Proper 14 A

August 10, 2008 

1 Kings 19:9-18

Psalm 85:8-13

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33

I’ve been milling around on the internet again. I found some video clips of a few small churches in Appalachia whose weekly worship is based on two verses in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Here they are:

"These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents [with their hands] and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover." 

(Mark 16:17-18)

When I read the Gospel lesson for today the memory of documentary films and photos in books I ran across at my part time job at the library in seminary of snake handling churches suddenly came to mind. I remembered that the Church history professor at Sewanee taught a summer course for the doctoral students (many of them from places outside the U.S.) where he took them to a snake handling church to observe that kind of worship as part of the ongoing history of Christian church experience in this country.

The history of this vein of the American Pentecostal Church is interesting. In 1909, thirty-year-old George Hensley had taken up reading scripture as a way to reform his life. Up until then he had spent his days making and selling moonshine. One steamy summer afternoon he sat on top of White Oak Mountain in rural East Tennessee pondering Mark 16, verses 17 and 18. As he sat there, it occurred to him that the scriptures said if one is a believer he will speak new languages, he will pick up serpents with his hands. Since the scriptures did not say he may or he can but he will, Mr. Hensley took that as a scriptural mandate for believers. But just to be sure he asked God to give him a sign. Just then he saw a large timber rattlesnake not far from where he was sitting, pondering these things. He picked it up and he was able to handle it without it biting him. So he carried it back to town and took it to the weekly church gathering in Sale Creek, Tennessee. He read the scripture from Mark 16 to the congregation then he pulled that big snake out of a flour sack and threw it at them. He told them to test their faith by picking it up. Amazingly to my way of thinking they did. And a new type of Pentecostal Church was born that day. From then on, the weekly worship always included some time for the worshippers to prove their faith by drinking strychnine or dancing around with poisonous snakes while speaking in tongues.

Now I truly don’t mean this to sound disrespectful but the day you see me open a plastic shoe box and take out a rattle snake, what I will be proving to you is that I have completely lost my mind!

I am interested in the notion that faith is something to be proved or tested before it is accepted as valid or authentic. In today’s Gospel some scholars have said that Peter was trying to prove his belief (perhaps to the other disciples) that Jesus truly was God’s Messiah by walking out to meet him on the water. If so, then it would appear that his sinking in the water meant he failed to prove his faith in Jesus. It could well have been that Peter did not really expect to walk on top of the water when Jesus commanded him to come to him. Maybe Peter expected the God of Israel to part the waters through some action of Jesus the way God parted the Red Sea when Moses held his staff out over the water so that the Israelites could walk across on dry land. That way Peter could have easily walked to Jesus. If that was the case, it wasn’t so much Peter’s faith in Jesus that he was trying to prove, but that he wanted Jesus himself to prove once again that he was God’s Messiah. That he had the power of God to heal, cast out demons, feed the multitude of God’s people, even to control the seas and quiet the wind.

Actually there was a point in this story when Peter’s faith was revealed. That was when he cried out to Jesus to help him as he began to sink. Likewise, the example of faith Jesus showed us through his humanity was when he cried out to his Father in heaven in the garden just before Judas betrayed him. And again when he was on the cross and looked up to heaven just before he died and cried out "My God, why have you forsaken me?" The real test of faith is knowing who to cry out to when you want or need to cry out for help. The kind of help that transcends anything another human could offer. Or who to cry out to and rail against in times of sorrow and desperation.

Faith is more about location, about where you place your trust than it is about having power to do or overcome or endure anything. Faith is where or in whom we put our ultimate trust. I can’t see any reason to ever want to test your faith. We all know there are plenty enough tests in this life that come along uninvited. Faith cannot be measured in quantity or quality. Our faith is between us and God or wherever we choose to place our ultimate trust.

In the times we live in, with science and technology growing by leaps and bounds; with multiple ways of perceiving and understanding the world we live in, many of them competing for our loyalty, there is a temptation even for church folks like us, to put out ultimate trust somewhere other than in our Lord, Jesus. The good news of this story about Peter is that it’s never too late to change our mind about that. Whenever we need or want to cry out to God in the middle of the night, God, who loves the sound of our voice, hears our call. God will arrest our fear, take hold of our hand and lead us to light and life. Above all else, God is worthy of our ultimate trust. Faith is just knowing that.