Playing with Vipers
The vulnerable power of God's coming | Proper 9, Year C
In his book, The Search for Common Ground, Howard Thurman tells the story of a baby and a rattlesnake. As a boy, Thurman had gone to a friend’s house to play, and as he approached the house, he heard a tap on the window. His friend’s father motioned for Thurman to come in through the front door quietly. When inside, the man pointed to the backyard where his baby was in the sandbox playing with a rattlesnake. The baby would flip the rattlesnake over on its back and the snake would slither around the baby. It was clear that both creatures, rattlesnake and baby were playing with one another without fear or antagonism. The father was trying to keep everything still and quiet so that no sudden moves would cause the snake to react and strike. Eventually, the baby grew tired of the play and began to crawl away. The rattlesnake for its part did the same and moved toward the woods at the edge of the yard.
Thurman’s story, along with our Gospel for this Sunday, offers us an invitation into a certain kind of snake handling religion. Not the kind that dares the power of vipers with the Holy Spirit, but a way of being that seeks the harmony beyond violence through an openness to the common life of all creation. Thurman saw the moment between the child and the snake as a sign of what is possible for creatures, the peaceable future that is the kingdom of God. It was the future that the Isaiah had long ago prophesied, when he said that when God’s reign arrives:
“The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.”
It was this same peaceable future Jesus announced as the coming of God’s reign. The reality of this new order, said Jesus, is now at hand and is available to anyone who wants to pick it up. To spread the news God’s kingdom, Jesus called 70 of his disciples, that larger group of followers who accompanied Jesus and the 12 apostles. Like most numbers mentioned in the bible, 70 is significant. It is a sign of the nations, which in this case means that with the 70 Jesus is in essence sending agents of God’s reign to all the people of the earth.
But to bring this message and reality, Jesus had clear instructions on how the disciples were to show up. The Kingdom of God had to be announced in a way that was as peaceful as God’s reign. It could not arrive with dissonant gun blasts or the cacophony of inquisitions; fire could not reign down on those who opposed it as James and John called for in our Gospel last week. Instead, the Peaceable Kingdom of God had to come through the defenseless openness of a vulnerable people. No staff, no change of clothes, no money—the disciples are called to arrive wherever they go dependent and ready for relationship. As Ched Myers comments, “Jesus understood that practicing intentional vulnerability and dependence are the best hedges against presumptions of entitlement and pathologies of greed that turn guest into conquest.”
In bringing God’s new order into the world, these first missionaries are called to rely on those who they are serving. If they are to eat, it would be through hospitality, accepting what was put before them. If they were to be welcomed, it would be with the humble attitude of a good guest. If they were to have a change of clothes, it would be by putting on whatever their hosts had in their closets, reflecting the local fashions. And if, they were rejected, they had to let go completely, shaking the dust off their feet and moving on rather than returning with retribution.
Such vulnerability is hard. It can get you crucified, cast out, put on edge, as the life of Jesus and his disciples clearly shows. It is far easier to take the more common path of force and violence rather than risk an encounter with a deeper harmony. It’s here I should give you the sad end of Howard Thurman’s story about the baby and the snake. As soon as the rattlesnake was away from the baby, the girl’s father shot the snake and killed it instantly. I can’t say I’d have done anything differently. And yet it put a bitter end to the profound and holy moment of God’s kingdom shining through for a blazing instant. Formed by his attentiveness to such moments, Thurman saw a common ground for all things in God, and it was this vision that enabled him to be an agent of peace against the terrors of Jim Crow and all the state sanctioned violence perpetrated against Thurman and his people.
The call to a join in God’s peaceable kingdom has not ended. There are now disciples spread throughout the nations, and those of us who seek to follow in Jesus way are called to continue the work to which those first 70 were called. We are to go into the world offering the reality of God’s reign in our communities. But we must be careful as we do so, for it is easy to let our fears rather than our faith guide us. When that happens, we often end up mixing God’s mission with the aims of earthly governments and empires. Such errors have come when the church has ignored Jesus’s message of vulnerability, and forgotten that we are called to be an alternative community, living resident aliens wherever we live.
Jesus, we must remember, would rather be executed by the state than sit on its throne. On this Sunday after Independence Day, in a time when all too many Christians conflate God’s reign with America, it is important to say that the reign of God is an alternative to every arrangement of government, every empire, every state that stands in idolatrous opposition to the way of Christ’s peace. Taking that peace seriously is difficult to do, but the Bishop of Texas, Andy Doyle, wrote a piece for The Christian Century last week with the theologian Stanley Hauerwas that is a bold example of the church living into its prophetic call to call for peace. Condemning the US bombing of Iran, Bishop Doyle and Hauerwas wrote: “we believe in a Christ who still calls his followers to love beyond borders, beyond fear, and beyond the rationalizations of empire. Christ for the world, we sing! War is a failure of imagination. The church is supposed to be an alternative. Let us live like it.”
“The church is supposed to be an alternative. Let us live like it!” That is the message our Gospel calls us toward this Sunday. It is a call to live with gentleness in a world of violence, to walk humbly in a society filled with arrogance, to embrace mutuality and dependence in a country that proclaims individuality and independence. In living into this way, we will one day tread on snakes and scorpions and not be harmed, that is the promise Jesus gives. Reading that verse with Howard Thurman’s story in mind, I do not imagine that treading to be a trampling, but rather a walking with and among, the peace of God’s kingdom brought into fullness, befriending even those creatures that can harm us.
To close, and show a way in which this might look in the world, I want to offer the example of Craig Foster. Best known for his film, My Octopus Teacher, Foster seeks to explore the sea with a gentle vulnerability that elicits connection. He mostly dives without a wetsuit or tank, which in the water is a bit like traveling without money or an extra tunic. Instead, he seeks to be with and among the creatures he encounters. It has resulted in Foster experiencing profound connections with a wide range of creatures including Great White and Tiger Sharks. Recounting the times he has swum alongside these massive, ancient animals, Foster told the BBC that they are “very gentle if you're relaxed. These animals are not the killers they're made out to be." They are not killers, because Foster approaches them with a humble vulnerability, a way of being that elicits curiosity in the sharks rather than aggression.
To move through the world like Foster moves through the water, that is the call Jesus offers to the church. There are sharks and snakes, and dangers all around, but when we rest in God’s love we will find a harbor of peace from which we can live with vulnerable grace. What wonders and surprising encounters will come when the church leaves behind the violence of nation and culture and follows instead the alternative path of open, generous love.