with the remote on the TV to find good old secular programs. ’Cause everything in between will be some Elmer Gantry haranguing his viewers to send in cash for Christ, often with some painted queen at his side, whooping it up with equally moronic studio audiences fawning on their every word. And talk about taking the holy name of Christ in vain! These birds are masters at it. ‘Give generously, my brothers and sisters! Sacrifice for the Savior, and JEEEZZUSS will bless you!’”
Jon was delighted to find his father in such rare form. Obviously, neither Rama nor age had dimmed his mental powers. “But how’re the TV pirates handling our dig?” Jon asked.
“Tell you in a moment. I’m not finished with that ilk. And what passes for music on those shows! Some overripe soprano will warble away about how Jesus has cured her hot flashes, or a chorus of exploited kids from their college—they all have colleges now, you know, status symbols. Anyway, the kids will sing their hearts out in order to touch yours . . . or put the touch on your wallet! And the come-ons—‘Let me send you my latest booklet, Jesus Told Me When the World Will End! ’
“Whatever happened to the Cross? To responsible preaching? To Bach or Handel for that matter? As a Christian minister, I’m embarrassed before the whole world if this is the faith!”
“Calm down, Erhard!” Jon’s mother called from the kitchen. “Your sermon should have ended in church!”
He smiled and called back, “I know, I know, Trudi. But now to your question, Jonathan. Yes, the worst of these television ‘apostles’ are exploiting the crisis. And, come to think of it, Mel Morton isn’t the worst. For my money, the worst is a bearded freak from Alabama who dresses in some outfit from Star Wars and whips his audiences into frenzies with a gargling sort of drawl. Lately he’s been opening each of his programs with painted portraits of you and Professor Jennings. ‘Heeyah are the whelps of Antichrist!’ he bellows. ‘Ah do rebuke, ah do condemn you in the name of the Faahhthuh’—he then lets fly with a dart into each of your portraits—‘and of the Suuhn’—another pair of darts—‘and of the Holy Speerut!’ And the studio audience goes wild. Yes, he’s the absolute pits, but Mel Morton has far and away the biggest following, which is why they had to have him as one of the panelists on the special this evening.”
“What special?”
“The CBS special. ‘Christianity in Crisis,’ they’re calling it. CBS cancelled 60 Minutes tonight—they hardly ever do that—for a two-hour special. The first half is supposed to be a documentary on your dig, and the second will be a panel of—”
“Oh, the one Marty Marty’s going to chair? Yes, I remember now. They wanted me on the panel, but I couldn’t clear it. That’s tonight?”
“Yup. They’re tying it into Christmas, of course. CBS has given it a tremendous promotion. Probably half the country will be watching.”
After the matriarch of the manse had served his favorite Sunday supper, Jon sat down with his parents in the living room to watch the show. Dan Rather hosted the documentary segment, which featured background footage from the Rama dig and Jon’s first press conference in Jerusalem.
“My, you look handsome, son,” his mother purred. “But who’s that very lovely girl sitting just behind you?”
“That’s Shannon Jennings, Professor Jennings’s daughter.” Just the sight of her on the tube made Jon take a deep breath. “I intend to marry her.”
“What?!” she cried. “Did you hear that, Erhard?”
“Shhhhh! Yes, I did. Great news, son! But look, they’re interviewing world leaders now.”
The United States president, the Canadian and British prime ministers, and other Western chiefs of state all warned that no one should draw hasty conclusions from not-yet-completed investigations. “I’ll drink to that!” said Jon, as his father brought in a couple of cold beers from the refrigerator.
World religious leaders were then interviewed, the pope affirming, “Not for a moment did I think, do I think, or will I think that the bones discovered in Israel are those of Jesus!” The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Berlin bishop who was head of the Lutheran World Federation, and the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches expressed similar sentiments, though without use of the future tense.
Response f
rom the non-Western world, however, was somewhat different. The Russian president was much more diplomatic than the original—and now much-quoted—New Pravda editorial. Looking into the CBS camera permitted inside the Kremlin, Arkady Rozomov sat at his desk and said, through an interpreter, “I should like to greet my American friends during your Christmas festival. We also sympathize with you on the problems that have developed by the discovery of what may be Jesus’s remains in Israel. While it is not our place to comment on this, we would urge that you be open to new spiritual directions, if necessary. Let Nature and Science, Logic and Goodwill be the props for our future, not what may be mistaken opinions of the past. And now join us in a worldwide celebration of Father Frost and the beautiful New Year he has in store for us. And so I say to all of you, not ‘Merry Christmas,’ but ‘S Novom Godom! ’—‘Happy New Year!’”
“Thank God Rozomov won the power struggle inside the Kremlin!” said Jon, raising his beer can in salute to the screen. His mother, however, was dab-bing her eyes with a handkerchief. Jon did not ask why. He wondered for how many other millions in the world the new symbol for Christmas was not the shepherds or the Magi, the manger or star—but the question mark. And what would Sandy McHugh say in the morning?
No commercials had interrupted the program until the first hour had passed. Then IBM provided a very tasteful one, although it was lost on that half of America taking a bathroom break.
And now the camera zoomed in on the smallish, balding genius who was Dr. Martin E. Marty. Deemed the most influential figure in American Christianity after Billy Graham, Marty digested and interpreted more articles and books on the current state of the Church than anyone on the planet. Some claimed that God himself subscribed to Marty’s Context news-letter in order to stay fully informed, although Marty always denied this—a little wistfully, some thought. He now opened, in his piping tenor voice, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve assembled here a panel of commentators on the recent archaeology in Israel, and I’m only sorry that Professor Jonathan Weber couldn’t be here also. To my extreme left, but at the extreme right on your screens, in accord with his theology, is the Reverend Dr. Melvin M. Merton, who represents the most conservative segment of today’s Christianity. Next to me is the man for whom any introduction is redundant, Dr. Billy Graham. To my right, your left, is the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, the Most Reverend Patrick Cardinal O’Neill. And finally Dr. Thomas Aquinas Avery, professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.”
“Oh, great!” said Jon’s father, ruefully. “They have ‘Doubting Thomas’ Avery on the program. He’ll be sure to celebrate what you’ve found, Jon. Or claim to have found.”
Marty continued, “Gentlemen, the excavations at Rama in Israel have been the central story in all the media for the past months. Tonight, we’d ask you to comment on the possible implications of this discovery, rather than on questions of its authenticity, which is still being decided. The implications, of course, rest entirely on the authenticity, and if Rama proves to be a fraud, we’ve all been exploited. But our question this evening is this: ‘What would be the impact on the Christian faith if the discoveries should prove to be authentic?’ First, Dr. Merton.”
Easily the most studied showman on the panel, Melvin M. Merton—a black-haired, deep-jowled, ham-fisted, pulpit-pounder—gave a bravura performance, attacking the Israeli finds, and the finders, with caustic wit. Jonathon Weber was another Charles Dawson, who had foisted a new version of the “Piltdown man” hoax upon a gullible world. “The Spirit of Antichrist has returned,” Merton announced, grandly. He continued, “The book of Revelation tells us that Antichrist shall sit in the very Temple of God. We’ve always understood that to mean a new Temple in Jerusalem. But, after much study of the Bible, and after a special revelation from Jesus Himself several weeks ago—which is too holy to describe to mortal ears—I’m now sure that ‘Antichrist sitting in the Temple’ means ‘the ultimate attack on Christ in the very heart of the Church.’ These archaeologists, then, applauded by our agnostic church leaders, are directly fulfilling the book of Revelation, and this means that the end times are upon us. Oh, thank You, Jesus, thank You!”
Merton raised his arms and nearly shouted in conclusion, “You’ve shown us that You’ll be coming soon, O Lord! And now please condemn the perpetrators of this fraud to the inner corridors of hell! Amen! And Amen!”
“Dad, do you know where I can get an asbestos jogging outfit?” asked Jon. “Poor Marty Marty. How can he possibly handle this yo-yo without losing his cool? I’ll give you a hundred-to-one odds he tried to argue CBS out of having him on the panel.”
Marty, showing admirable restraint, turned to Cardinal O’Neill for the Roman Catholic riposte.
Patrick Cardinal O’Neill, a silver-haired sage whose broad shoulders and stocky frame visually dominated the panel even though he was not, that evening, draped in the red-purple of the cardinalate, began deliberately, “While the Catholic church agrees with Dr. Merton that the bones discovered in Israel are not those of Jesus, it agrees with him on almost nothing else.”
“Great! Give it to him, O’Neill!” Jon’s father shouted into the screen of their Zenith. They all chuck-led as O’Neill proceeded to dismantle Merton’s rabid millennialism and self-serving claims to a private revelation. “Can we really believe in a Christ who talks only to Melvin Merton? And so far as his timetable for Jesus’ return is concerned, prophecy fanatics have played that game for ages, and their ‘batting average’ to date is zero. But now let me make a prediction: as we move through the first century of this new millennium, these sorts will be coming out in frenzied swarms with frantic forecasts. Remember what former Secretary of the Interior James Watt told a congressional committee? America needn’t worry about her resources beyond the year 2000, since the great millennium would either wipe out or transform the existing world? Well, that’s the kind of irresponsibility spawned by your unholy emphasis on end times, Dr. Merton, and dozens of prophecy preachers like you!”
He glared at Merton for some moments, and then gave views on Rama that were similar to what the pope had affirmed.
Moderator Marty, who had had a difficult time controlling a catbird smile during O’Neill’s presentation, now introduced the third panelist. “Professor Thomas Aquinas Avery, of Union Theological Seminary in New York, studied under Rudolf Bultmann, and he has publicly stated that the Rama discoveries, which he considers genuine, are, in his words, ‘congenial to Christianity and even expected.’ Professor Avery.”
An older Boston Brahmin with accent to match, Avery had a full thatch of snow-white hair carefully framing an aristocratic set of features. A glad sparkle in his olive-green eyes, he began, “Even though there are hundreds of different church bodies, there are only two basic theologies—with some variations, of course. One is the conservative, if not fundamentalist, view that insists on a literal interpretation of the Bible as ‘God’s inspired’ or even ‘errorless Word.’ The other is the more scholarly and logical view that has honestly dealt with the obvious errors in the Bible, tried to identify the very human—not divine—sources on which the biblical writers drew, how they edited those sources for their theological purposes, and which also dismisses the so-called ‘miracles’ in Scripture as simple mythology. And this includes such claims as Jesus’ raising someone from the dead, or that He was Himself raised from the dead. Consequently, the discovery of Jesus’ bones in Israel surprises us not a bit. Quite on the contrary, some of us even predicted that they might indeed be found one day, and that this would have no effect whatever on Christianity—properly understood.”
“Oh, of course not, Doubting Thomas!” the Reverend Erhard Weber shouted at the TV screen. “It just contradicts the very core of the faith, that’s all!”
“Quiet, dear!” cautioned Mrs. Weber. “I want to hear him defend that point, if he can.”
Avery continued. “Many of my colleagues and I are also somewhat chagrined that the
Rama archaeologists have been so reticent about the authenticity of their finds. Had anyone else’s bones been discovered with that sort of documentation, they would have been declared genuine long before this!”
“Not so fast, Avery!” Now it was Jon’s turn to address the screen. But Avery paid him no heed, as he resumed, “Many of you may wonder how I can say that an informed and mature Christianity will not be affected by these discoveries. What’s important about the first Easter is not the resuscitation of a lifeless corpse—that was impossible then just as it’s impossible now, even for experts like Dr. Mel Merton! What is important is the faith and belief that we can overcome evil and fear of death triumphantly, just as Jesus did. He sets us the great example. By nobly facing death, He truly ‘conquered’ it. Jesus shows us how, even as He points the way to a renewed life for all of us, if only we follow His example.”
“Pure Bultmann,” Jon’s father commented. “I hope Billy Graham nails him to the wall.”
Graham’s face had reddened somewhat during Avery’s presentation, and when Marty gave him the floor, the lanky, likeable evangelist chose words that quickly picked up tempo and intensity. “I only wish Professor Avery would try out his message on some-one who is dying. ‘This is the end, friend,’ he’d have to say. ‘Stiff upper lip! Try to take it on the chin like Jesus did. There’s no hope, no afterlife—nothing. Prepare for dissolution!’ Compare that to the faith that has always pulsed through Christianity: that Jesus truly rose from the dead—physically, historically, factually, materially. This is the sort of Easter proclaimed by all the earliest witnesses, and by the whole Christian church until some theologians thought differently in the last century—and this.”
“Go, Billy, go!” said Pastor Weber. “Give them Saint Paul!” And Graham seemed to hear, for he continued. “The earliest writing in the New Testament came from the pen of Saint Paul, and for him the matter was simply categorical. ‘If Christ was not raised, your faith is in vain!’ he said. ‘If we have only hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied!’ Now I can certainly understand someone like Professor Avery doubting the Resurrection—that’s his prerogative. I only object to any claim that this is historic Christianity. It is not! The Jesus you describe, Dr. Avery, is only a teacher in a line of noble teachers, like Socrates, Aristotle, and the rest. And your so-called ‘Christianity’ is merely an ethical system, not a religion.”
