This morning, the Discovery Channel announced two things: (1) that The Lost Tomb of Jesus-the shocking expose they aired in which Titanic director James Cameron breathlessly announced that almost certainly he and his friends had found the tomb for Jesus, his son and his wife (Mary Magdalene) and, therefore, that Christianity and the New Testament were now firmly refuted—was their best-rated show of the past year, and (2) that they wouldn't re-air it and had no further comments about it.  This seemed like a new record for how fast one could both heavily promote the latest shocking finding about Jesus and then cut it loose. 

Have you noticed how fast and furious these exposes are loudly arriving and quietly departing?  We had, of course, the granddaddy of them all with The Da Vinci Code, which—in book form—began by saying that every scandalous theological claim it would make was FACT, only to be cut loose by the loudest secular voices in the country including Harpers, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and The New York Times.  And then its author, Dan Brown, was sued by the authors of the quarter-century old book Holy Blood, Holy Grail who claimed he stole his shocking allegations from them, so perhaps the material wasn't as fresh as had been claimed.

Then this last year we had the astounding and scandalous arrival of The Gospel of Judas, this freshly unearthed "new gospel" that would challenge all of our understandings of who Jesus was and what he came to do.  I got a call from our local NPR affiliate that week asking if they could film our Sunday service as, surely, I'd be using the time to help our people cope with this devastating refutation of their beliefs.  When I said I didn't have any plans to bring it up, the reporter was surprised.  How could this be avoided? 

I asked the reporter if she'd noticed how—usually right around Easter—every single year the major newsmagazines had new features announcing "astounding new information" about who Jesus really was?  Did that make her suspicious?  Was this information truly only discovered at Eastertime each year?  Or perhaps was there continuing interest in Jesus and therefore continuing economic incentive to create conflict around him? 

And was it noteworthy that each year's new findings had no comment whatsoever about the devastating claims of the previous year?  And was it noteworthy that the promoting arm of The Gospel of Judas was the National Geographic society, who had a million-dollar investment in the thing and had gone public with their fears that they couldn't recoup short of creating a major media event? 

As it turned out, The Gospel of Judas was another of many so-called "Gnostic gospels" written about two hundred years after the time of Jesus (and the time of the canonical gospels).  It was not written by someone who was there, but by a later author claiming to have esoteric spiritual insight.  It may, of course, prove to have something useful to contribute on that front.  But it won't have something especially fresh to contribute that the many other Gnostic gospels haven't gotten to first.  And have you heard much about The Gospel of Judas recently?   

Back to The Lost Tomb of Jesus.  Here's a familiar scene.  On the Today show, we have the media front man for our scandal of the moment, Mr. Cameron, saying statisticians argue "in the range of a couple of million to one in favor of (these bones) being them."  Only to have, as reported in the Globe the next day, another quote, this one from the archeologist who—who knew?—actually discovered this site over a decade earlier: "Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archeological standards, but makes for profitable television. 'They just want to get money for it,' Kloner said." 

And the Discovery Channel quietly distances themselves from the whole thing.

Here's a prediction—and I want to emphasize my uncanny predictive gifts by noting that I'm writing this mid-March: On your newsstands right now, a week before Easter, are major national newsmagazines trumpeting amazing new finds about Jesus and his astounding claim to being the resurrected Son of God. 

Perhaps one of them will actually turn out to be the real deal.  Or perhaps it will just be another reminder that Jesus is really, really interesting.