You may have heard of The Rev. Glendel Buford Summerford, the snake-handling pastor of The Church of Jesus Christ with Signs Following, a little country church in Scottsboro, Alabama. Rev. Summerford came to national attention back in the early Nineties, when he tried to murder his wife by forcing her at gun point to stick her arm into a box full of rattlesnakes. A reporter named Dennis Covington went to Scottsboro to cover Summerford's trial for The New York Times. Covington stayed on to write a book about snake handling and redemption in southern Appalachia, which he titled Salvation on Sand Mountain. The book turns out to be as much about Dennis Covington's redemption as it is about Rev. Sommerford's snake handling.
During Summerford's trial--he was subsequently convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison--the prosecutor tried to convince the jury that the trial was actually not about snake handling. "But in ways," Covington writes, "that is all it had been about. Facing fear. Taking risks. Having faith." He adds, "Christianity without passion, danger, and mystery may not really be Christianity at all."
What Covington eventually discovered, as he spent time among the hill people of Scottsboro, was that he had some fears to face and risks to take of his own. A Vietnam vet working on his second marriage, Covington had ten years earlier been a heavy drinker and part-time teacher who went to El Salvador as a journalist in order to discover what he called "the antidote for a conventional life." He found the antidote in the form of a sewage pit, in which he one day found himself lying face down. Pulled up short for the first time in his life, Covington prayed shamelessly that he might live.
In the years since that experience, he had found that the mysteries and passions of his life did not yield up sufficient meaning to satisfy to him. "The previous nine years," he writes, "had been a journey out of cynicism and denial into a kind of light. I had my life, my family, my sobriety. But something was missing. I had reached that point in the middle of looking for something when you have forgotten what it is you have lost."
The first time Covington visited Rev. Glenn Summerford's church was a cool evening in March of 1992. The sky over Sand Mountain on the far side of Scottsboro was the color of apricots, and a thin, silver-crescent moon had just risen into an as-of-yet starless sky. As Covington approached, he wondered if the dilapidated building were really a church at all. It looked like an old gas station and country store. But then he saw the miniature steeple, and he heard the music, which sounded like nothing he had ever heard before, a cross between a Salvation Army band and acid rock. The cacophony of tambourines, an electric guitar, drums and cymbals were appropriate background to voices that careened from one note to another as though the singers were being sawn in half. "I shall not be...I shall not be moved. I shall not be... I shall not be moved. Just like a tree that's planted by the wa-a-ter, oh... I shall not be moved."
As he stood outside the door of the tiny church, Covington hesitated for a brief moment. He writes, "There are moments when you stand on the brink of a new experience and understand that you have no choice about it. Either you walk into the experience or you turn away from it, but you know that no matter what you choose, you will have altered your life in a perma-nent way. Either way, there will be consequences. I walked on in."
What Covington discovered, in that church and others like it, was a tradition of religious mysticism--known in the modern era as Pentecostalism--in which people cast out demons, speak in tongues, drink strychnine, run blowtorches up and down their arms, and drape themselves with rattlesnakes. If the people are truly filled with the Spirit when they do these things, which Covington makes clear that they actually do, then no harm comes to them. If their faith is weak, the blowtorches burn their flesh and the rattlers strike them down. In the minds of the faithful at The Church of Jesus Christ With Signs Following, the ability to dance in the Spirit with a rattlesnake is a sign of strong faith and sure convictions.
This is not an unprecedented use for snakes, by the way. The book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible contains a story about the prophet Moses, who was out in the desert one day, tending his sheep, when suddenly he saw a nearby bush catch fire. The bush kept burning and burning, but it didn't seem to burn up. Instead, a voice in the bush started talking to Moses. "Go to Egypt," the voice said, "and tell Pharaoh to release the people of Israel from captivity, then lead the people back through the desert to their homeland." Which is exactly what Moses set out to do.
Along the way, however, Moses had second thoughts about marching into town armed only with a story about a burning bush that had spoken to him. He voiced his hesitation to God. "Suppose they don't believe me or listen to me, but say, 'God did not appear to you.'" God responded with a question. "What is that in your hand?" he asked Moses. "A staff," Moses replied. God said, "Throw it on the ground." So Moses threw the staff on the ground, and it became a snake. Moses quickly drew back from it. Then God said to Moses, "Reach out your hand, and seize it by the tail." So Moses reached out his hand and grasped it, and it once again became a staff in his hand. "Do this before the people," God said, "so that they may believe that the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you."
To my knowledge, none of the ministers at All Souls has ever tried to do that. I'm not certain it would increase our credibility if we did. But some of the things we gather to ponder here are just as inscrutable. If you came to All Souls last Sunday, you doubtless noticed that it was Easter. You may have been tipped off by the lilies on the chancel, or by the brass and tympani in the choir loft. The other clue was the number of people who came to worship; our attendance was roughly double that of a typical Sunday, and about the same as our attendance on Christmas Eve.
I understand the appeal of Christmas. Taken superficially, it's a celebration that is both easy to understand and easy to like. a babe is born, a gift is given, a star shines bright in the night sky. At its heart, of course, Christmas is not easy at all. Its central claim is that, through what is known as an immaculate conception, god came to earth in the form of a human baby. Easter is even more enigmatic. The story of Easter, as told in the New Testament, is that the Hebrew prophet Jesus, who had been crucified by Roman soldiers for his insurrection and rabble-rousing, was resurrected from the grave three days after his death. Two thousand years later, people like us still gather with festive hats and sounding brass to celebrate. Perhaps we do so because, in a world filled with clear-cut answers and scientific certainties, Easter is one of those places where mystery lives, and perhaps even danger as well.
During the past week, I have found myself pondering Easter's continuing appeal to us. And I wondered what comes next--after Easter. Not just historically, but symbolically. After one ponders Jesus rising from the dead, what's the next thing to think about? To find out, I consulted a book variously called The Lectionary or The Book of Common Prayer. It's a detailed chronology of the Christian church year, listing the complete cycle of all the major holy days and commemorations, as well as the scripture readings assigned to each day. According to the Lectionary, today is the second Sunday of Easter. One of the readings to be read on this particular Sunday each year is taken from the section of the Christian Bible called the book of Acts. The passage describes what happens to Jesus' followers in the wake of his death and resurrection. It says, in part:
Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. Then the high priest took action; being filled with jealousy, he arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison. But during the night an angel of God opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, "Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life." When they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and went on with their teaching.
Every year, the Sunday after Easter is about signs and wonders. Other passages in the New Testament explain that forty days after Jesus' death and resurrection, on a day known as Pentecost--from which modern-day Pentecostals like Summorford take their name--the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus' disciples and gave them power to perform miracles. These miracles--known as signs and wonders--were intended to demonstrate that Jesus' authority to teach had now been passed on to his disciples. The miracles provoked wonder and amazement, even consternation. They called people to gather round and pay attention. With Jesus gone, it was his followers' turn to tell the people the message about this life. The signs and wonders were simply indications that their message was real.
Whatever view one holds of Easter as an historical event, it is one of those symbols which reminds us that life is both more enigmatic and more deeply-textured than we often imagine. As such, it issues a challenge, which Covington puts this way: "Either you walk into the experience or you turn away from it, but you know that no matter what you choose, you will have altered your life in a perma-nent way. Either way, there will be consequences." Like other enduring symbols of faith, Easter calls us to declare ourselves, to say what we believe about life and to demonstrate through our own signs and wonders that what we believe is real.
We may not live on the sands of ancient Egypt or in the hills of modern-day Alabama, but in some ways life hasn't changed all that much. There are still people among and around us today who struggle with failure, despair, grief, and rejection. They look around for reasons not to quit when they are discouraged, for ways to stick with lost causes and hang on when the going gets rough. Like Covington, they are in the middle of searching for something, sometimes not even knowing what it is they have lost. When people look at you and me, what sign do we show them? When they listen to us, what message do they hear? If our words convey a message and our actions bear a sign, for which truth about life are we making a case?
As you may by now suspect, Dennis Covington finally took up the sacred snake himself--"the big rattler, the one with my name on it, acrid-smelling, carnal, alive." He says, "I felt no fear. The snake seemed to be an extension of myselfThere seemed to be nothing in the room but me and the snake The air was silent and still and filled with that strong, even light. It was a feeling, he says, of "victory in the loss of self," a feeling very "close to our conception of paradise."
Covington's particular experience of paradise is one that will hopefully elude you and me forever. There is a certain clarity that comes to us when we know where we stand and what we stand for. We need that kind of clarity and focus in our lives. I just don't happen to think that the best sign of it is a rattler.