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Mettle Maker #396
What’s the weekly mettle maker? Training tips and educational information in support of our free programs, that’s what! What’s mettle? According the American Heritage Dictionary, mettle is, “The ability to meet a challenge or persevere under demanding circumstances; determination or resolve.”
Heritage Self-Defense: Scarf Hold or Side Headlock? There is a great deal of confusion on this point, and I admit I’ve contributed to it over the years by using the terms interchangeably. A Scarf Hold goes around the neck and holds the head in place. A Side Headlock is a lock. It hurts. It can can be a submission. Look on the right. You will notice that Robert has his arm around David’s head, not his neck, and his forearm is lined up along his jaw. He has not, however, fully applied it. How can you tell? By his hand position. What to know the secret? I guess you’d better join the martial arts club in Richmond, VA or click here to sign up for the Heritage self-defense distance learning program!
Heritage Fitness: Slow down! The slower you go, the harder an exercise gets, and the less volume you can perform in the allotted training time. Do the math. This means you’ll experience less wear and tear because there’s less volume, less risk of injury because of increased control, and more strength because the exercise is more difficult (the muscle is under stress for a longer period). Want more old-school training tips, or a free fitness coach to help develop an old-school fitness program that suits your specific needs and goals? Click here to sign up for one of our free programs!
Heritage Wildwood Outdoor Skills: Learning birds and their calls isn’t an esoteric specialty reserved for birdwatchers and conservationists. It does several important things to those who undertake it:
It builds the patience to watch and listen
Deepens the your visual and sonic landscape
Enriches your experience of nature
Increases your sense of belonging and participation in life
And it might save your life.
If you hear or see predatory birds, you know prey is nearby and you can hunt them too. If you learn to tell buzzards from eagles, you can find a carcass and, if necessary, salvage horns, hide, bones, teeth, and hooves for tools. You can follow herons to water., and so on. Learn some birds and their calls. You’ll be happier, have more fun outside, and be a more capable wilderness survivor. Click the photo above to see some of the bird observations and calls I’ve captured using Birdnet, a cell phone app provided courtesy of the Cornell Ornithology Lab. Looking for a free adult outdoor skills program? Click here to sign up!
Holy Communion is LIVE on YouTube every Sunday at 10 am EASTERn. Click HERE to watch live. To view and print a copy of the program for holy communion, CLICK HERE.
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, 3/10/24 – Father Mitch
Readings: 2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23, Ps 137:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6, Eph 2:4-10, Jn 3:14-21
John 3:14-21
Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born§ Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only born Son of God. 19 This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the light and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.”
The serpent staff is one of the world's most archaic and enduring symbols, dating back at least 6,000 years and still used today. In Greco-Roman myths, Greek gods Hermes and Asclepius, and the Roman god Mercury, carried them. Sometimes the rod had two snakes, sometimes just one. Nowadays we see these symbols on ambulances, emergency hospital signs, pharmacies, first aid kits, and so on.
For pagans, all power comes from nature. To them, these serpent staffs were markers of authority that allowed magic power to be drawn from the wellspring of nature. Even their gods derived their powers from nature. Ba'al was the god of storms, Amon the god of the sun, Molech the fiery god of sacrifice, and so on. But for the Hebrews, all power comes from God, who created nature. There is no magic beyond or above God.
So in today’s Gospel reading, when Jesus referenced Moses and the serpent on a pole which the Hebrews called Nehushtan, Nicodemus knew the story.
8 The LORD said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 Moses made a serpent of bronze, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of bronze, he lived. (Numbers 21:8-9)
Poor Nicodemus. Certainly, he saw the resemblance between the Hebrew Nehushtan and the serpent rods of their neighboring cultures. And of course he knew that their Hebrew version was something entirely new and improved. But he could not have fully grasped the deep analogy Jesus was speaking to him. We can, because we can read Jesus' words by the light of two thousand years of history and Christian teaching. We can see the progression.
Pagans believed in many gods and magic serpent staffs. But through Moses, God showed that there is no magic, only a deeper level of reality and relationship with him. Nehushtan wasn’t mythical, make-believe, or magic in itself. It was just an ordinary brass snake on a pole to remind them that if they turned to God in faith, as God commanded them, they wouldn’t die. Nehushtan was just a sculpture, a focal point, a way of reminding the Hebrews to have faith in God’s healing power. Nicodemus could’ve seen that. He would’ve agreed that God, through Moses, clarified and corrected the pagan serpent pole motif, making it something entirely new.
What Nicodemus couldn’t see or know was that Jesus was going to take the symbol into himself and perfect it in the Cross. Yes, Nehushtan stood for the power of faith. But brass serpents don’t bleed. Brass serpents don’t suffer. And brass serpents are not the only Son of God.
Like Nehushtan, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross doesn’t prevent us from experiencing the painful bites of life's hardships and sufferings. But if we have faith in him, we can be protected not just from death by snakebite – but from the death itself – from the death that lasts forever. And Jesus is not a solution for one people at one time in one place, a lesson to get the Hebrews through a test in the desert. Jesus was going to be hoisted up on a cross for everyone to see so that they could all be healed by faith.¹
Poor confused, and yet blessed Nicodemus. Imagine how he felt after the Passion and Resurrection, when he looked back on his conversation with Jesus and finally understood it fully. And then imagine his joy when he realized that he had spoken with God’s only begotten son, come to earth in the flesh to be put on a cross and held aloft to save everyone, Jew and Gentile. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).
¹ Note also that Hebrew letters are also numbers, which means that all Hebrew words have numerical values. Very strikingly, the words "serpent" (נחש) and "Messiah" (משיח) both have a numerical value of 358.
*2:17 Psalms 69:9