Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet. – 2 Kings 13:21

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 22, 2026): 2 Kings 13

The Christian Church has, throughout most of its history, sought after relics from the lives of Christ or the Saints. These relics are often thought to possess miraculous powers both in the past and in the present. Maybe the most popular of those relics is found in the search for the Holy Grail, traditionally identified as the chalice from which Jesus and his disciples drank at the original Lord’s Supper on the night Jesus was betrayed. But we haven’t found it. And without some miraculous power, any cup that was declared to be the grail would be a nightmare to authenticate.

But there are other relics that have shown up through the pages of history, and some of them have been really strange. One of the more logical ones is the wood from the one true cross. Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, visited the Holy Land from 326 to 328 and discovered three crosses, believed to be those of Jesus and the two thieves, Dismas and Gestas. The cross belonging to Jesus was labelled, but according to the story, even Helen was skeptical that it was the one true cross until she witnessed a miracle associated with it. I am not sure what that miracle might have been, but something happened to convince Helen of the cross's authenticity.

Some of the stranger relics include Jesus’s foreskin, from his circumcision. These pieces of skin began showing up in Europe, mostly in France, about the year 800 C.E. However, not just one of these foreskins has shown up in European churches, but more than a dozen. Obviously, they weren’t all genuine. And then they were stolen and showed up somewhere else. Miracles associated with these pieces of skin included foreskins that continued to bleed at times, especially during worship services. All of these relics have disappeared, and Pope Leo XIII grew tired of the whole story and decreed that anyone who refers to these foreskins will be excommunicated. (I guess that means I will never be a Roman Catholic. Oops!)

Another strange relic is a baby tooth of Jesus. Maybe the tooth fairy picked it up from Nazareth and dropped it off at the Abbey of Saint-Medard of Soissons, once again in France, where the baby tooth was housed, at least for a while.

Here we have a strange story of a group of friends burying a man when they are confronted by raiders. To save the body from desecration, the friends make a decision to hide the body in the tomb of Elisha. The body touches Elisha’s bones, and the body comes back to life. Maybe the question that we ask is, if it happened, then why not now with modern-day saints? Most theologians look at this strange story and say that this happened, but it was not repeated. Sometimes, God does things once and then never again. Biblical scholar Adam Clarke (1762-1832) sums up the story and leaves us with this thought.

This is the first, and I believe the last, account of a true miracle performed by the bones of a dead man; and yet on it and such like the whole system of miraculous working relics has been founded by the popish Church (Adam Clarke).

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 14