Chrysalis

This week the church celebrates the Ascension of Christ; and this coming Sunday we will celebrate the last Sunday of the season of Easter.  While everyone’s societal calendar will tell you that Easter was April 20^th this year, EASTER is not a single date, but rather a liturgical SEASON. 

This EASTER, the congregation I serve has been trying to be mindful living an Easter life means being raised from an old life.  For Lent, we kept an eye on “leaving behind” certain parts of our lives, so that come an Easter resurrection we could emerge into a new, renewed life—hoping it wouldn’t be just for a day! 

I think the end of Easter is a better example than the beginning.  Jesus’ ascension reminds us that the disciples, followers, and believes are left awaiting a fuller transformation.  And come Pentecost (that we’ll celebrate on June 8^th), the disciples, followers, and believers finally seem to become the embodiment of the Church.  While in the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection there are stories of fright, fear, discombobulation, and uncertainty; by the end of the Easter season there seems to be renewed excitement, new revelations, hope, and a new way of being emerges. 

Common Crow Pupa

These last few days, as Spring has more fully sprung, as the familiar creatures and bugs have emerged from winter, I’ve been thinking about the transformation and transfiguration afoot in the world and I’ve been thinking about chrysalides—the plural of “chrysalis.”  A chrysalis is the pupa form of a butterfly, and one of the images of Easter transformation. 

In the insect world, a chrysalis is the “in-between” stage of transformation and transfiguration during a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly.  The caterpillar spins a cocoon, sheds its outer skin to help form a protecting cover, and transfigures itself—before emerging as something almost entirely new.  It’s amazing!  Some have likened this to Jesus in his death and resurrection—entering the tomb as a wrapped body and re-emerging as the “risen one.” 

As I encounter the stories of the disciples and the early church post Jesus’ resurrection, this is also something that seems to happen to the disciples and believers.  When Jesus departs for the last time from an earthly life, the responsibilities for his earthly ministry seem to shift from him to the disciples and the group of early believers.  And I’m wondering if we really “get” that? 

Following Jesus’ resurrection, Luke and Acts report that the disciples, followers, and believers were continually in the Temple and constantly devoting themselves to prayer—waiting in Jerusalem until they are clothed with power from on high.  Hmmm.  They enter that protected space, waiting to be transformed (or is it transfigured?).  When they emerge—we find them speaking, teaching, traveling, tending, and all around them are the acts and works of Jesus! 

There’s so much written and in conversation in church circles these days about changes happening in the church.  It’s the end of the great Christendom age—many think; we are dealing with changes and challenges unimagined; we are facing struggles amidst the reality of the decline in the numbers of people participating actively in churches.  Yet, there is an unprecedented hunger for the works and ways of Jesus. 

Perhaps this is our chrysalis-time as the church—in which we are being transfigured and transformed by individually and corporately.  What has been is not going to be in the same way.  What will be is not exactly who we are, now.  So…, as Easter comes to a close, will our life as the Church look different and be different as the scripture stories suggest it must be? 

For so many people, Easter morning is often portrayed as our “emergence”—“Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes…” declares the popular refrain.  But for the disciples and early believers, those early days of Easter are borne out sometimes behind closed doors, sometimes not being able to “see” Jesus at all, sometimes terrified about what this means or if they’ll be killed next, John even tells a story where the disciples all go home to Galilee; Mark ends without the women saying anything to anyone. 

No.  Easter requires us to stop and think, to reflect and take stock.  Almost as if we pull the covers over us tight on a cold winter’s night to hide in the darkness.  Or, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis-state. 

No.  This is the time of personal and corporate transfiguration and transformation.  We will soon be invited to take wing and fly.  It’s suddenly going to be EASTER everywhere! 

Cue the Avery & Marsh music, here. 

 “Every morning is Easter morning from now on!  Every day’s resurrection day, the past is over and gone!  Goodbye guilt, goodbye fear, good riddance! Hello Lord, hello, sun!  I am one of the Easter people!  My new life has begun! 

Steps and Steps Toward Home

I'm not preaching this coming Sunday--and it's been planned that way. We're celebrating Music Ministry Sunday in worship in our congregation; we're also celebrating and giving thanks for our congregation's 105 years of ministry; and—it’s Mother’s Day.  If I were preaching, it'd be harder than usual, I think. 

But mostly because I'm disheartened by the news this week of the nearly 300 young women who were taken captive and carried off in Nigeria, and the unfathomable lack of response to seek, find, and return those victims to their families.  I am angry and confused that the major news outlets could drone on and on day after day regarding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370--going to great lengths to describe the safety features and the technology deployed to find the missing plane, even when we all presume all of the passengers must surely have perished early on.  Yet, as news trickles in of next to nothing being done to find these young women, it seems there’s little more than a collective “shrug of the shoulders” going on. 

It is almost unimaginable.  And yet, it’s what we do.  It’s who we are—though some of us fight back against this reality. 

Mother's Day is not a liturgical holiday. I say that to the worship team every year as we make plans for observing it without naming it as such. I struggle each year knowing that for many women, the idea of Mother's Day is difficult, painful, and challenging. I "get it" and I'm always trying to find ways to help my congregation "get it" that Mother's Day is more than roses and Hallmark cards. But as we come to this year's observance that has such deep roots in our American culture, we're now face to face with this traumatic happening in another part of the world.

Say what you will about mothers and Mother's Day. We have nearly 300 mothers grieving the loss of children--who haven't suffered from some disease or accident, but who have been unmistakably and intentionally stolen. While we wrangle over the appropriateness of honoring mothers in worship, knowing the traumas of infertility, abuse, or thinking that “every woman wants to be a mother;” here are those whose precious babies have been ripped from their arms--and there's seemingly been little effort to go get and bring the babies back. 

Our lectionary scripture lessons this week put us in the liturgical cross-hairs of this trauma, too.  The famous 23^rd Psalm—with it’s green pastures and still waters, fearing no evil in the valley of the shadow of death, and dining at the table prepared in the presence of mine enemies—leaves me wanting even though the opening verse would deny it!  And Jesus’ promise in the gospel from John 10--

“Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.  ⁸All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.  ⁹I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.  ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

--seems only to serve to exacerbate my hopeless and helpless feelings.  THOSE WHO TOOK THE YOUNG WOMEN WERE THIEVES AND BANDITS!  AND JUST WHERE WAS THE GATE, TO PROTECT THEM, AND CALL THEM OUT/BACK JESUS? 

Aren’t we all now simply standing by as if these schoolgirls are just akin to the other schoolchildren who were victims of the ferry accident in South Korea?  As if they were lost by way of tragic accident and there’s no way we can get them back?  From which we now just have to “move on” and quit our whining! 

So—I have been heartened to know that this is never the only answer.  The writer of the Book of Acts points Christ-followers to this example:  “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

And so, as the names of the lost ones were revealed this week, Christ-followers responded with encouragement that all of us pick a name of one of these victimized schoolgirls and pray for that one’s safe return, and for her mother and father, her family and community. 

All of us as Christ-followers can take that first step.  And hopefully, in that step, we will also find the courage and the voice and the urging to move beyond that step.  That we would raise our voices and dis-contentedness to make a difference—to cajole those with the power and authority to do something other than just standing by and hoping this news cycle will pass. 

And that as we take our steps toward home—that is the way and the witness and the will of the Kingdom of God—the world might see our faithful witness, and see in us that which we are and shall be.  And in that dawning, the world will be resurrected and made new. 

It’s Easter.  Jesus lives again.  We live again.  Those lost must be found.