Some time ago, when I was pastor of a Presbyterian Church, the season of Lent came, then Easter, the Sundays after Easter and then the season of Pentecost.  This event occurred after the celebration of Easter, but before Pentecost Sunday.  It was in the late spring, but before Pentecost in May.

The seasons of the church follow the life and death of Christ, then Christ’s resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the church.  As pastor, either we can follow the lectionary for the church year, or we can develop a sermon suitable to the season or the time of the church year.

This particular Sunday, in late spring, I have no recollection of what I preached upon.  However, I do remember what occurred on that particular Sunday morning.  I remember it as if it were yesterday.

In the season of the church year between Easter and Pentecost the Women of the Church had designated this period of some six or seven Sundays as “Mission Season”.  During mission season, the persons who normally bought flowers for the church sanctuary (as they did so on a rotating basis) would instead forego the purchase of flowers and take the money saved and give it to a Mission Offering, for some worthy designated cause.

In order to avoid buying flowers, but still wishing to adorn the church sanctuary for worship, flowers were to be brought from home, or the person could make an arrangement of flowers from whatever they had as long as it was appropriate for the church sanctuary.

The other money saving item was to avoid turning on the heat or air conditioning for the church during this period, so that money too could be sent to missions.  So in the late spring, after winter’s cold but before summer’s warmth, the church sanctuary remained unheated and not cooled.  As a result, in the 10:00AM Sunday School hour when the sanctuary was mostly empty it was cool, but when the congregation gathered for the 11:00 AM worship, as body heat from the people sitting warmed the church, the morning cool gave way to toasty warmth.  So the temperature was never perfect, but was tolerable, neither “too hot nor too cold”.

On this particular Sunday in early May, Barbara brought a lovely fern from her home to the church sanctuary.  Placing it carefully on the front seat of her car, she rode alone to church with the fern for the communion table.  Her husband, Don, did not come to church every Sunday and on this occasion he stayed home.

Barbara placed her fern carefully on the communion table, which was covered by glass to prevent water from harming the wooden top, as the table is a treasure, carved from pure oak with the large words on the front, “In Remembrance of Me”, pointing, of course, to the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.  The fern was placed in the middle of four offering plates, two on either side, which were used for the morning offering during worship.

Barbara left her fern and went on to her class for Sunday School.  Afterward, everyone came trickling in to the sanctuary by 11:00AM and I started the service on time.  I prided myself on good church order, on having a timely and concise service and most importantly, getting the congregation out at 5 minutes before 12 Noon so they could beat the Baptists to Dud’s Restaurant.  Dud’s served Sunday dinner, and was known to have the best fried chicken in town.  One of the elders had told me that I would endear myself to the congregation if I got them out of worship before the Baptists.  The Baptist services almost always went longer, owing to the need for an invitation to come forward to be saved.  Presbyterians have a more efficient way of being saved, just tell the minister at the close of the service and he or she will arrange a meeting of the elders so you can join the church.  The Baptist have a more prolonged process requiring just the right amount of anguish and repentance for sins.  Presbyterians proclaim forgiveness for sins in Christ in the first part of the service, so we did not need to anguish so much at the end of the services.  Our prayer of confession prepares us to hear the Word of God preached each Sunday.  By the end of the service we have said our peace before God and are ready for some good fellowship together over Southern Fried Chicken.

Persons who do not live in the South will never understand the universal appeal of properly prepared Southern Fried Chicken.  If they have ever had any, they will understand why Presbyterians need to arrive first at Dud’s Restaurant.  Whoever comes late does not get to choose any of the choice pieces, but is left only with thighs and legs.  While these are good chicken pieces, they are certainly not breast, wings or the pulley bone.

So launching into worship, as pastor I carefully led my congregation through the call to worship, the prayers of confession and the assurance of pardon.  Then after the first and second hymns comes the reading of the Holy Scriptures and the sermon appropriate for the day.  The offering comes at the end of the service, so any one not wishing to give can slip out before the plate is passed.

On this occasion, I had completed the reading of the scriptures, the prayer of illumination and was into the beginning of the second point of the sermon.  I would like to tell you what I preached that day, but to tell the truth, I simply no longer remember.

As I moved deeply into the second point of the sermon, I noticed a young woman about five years old who stood up behind the pew and looked directly at the offering plates.  I had the pulpit raised due to my height and I could not see what she was seeing.  Her eyes grew wide, as large as a silver dollar.  Then a young man on the pew in front of her leaned his head out into the middle aisle of the church to see more clearly and he too had fixed his vision on the communion table and the offering plates.

Realizing something was wrong, but not knowing what it was and not seeing any adults affected, I did what any good preacher would do.  I doubled my efforts at preaching the sermon, raised my voice louder to keep everyone’s attention and kept going through my second sermon point.

About this time, I noticed two or three adults looking at something on the communion table and they were whispering to one another about something going on at the front of the church.  Then several more persons got restless and were shuffling in the pews.  Still, hoping to keep the service on track, I kept on preaching the sermon.

In a little while, however, I realized no one was listening to me anymore at all! I paused to collect my thoughts and about that time one of my good deacons came up to the pulpit, whispered in my ear, “There is a snake in the offering plate!”  I paused again to catch my thoughts, wondering what to do at this time.

Finally I said to the church:  “The devil got in the church this morning and the deacons are going to carry him out!”  So John, the good deacon who whispered in my ear picked up the beautiful fern and carried the fern and the snake which by then was back in the fern out of the church sanctuary.

I rapidly concluded the service and we all went home.

Later, I found that John, my good deacon took the fern out of the church and beat the snake in the fern.  Of course the fern was destroyed as well as the snake, which turned out to be a black snake, who simply had taken residence in the fern.  The fern had been sitting outside on Barbara’s back porch, which was open to the air.  The children first noticed the little snake when he poked his head out of the fern and was according to them, “flicking his tongue”.

The adults became aware of the snake when he crawled out of the fern and curled up in one of the offering plates.  Obviously, it was the body heat of the congregation which warmed the sanctuary enough so the snake could awaken and come out to look around so as to know where he now was.

The story continues:  Barbara went home and accused her husband Don, who was known to play jokes on persons around town of deliberately putting the snake in the fern.  Of course, he denied everything!

The next morning, Rev. Vernon, the retired Baptist minister contacted me as pastor of the church.

“Preacher,” he said, “it is all over town.  I heard this being discussed at the hardware store.”  “What did you hear, Vernon?”  I asked.  “Well, all about the snake handling service in the Presbyterian Church!”

“What!” I replied, “Are you crazy?”  “There was no snake handling service in the Presbyterian Church!”

“Seriously, tell me what is being said?”  “Like I told you preacher, they are talking about this all over town!”  And he hung up the phone.

I thought for a while and then realized Vernon surely was pulling my leg with this cockamamie story.  But just to be safe, I waited three days before going up town to the local hardware store, where the old men gathered to discuss things.  I figured by Thursday, whatever story was being told would have died down and by then everyone would be discussing something else.

Now I have been in many church services over my lifetime and I have officiated as pastor or preacher of the day at many of these.  But this is one of the most unusual services I have ever been privileged to be part of over the past forty years.  If you know of a story more unusual than this, I would like to hear it.

I suspect God got tired of my stale sermons and thought he would just bring a little excitement into our otherwise routine lives.  Or may God needed a laugh or two.  I expect we get too serious about this thing called religion.  I expect God is not as serious as we are at all.  Every once and a while God throws us a curve ball or two, just to see how we will manage.  Then we kneel down, hiding our face, and find ourselves laughing with God!

An Old Pastor