Fr Peter Helman

“You have rescued my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.” (Psalm 56:12)

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Dear beloved,

I served a small country parish on the Cumberland Gap for three years before coming to Saint Philip’s in 2016. Saint Mary’s was the oldest church in Middlesborough, Kentucky, built in 1891 on a knoll overlooking downtown.

Most days I walked at noon across the square to the post-office, which was always bustling at that time of day. Every now and then a man named Jamie Coots held the door for me in line. He was a third-generation preacher at a nearby snake-handling church.

I watched several episodes of a National Geographic series called Snake Salvation that featured Coots and his congregation. Their worship is very much a revival. They gather for hours and sing and pray in tongues to be caught up in the ecstasy of the Spirit.

Snake handling is only one of their rituals; they also ingest Strychnine and handle fire. The root of these devotions is a curiously beautiful passage from the end of the Gospel of Saint Mark, an account of the Great Commission:

“And Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. […] These signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”(Mark 16:15-17)

Coots refused medical intervention when he was bit by a rattlesnake in 2014. His death a few days later was all over the local news.

To this day, I still ask myself what I think of his decision? Most everyone I knew said only a fool would reject God’s gift of medicine. Even if that is the case, and maybe it is not for me to judge, what of his courage to put his life in the hands of God, to look the Grim Reaper face to face and believe that death was not the end but the passage toward Christ and that he would come at last to take him by the hand past the threshold of the gate of heaven? I don’t believe Coots meant to test God. I believe he weighed, as so many people do in the face of their fight against intolerable suffering, the incredible immensity of what awaits us on the other side, in heaven. Whatever I might think of Coots’ decision, however much I may have pleaded with him to take the antivenin, he faced death with unbelievable courage, even if frightened too, and I pray that I’ll have the same courage in God’s love.

Today is All Souls’ Day, when the Church commemorates all the faithful departed and prays for the mercy of God to bring to fulfillment the sanctification of the dead who will enter heaven. It is a day that confronts us with the deepest questions about the most important act of earthly existence, of death, and how we both must fight for life and understand too that we owe our lives to another who gives to all things life, and breath, and all things. Even in death God upholds us and carries us home.

Today and every day, may God give us strength to fight for life and courage to face the grave, knowing that one day we will all stand face to face with the One who is our friend and not a stranger.

I hope you'll join us this evening for our live-streamed All Souls' Requiem at 5:00 p.m. You will find more information at our parish's homepage.


Yours in Christ,
Fr. Peter+