Snake Bit
Stories
Contents
“Snake Bit” by C. David McKirachan
“Burned Out” by C. David McKirachan
Snake Bit
by C. David McKirachan
John 3:1-17
I’ve been bit by this passage so many times I’ve lost track. It’s usually someone who wants to lock up salvation with some sort of security system that will keep out those who aren’t up to snuff. Or some who use this passage as bragging rights, “I’m born again, are you?” Which always sounds like an accusation to me. I’m never sure about the big 3:16 signs at football games. Are they asking for a certain play, or is that code for ‘their’ team? I’ve had sincere, worried Christians come into my office, wondering if their non-believing loved ones are going to be damned because they don’t ‘believe in’ Jesus.
I wonder what Jesus would think of all of this. He’d probably tell me to be careful about my own sense of judgement. Who am I to look down and condemn others? On the other hand he might get rather angry at the lousy translation and all the trouble it’s caused. I bet’cha Satan’s cackling, if that’s what Satan does, about the pretzel we’ve made out of this teaching. I like pretzels, especially the big soft ones. But they really need good deli mustard. Just like this does.
Did you ever get bit by a snake? Most of us haven’t. But the dread of this specific form of reptilian self-defense is rather universal. When I was a child, I was having a picnic lunch with my aunts in the upper hay field, near Cousin Bud’s place. It was actually a lunch break, but it felt like a picnic to me. We were sitting on the ground eating stuff. They didn’t believe in sandwiches, so it was other kinds of food. Aunt Ida stood up and pointed. “Snake! Copperhead!” Copperheads are less well known than rattle snakes, but they’re just as nasty and just as poisonous, and this one was coming right at us, with intent. Aunt Alice jumped up and onto the tractor so fast I could hardly see her move. She got that monster in gear and moving and ran right over this purveyor of life threatening poison. Nothing else was said. No screaming or hollering. When I told my mother she got white and grim. She’d been helping her mother while the ‘girls’ took me up to mow. No one got blamed. But it was clear it was a scary moment.
Jesus used it as an illustration of salvation, but not to kill the snakes, to heal people who’d been snake bit. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up…”
We’ve all been snake bit. Life will do that to you. It has edges. It has teeth. And it will kill you. Moses led the people through the horrors of the wilderness, with guts and hope and faith. He believed that this God that had spoken to him from the bush, this God who’d thundered on the mountain, the giver of the Covenant, the giver of the methods and means to make and keep a community together and keep it going would not let snake bites stop that same community. They needed to believe as much as Moses did. They needed something to hold onto, to call their own, something that made sense to people who were afraid of the glow on Moses’ face when he came down from the mountain, people who complained about manna, people who’d made a statue to Baal. People who’d been snake bit.
It’s the same God. Jesus was talking about the same God. “Can’t you see Nicodemus?” This guy was as dense as some preachers I know. God has done and is doing and will keep doing all of this stuff because that same God LOVES THE WORLD.
If you say the words individually and really slowly, it has more emphasis.
LOVES THE WORLD.
And I guess that includes the ones who want to lock it all up with security systems and the ones who want to have bragging rights. They’ve been snake bit, by somebody, or something, somewhere. So I guess our job is to keep finding brazen serpents to lift up so they can make it through. Jesus got exasperated, so did Moses and the prophets, and Paul, so I guess when the copperhead makes it past Aunt Alice and sinks its teeth in, I need to find the cross and remember 3:16.
It’s enough to tie you up in knots. But anything tastes better with mustard. You saw that coming, right?
* * *
Burned Out
by C. David McKirachan
Romans 8:12-17
Burned out. After four years of college and two years of seminary, double dosing. (I was working on a masters in philosophy during the same two years.) Stop shaking your head. I was in my early twenty’s and made out of rubber bands. I could do anything. I was holding on, barely. By May I’d decided to bag the whole thing in favor of making stained glass windows and surfing.
My parents came to see me. They fed me and listened and did a lot of nodding and worrying in private. My father and I went on walks, long walks. Two things stand out from those hikes. One was how much he cared about me. That wasn’t a new revelation. He and my mother had supported me, encouraged me, and put up with me for a couple of decades. But it’s always nice to have the girders with which you support your dreams, reinforced. The second was his frailty. He was by no means doddering, but he’d aged. I saw in him, probably for the first time, the signs of mortality.
He’d always been a defining principle, a boundary, a goal, not an active player on the field. Now, in the creases of worry, in the stoop of his shoulders, in the knobs on his hands I saw humanity, not a principle
I’d always seen him as a giant striding into the pulpit, enthralling congregations with whispers and growls, painting pictures with words and parables, cracking the hard shells of scripture, letting Jesus and Paul and David and Isaiah flutter out and live. He’d read to me, Twain, Melville, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Hugo, Poe, Stevenson, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickenson. Homer and Epictetus weren’t just names to him, they were buddies. How could he be human? I listened with a new ear, perhaps tinged with dread that there was a shadow in the bright light of my universe.
There was a Rubicon, a Jabbok in front of me. I needed to make a decision, go on with my education, or not. To go on, I had to find an internship for the MDiv and concurrently, complete a proposal for my Master’s thesis. They went sightseeing. I went out with a friend to an Italian restaurant and then to see The Godfather.
I walked out of that movie with a decision made, a river crossed. I’d grown up, a bit. Just enough to realize that it was time for me to step up and handle my part of the family business. Not the mafia. The business of living as my own person.
In many ways I owed my father my life. He had created a foundation for me. But I was an heir. As such, I was a steward of the gifts that had been given to me. It was time for me to build.
Paul wrote to the Romans, people he’d never seen, about the mysteries of God. He wrote about his faith. But he didn’t want them to be indebted to him. That would make of them servants of the wrong master. He wanted them to see that they were heirs. Surely servants of the God that makes us all. Yet to truly serve our God we must look beyond servanthood to the liberating love of a father that is willing to give everything out of that love. And as we accept that love, we grow up, perhaps a bit, hopefully enough to build ourselves into the living Body of Christ, partners with the risen Christ.
I was still burned out. But I had learned that one of my responsibilities was to figure out how to get and keep it together to finish the process. There were a bunch of bumps along the way. But because of the support of others and a lot of hard work I made it through and out into a new world. And I’m still working on it.
And God’s still offering me a deal I can’t refuse. (Sorry, that’s an inside joke from the movie.)
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 27, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Snake Bit” by C. David McKirachan
“Burned Out” by C. David McKirachan
Snake Bit
by C. David McKirachan
John 3:1-17
I’ve been bit by this passage so many times I’ve lost track. It’s usually someone who wants to lock up salvation with some sort of security system that will keep out those who aren’t up to snuff. Or some who use this passage as bragging rights, “I’m born again, are you?” Which always sounds like an accusation to me. I’m never sure about the big 3:16 signs at football games. Are they asking for a certain play, or is that code for ‘their’ team? I’ve had sincere, worried Christians come into my office, wondering if their non-believing loved ones are going to be damned because they don’t ‘believe in’ Jesus.
I wonder what Jesus would think of all of this. He’d probably tell me to be careful about my own sense of judgement. Who am I to look down and condemn others? On the other hand he might get rather angry at the lousy translation and all the trouble it’s caused. I bet’cha Satan’s cackling, if that’s what Satan does, about the pretzel we’ve made out of this teaching. I like pretzels, especially the big soft ones. But they really need good deli mustard. Just like this does.
Did you ever get bit by a snake? Most of us haven’t. But the dread of this specific form of reptilian self-defense is rather universal. When I was a child, I was having a picnic lunch with my aunts in the upper hay field, near Cousin Bud’s place. It was actually a lunch break, but it felt like a picnic to me. We were sitting on the ground eating stuff. They didn’t believe in sandwiches, so it was other kinds of food. Aunt Ida stood up and pointed. “Snake! Copperhead!” Copperheads are less well known than rattle snakes, but they’re just as nasty and just as poisonous, and this one was coming right at us, with intent. Aunt Alice jumped up and onto the tractor so fast I could hardly see her move. She got that monster in gear and moving and ran right over this purveyor of life threatening poison. Nothing else was said. No screaming or hollering. When I told my mother she got white and grim. She’d been helping her mother while the ‘girls’ took me up to mow. No one got blamed. But it was clear it was a scary moment.
Jesus used it as an illustration of salvation, but not to kill the snakes, to heal people who’d been snake bit. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up…”
We’ve all been snake bit. Life will do that to you. It has edges. It has teeth. And it will kill you. Moses led the people through the horrors of the wilderness, with guts and hope and faith. He believed that this God that had spoken to him from the bush, this God who’d thundered on the mountain, the giver of the Covenant, the giver of the methods and means to make and keep a community together and keep it going would not let snake bites stop that same community. They needed to believe as much as Moses did. They needed something to hold onto, to call their own, something that made sense to people who were afraid of the glow on Moses’ face when he came down from the mountain, people who complained about manna, people who’d made a statue to Baal. People who’d been snake bit.
It’s the same God. Jesus was talking about the same God. “Can’t you see Nicodemus?” This guy was as dense as some preachers I know. God has done and is doing and will keep doing all of this stuff because that same God LOVES THE WORLD.
If you say the words individually and really slowly, it has more emphasis.
LOVES THE WORLD.
And I guess that includes the ones who want to lock it all up with security systems and the ones who want to have bragging rights. They’ve been snake bit, by somebody, or something, somewhere. So I guess our job is to keep finding brazen serpents to lift up so they can make it through. Jesus got exasperated, so did Moses and the prophets, and Paul, so I guess when the copperhead makes it past Aunt Alice and sinks its teeth in, I need to find the cross and remember 3:16.
It’s enough to tie you up in knots. But anything tastes better with mustard. You saw that coming, right?
* * *
Burned Out
by C. David McKirachan
Romans 8:12-17
Burned out. After four years of college and two years of seminary, double dosing. (I was working on a masters in philosophy during the same two years.) Stop shaking your head. I was in my early twenty’s and made out of rubber bands. I could do anything. I was holding on, barely. By May I’d decided to bag the whole thing in favor of making stained glass windows and surfing.
My parents came to see me. They fed me and listened and did a lot of nodding and worrying in private. My father and I went on walks, long walks. Two things stand out from those hikes. One was how much he cared about me. That wasn’t a new revelation. He and my mother had supported me, encouraged me, and put up with me for a couple of decades. But it’s always nice to have the girders with which you support your dreams, reinforced. The second was his frailty. He was by no means doddering, but he’d aged. I saw in him, probably for the first time, the signs of mortality.
He’d always been a defining principle, a boundary, a goal, not an active player on the field. Now, in the creases of worry, in the stoop of his shoulders, in the knobs on his hands I saw humanity, not a principle
I’d always seen him as a giant striding into the pulpit, enthralling congregations with whispers and growls, painting pictures with words and parables, cracking the hard shells of scripture, letting Jesus and Paul and David and Isaiah flutter out and live. He’d read to me, Twain, Melville, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Hugo, Poe, Stevenson, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickenson. Homer and Epictetus weren’t just names to him, they were buddies. How could he be human? I listened with a new ear, perhaps tinged with dread that there was a shadow in the bright light of my universe.
There was a Rubicon, a Jabbok in front of me. I needed to make a decision, go on with my education, or not. To go on, I had to find an internship for the MDiv and concurrently, complete a proposal for my Master’s thesis. They went sightseeing. I went out with a friend to an Italian restaurant and then to see The Godfather.
I walked out of that movie with a decision made, a river crossed. I’d grown up, a bit. Just enough to realize that it was time for me to step up and handle my part of the family business. Not the mafia. The business of living as my own person.
In many ways I owed my father my life. He had created a foundation for me. But I was an heir. As such, I was a steward of the gifts that had been given to me. It was time for me to build.
Paul wrote to the Romans, people he’d never seen, about the mysteries of God. He wrote about his faith. But he didn’t want them to be indebted to him. That would make of them servants of the wrong master. He wanted them to see that they were heirs. Surely servants of the God that makes us all. Yet to truly serve our God we must look beyond servanthood to the liberating love of a father that is willing to give everything out of that love. And as we accept that love, we grow up, perhaps a bit, hopefully enough to build ourselves into the living Body of Christ, partners with the risen Christ.
I was still burned out. But I had learned that one of my responsibilities was to figure out how to get and keep it together to finish the process. There were a bunch of bumps along the way. But because of the support of others and a lot of hard work I made it through and out into a new world. And I’m still working on it.
And God’s still offering me a deal I can’t refuse. (Sorry, that’s an inside joke from the movie.)
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 27, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
