Dancing with Snakes

I’ve long been of the opinion that good preaching – and by that I mean “effective” preaching –  should make the congregation squirm in their seats at least a little bit. It is in that spirit that I feel I must warn you that today’s sermon might just be a little more “effective” than normal. No, I will not be handling any snakes or other potentially deadly critters or drinking poison in the pulpit today, nor will I be advocating that it is something any of you should do. 

Nonetheless, consider yourselves duly warned.

Our Bible verse today is from Mark 16, verses 17 & 18. “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (ESV)

Those words are in red, so they are a direct quote from Jesus. Now, to be fair, those verses are from what is called “the longer ending” of Mark. The earliest manuscripts of Mark end at verse eight, which reads: 

“And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

The women found the tomb empty, they were scared silly, and then they said nothing to anyone? 

It seems obvious that the Gospel of Mark was incomplete. Some concluded a page of Mark’s Gospel had been lost. Some said Mark was intentionally being mysterious. Whatever the case, people who had spent their lifetimes studying this subject and who were way smarter than me approved verses 9 - 20 as a legitimate ending to Mark and we have been using it as such for about 1600 years. 

In the midst of those verses we have the poison drinking and snake-handling reference. 

At least one Pope has claimed that these verses are a metaphor for how God protects missionaries and should not be taken literally… well, except for the first and second parts and the fifth part. Those parts you could take literally, but not the snake and poison things.

Oh, and the verses in Mark 16 are not the only reference.

Here’s Psalm 91:9-13:

If you make the LORD your refuge,

if you make the Most High your shelter,

no evil will conquer you;

no plague will come near your home.

For he will order his angels

to protect you wherever you go.

They will hold you up with their hands

so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.

You will trample upon lions and cobras;

you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet! (NLT)

Then we also have Luke 10:19 when Jesus sent out the 72:

“Look, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you.” (NLT)

There’s also the account in Acts 28: 1-6 where Paul is building a fire after having been shipwrecked and is bitten by a snake. The locals all assume he will die quickly, but he suffers no harm.

Of course, all of this is an echo back to the promise God made in Genesis 3:15 when he promised to crush the head of the serpent that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden.

And, snake-handling is not a new thing. A group called the Ophites were Gnostics who were said to handle snakes during their services way back in the second century.

There is also a book called The Sayings of the Desert Fathers from the fifth century which tells of an Egyptian monk named Paul, who was said to be able to hold snakes in his hand and cut them open. The account attributes this ability to a special grace from God. 

Throughout history, there are records of various tribes and non-Christian religions that have handled snakes. Snake-charming is part of that whole subset of humanity’s interaction with serpents. 

When it comes to serpent-handling as part of Christianity, it appears to have started around 1909 or 1910 in the Grasshopper Valley of southeastern Tennessee. It’s associated with the Pentecostal and Holiness movements, mostly in Appalachia, but there are also a few churches in Canada that engage in the practice.

All of the churches involved are small and rural but, astoundingly, there are an estimated 125 of them scattered across Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virgina - and a total of four of them in Alberta and British Columbia.

As far as I can tell, the whole snake-handling, poison-drinking thing is not currently practiced outside of North America.

The obvious question, (the rattler in the room if you will) is, “Why?”

Why would you knowingly and purposefully subject yourself to being bitten by a snake? And, yes, there are documented cases of about 100 adherents being bitten and dying as a result of the practice, not to mention almost all of the people who handle these snakes have been bitten at some point and have suffered atrophied hands and fingers as a result. (No one who has been a guest in any of these churches has ever been bitten, nor is there any record or accusation of any visitor being asked to handle a snake against their will.) 

Oh, and by the way, the verses in Mark do NOT say people will pick up the snakes and not be bitten, nor does it assure us they will not die. It says they will pick up serpents with their hands. It does say poison will not harm them, but there is no guarantee the snakes will not harm them.

Of course, I had heard of the practice before deciding to write this sermon, and hadn’t paid much attention to it, but my interest was piqued when my friend, Tim Ogle, who is from Kentucky, told me about a podcast called, “Alabama Astronaut." The host is a guy named Ferrill Gibbs who, along with a musician named Abe Partridge, went into and explored a number of snake-handling churches.

Their primary interest was in the music, which is shared on the podcast and is an astounding and amazing variety of rockabilly that includes songs you and I have never heard before like “Tangled Up in Jesus.” It’s energetic, filled with praise and worship – and often mentions the five signs from Mark 16.

It’s not unusual for worship in these churches to go on for up to four hours. When the snakes come out of their locked boxes it’s typically for only about ten minutes, but they are indeed up there singing and dancing with the snakes. 

Gibbs and Partridge found members of these congregations to be warm and welcoming, authentic and genuine. As for the motivation of the snake-handlers, one thing is certain: They are not doing it for fame or fortune. No one is getting rich handling snakes in churches. And they are not worshipping the snakes. I am sure of that.

And, as long as we’re being absolutely honest, let’s get one thing crystal clear: The people doing this are people just like you and me. They are not any more ignorant or hateful or cruel than we are. They may be backwoods folks who talk differently from you and I, but they firmly and genuinely believe in Jesus – and in what the Bible says. They are not handling snakes to “test” God. They are not showing off. And they believe whether they are bitten and die or not, this is God’s will for them.

So, if we really look closely at what these people are doing and why, it certainly seems to me that what they are doing are genuine acts of faith done out of trust in God and His Word.

And, folks, if these are indeed acts of faith, we can’t help but conclude that they are acts of extreme faith.

Their question for us is, “Why would you practice a faith you’re not willing to die for?”

And there’s the deal.

One of the chief complaints about modern Christianity as it is practiced in the west is that it is so bland and so safe, it has lost all its meaning – and its power.

They have a point. Modern American Christianity is often like aerosol cheese. Smooth, homogenous, easy, safe, cheap, and available at the touch of a button – but having little to nothing to do with its origins or the things that made it real and genuine and good.

If we look at Christianity around the world and throughout history, what we see is a religion – no, a movement – that grew and overcame the world the most when its members were persecuted, hunted down, outlawed, shunned, reviled, hated, and killed. 

Christianity suffers and shrinks the most when it is safe, comfortable, bland, and lukewarm – when it looks like the world around it and no one can tell the difference between a Christian and the rest of the world. 

There’s a passage in Samuel 24 where David goes to build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of a Jebusite named Araunah. David sets out to buy the threshing floor, but Araunah generously and graciously offers to give it to him. David replies,

“... “No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the LORD my God that have cost me nothing.” So David paid him fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen. “ (Samuel 24:24 NLT)

As I said, I am not going to be handling any snakes today (or in the near future) nor will I ask you to do so, but let’s consider some of what the Bible says on other topics as we roll this around in our heads and hearts.

Paul writes in Romans 8:17: “And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.” (NLT)   

Here’s 2 Timothy 3:12: “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” (ESV)

And, if we had any doubts at all about this topic, here’s what Jesus said in Matthew 10:34-39

 34“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.

35‘I have come to set a man against his father,

a daughter against her mother,

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

36Your enemies will be right in your own household!’

37“If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. 38If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. 39If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. (NLT)

Christianity is full of beliefs and concepts that make no sense at all from a worldly, naturalistic viewpoint. Why would God allow us to kill His own Son to save us from things that are clearly our fault? Why would He choose the most hideous, painful, degrading, humiliating death possible for His only Son to save us?

Someone once said that Jesus could have paid for all of humanity’s sins with a single, solitary drop of His precious blood. 

But grace is not cheap. 

The salvation of the world came at a cost that no one but Jesus could have paid for us.

Christianity has a cost. It should have a cost. The cost, the sacrifice is what makes it real, authentic, and genuine. The cost is what ties us to the cross, to Jesus.

This Christianity thing is not supposed to be safe, easy, or a cheap hollow echo of the real Jesus. 

I’ve shared John 15:7 with you before:

But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! (NLT)

And that’s not a one-verse deal. Jesus says the same thing in John 14:13&14, 15:16, 16:23, Matthew 7:7, and Mark 11:24.

To me, those verses are just as powerful and disturbing as the snake-handling and poison-drinking verses. Jesus promises that we will be granted anything we ask for in His name! Anything! Can you imagine the power He intended for us when He said that? How many of us live in faith like that? 

There’s a risk – a cost – to believing those verses and verses like that. It changes the way we live, the way we think, the way we act. It changes who we are. It changes how we interact with the world.

It’s like we are something totally  new we have never been before (Yes, that’s a reference to 2 Corinthians 5:17) –and that is visible to others in the world around us. 

But there’s more going on here, too.

At one point in the podcast, one of the participants who had handled a snake described what he said felt like a bucket of warm water being poured over him as the Holy Spirit saturated him and brought him to tears.

I have experienced that.

The first time was on Pastor Secundino’s porch on my first mission trip to the Dominican Republic. A young Dominican lady used the word “amo” (Spanish for “Love.”) and the Holy Spirit came down and touched me with such power it brought me to tears and changed my life forever.

The second time, I was talking to a member of the Israeli Defense Force and her father in a bus stop in Haifa when I learned she had been baptized Christian as an infant in Romania, then adopted by Samuel and his wife in Israel and raised as a secular Jew with no mention of Jesus throughout her life, but now this Sergeant in the IDF was having questions suddenly pop up in her life about Jesus seemingly out of nowhere. It felt like the doorposts and the lintels in the throneroom of heaven started shaking, the Holy Spirit came down, and all three of us were in tears.

In each case, the enormity of the love of God and its indescribable magnificence, power, and glory flowed over me in ways impossible to describe, but so amazing and undeniable I cannot fully describe it to you now. This is what Paul was writing about in Ephesians 3:18 when he talks about how wide, how long, how high, and how deep the love of God is. 

You will note that in both of those cases I was on a mission trip. I had stepped out in faith and done what God had asked me to do out of obedience. In both cases, there was a certain element of putting myself in some degree of danger. And, the power of the Holy Spirit and God’s love in Jesus Christ was absolutely undeniable and enormously powerful.

If that’s what happens when these people handle snakes, I cannot say I blame them.

As I said, I’m not going to ask you to handle snakes or drink poison, but let us consider John 10:10 as I conclude:

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (NLT)

The Greek word for the life Jesus was talking about is περισσὸν (perisson) and it means, “superabundant or superior; by implication, excessive; adverbially violently.”

That superabundant, glorious, excessive, amazingly superior spiritual life Jesus came to bring to us does not come about by being bland, lukewarm Christians. The next time we have a chance to speak the Gospel, to shine with the light and joy of Jesus, to be the people God made us to be, let’s not forget that there are some Christians in this world who have the faith, the courage, and the obedience and trust to pick up snakes because they believe what God says. 

My final point, and the reason I am not up here pulling a snake out of a box right now, is that there is a line. That line is drawn where faith and trust and obedience look like a circus act. Snake-handling Christians may have no intention of looking like that and even complain that the world does not understand them, but ending up on the Jerry Springer show (and they have) is not a good thing, whether they intended it or not.

So, it’s at this point that I have to confess to you (and myself) that my fascination with this topic and why I’m talking to you about it today may have something to do with its shock value. 

Okay, it may have a lot to do with it. 

But the points I made about bland, lukewarm, cheap Christianity are valid.

I think you and I do need to overcome the fears and revulsion we face about sharing Jesus, and about truly living out this faith as genuinely and authentically as we can. Maybe the fear we overcome and obediently face, the risk we take, is talking to a stranger about Jesus. Maybe it’s loving someone who seems unlovable, unapproachable, or just unpleasant. Maybe it's bringing up that topic with another believer that has been hiding under the rocks and waiting to bite us that we've been afraid to talk about for months – or decades. Maybe it’s confronting a sin in our lives that is trying to swallow is whole, but we’re afraid to confront.

Perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:18) As Christians, there is absolutely nothing in this world we should ever fear. God says that again and again. Jesus defeated sin, death, and that old serpent devil himself. 

Whatever God puts in your path that requires you to step out in faith, I can assure you that you will find joy deeper and greater than you can think or imagine if you choose to trust and obey.