Douglas Hickey

Friends,

In high school, I was lent a trade paperback called A Skeleton in God’s Closet. The story centers on a Christian archeologist who discovers the mortal remains of Jesus. In the end, the eponymous skeleton is revealed as a fraud, but even so, I felt scandalized.

15-year-old me had never heard of the synoptic problem or Marcan priority. I was alarmed to discover the claims about scripture in this book were also attested in my Youth-Group-Sanctioned NIV Study Bible. Turns out, our best and oldest copies of the gospel end with women fleeing an empty tomb; Jesus doesn’t appear to anybody.

The gospel for today comes from the Longer Ending of Mark, and if your Bible looks like mine, it appears in brackets to signal that the text is doubtful. Here, Jesus does appear, and we learn that baptized believers will exorcise demons, speak in tongues, drink poison, and heal the sick—all signs that attest to the risen Lord.

For most of my adulthood, I’ve felt content to treat this like ersatz scripture. Partly because the text appears to be a late addition but mostly because the Christianity on display here looks like the charismatic hokum of wild saints and weirdo basement churches. The truth is I shrink from anything that would align me more with tent revivals than rationalism.

But maybe Christ is calling me to something beyond the limits of my reason.

At a recent office Bible Study (held in a basement!), the Chaplain said, “I recently wanted to pray for a coworker. I thought I was supposed to pray about one thing, but then felt compelled to pray for the health of his child instead. Later, he learned his son had been in an electrical accident that burned down the building he was in. It should have killed him, but he lived. His father told me, ‘Now, I know God is real’.”

Why should this feel scandalous to me? Because a guy I share office space with felt led by the Spirit? Because God answered his prayer in a literal way? Because someone’s life was changed by an immediate encounter with the living God and not through years of careful study and reasoned debate?

How often do I miss God at work in the world because I don’t want to look foolish?

Lord, open my eyes, so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

In Christ,

—Douglas