As I drove home from a vacation in Wisconsin this past week I was listening to an NPR sponsored program called RadioLab. It’s a radio show where each episode explores a different topic such as colors, human limits, or the feeling of happiness. The show I listened to as I drove through the farmlands of Minnesota and South Dakota was titled Black Box. The stories centered on those peculiar spaces where we think we know what’s going on, and we know what the end result is, but the middle part is a mystery. The last story of this particular episode was on moths and butterflies and the mysterious journey of the cocoon.
The journalist makes her way to an exotic location where she speaks to researchers at a butterfly facility which houses thousands of butterfly and moth species. As part of the interview one of the researchers unfastens the webbing a cocoon and lets her look inside. The journalist first describes to the audience what she expected to see: Some sort of caterpillar/moth hybrid. She imagines she will see a caterpillar that is growing legs, with some wings developing and antennae beginning to protrude.
And then the audience hears a gasp as the secret world of the cocoon is revealed to her. You hear her faint voice exclaim, “It’s empty, there’s nothing there.”
The caterpillar no longer existed, and there was no moth. There was nothing except this sort of slime, which she was told was basically a soup made of broken down proteins and enzymes.
After hearing this part of the show I paused the episode for a moment. I turned and looked out the window, and as I watched corn stalk after corn stalk whiz by at 75mph I had new questions: Do caterpillars know what’s going to happen? Do they know where they will end up, or do they dutifully, out of genetic and environmental cues, just go about their business knowing they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing? I even wondered if as the caterpillar weaves the last of its silky cocoon shut it wonders if that is the last sunlight it will ever see?
I continued the episode, and although it didn’t end with me knowing the answers to my particular buggy questions, it did reveal a beautiful and wonderful surprise, which we will get to a little later on.
You see, before I tell you the ending secret of the butterfly and moth’s improbable transformation out of caterpillar slime I’m going to tell you about another mystery. A mystery that cannot so much be explained, but rather, it must be lived.
Our Gospel for today begins with Jesus telling the disciples of his eventual crucifixion and resurrection. Peter is quite distraught by this news. It was only at the end of last week’s gospel that Peter recognizes Jesus as the Messiah.
Now, only one verse later Peter and the others hear of a future filled with suffering and death. To Peter this doesn’t seem like the ending fit for Jesus, and he vocalizes his frustration, “God forbid it, this must never happen to you.”
We can all relate to Peter on some level.
Just as Christ was revealed as the messiah to him, we have our own revelations of God.
We might experience God when hearing the laughter or wiping away the tears of our friends.
We might experience God when sitting around the dinner table or even the football game with family.
We might experience God while watching the sunset or when hearing the wind sing through the trees.
Sometimes we stumble upon God without even meaning to, in the smile of a stranger or an unexpected phone call.
Regardless of the circumstance, when God is revealed to us we are awakened with wonder at our discovery. If all of God is everywhere what more could there be to do, but to take it all in. To soak up the warmth and beauty we have found ourselves in.
But it is not enough to stop with the revelation.
Peter, who did not know the glories of Easter mornings as we do today, probably had a different idea of what messiah meant. He was most likely hopeful that an individual was coming to help the Jewish people who were under the reign of the romans. Regardless of what the revelation meant to peter and the other disciples or to us today, the revelation that Jesus is the messiah isn’t where the story ends.
After Peter so strongly conveys his fear and anger at Jesus’ foretold future he is referred to as the tempting voice of Satan and as a stumbling block. Jesus reminds Peter to keep his mind on divine things. To put away the human thinking that revelation of who Jesus is, is enough and that maybe there is another option, that perhaps death can be avoided.
A few verses later, we find out that even for us today revelation of who Jesus is, is also inherently a call to action.
Just as Jesus says he must go to Jerusalem he says we must follow him there. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Follow me down to the unfair trial and painful beating.
Follow me down where with unbearably achy muscles I carry the cross through the streets.
Follow me down to the garbage heap where my body, high in the high, takes its final breath.
Pick up your cross and follow me.
This is the part of the story where all seems lost.
This is the part of the story where we wonder how we ever get to an Easter ending.
This is the part of the story where the journalist who gasped upon seeing what appeared to be an empty cocoon wondered where the butterfly was.
Here is what she found out about the butterfly’s Easter:
The researchers explained that when they looked closer they realized there were in fact tiny parts of butterfly within the cocoon. There were small beginnings of wings, and legs, and antennae, but they didn’t know where they had come from. They began to look at the caterpillars more closely, and they discovered that inside the caterpillar were already tiny bits of wings, and legs, and antennae, just waiting for the right moment to begin growing.
We often think that caterpillars change into butterflies, but these researchers explained that in a way Caterpillars are already butterflies, but it’s not until they go through the soupy mess of life that they can be revealed as who they truly are.
So too it is for us.
At our baptism we are marked as Christ’s own forever, and our candle flame begins to burn with all the other beautiful lights of Christ already in the world.
Not only do we carry around the gift of who we are, but deep inside we also carry the gift of who we are becoming.
The gift of who we can be after we pick up our crosses and follow.
Your cross may be to make amends with someone you don’t get along with.
Your cross may be to spend less time worrying.
Your cross may be to spend your time in a place or with people you wouldn’t normally associate yourself with.
Your cross may even lead you down paths of danger and pain.
I don’t know what your cross looks like, only you know.
I can tell you that when we pick up our crosses and follow we almost assuredly are going to leave the safety of our comfort zones behind. But when we are brave enough to do so we not only follow Christ to the hill where he died, and where we, in our own way must die, but we follow him knowing our cross leads to a resurrection.
It is a cross that leads to hope, and light, and water that satisfies the thirst we never thought could go away.
Just as there are an endless number of Easters, there are an endless number of crosses.
We are always experiencing death and resurrection in our own lives. If we give in to the mystery of the cocoon, we might be surprised at how far our colorful wings can carry us.
And so we follow.
Sometimes slowly and sometimes stumbling.
In our own little silly ways we follow, with each of us carrying our life’s history on our back.
We take up our crosses not because it is a path to follow, but because it is the path to follow.
When God is revealed to us in the world, by all means we should stand in awe, and bask in the light. And then, if we are ready, we can pick up our nearest cross, and begin the journey of becoming more fully who we already are.
Deep down, there is already an Easter morning inside us, are you ready to give in to the darkness, so that you can see the sunrise?
Amen.
