Caterpillars Transformed and The Power of Resurrection

Music.

On the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to

the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.

So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus

loved, and said to them, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,

and we do not know where they have laid him.

Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.

The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

He bent down to look in, and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb.

He saw the linen wrappings lying there in the cloth that had been on Jesus'

head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself.

Then the other disciples, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.

For as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.

Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.

And as she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and she saw two angels

in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.

They said to her, Woman, why are you weeping?

She said to them, They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there.

But she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, him, Sir,

if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Hebrew,

Rabboni, which means teacher.

Jesus said to her, Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to

the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father

and your Father, to my God and your God.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord.

And she told them that he had said these things to her.

This is the gospel of the Lord. Christ is risen.

You may be seated.

One of my favorite Easter memories from my previous congregation was the Easter

we let butterflies loose after worship out in our church's garden. It was magical.

You should have seen a hundred or so butterflies lifting off from their tomb-like little paper boxes.

Those who were once caterpillars were now beautiful butterflies,

symbols of Jesus's resurrection.

It was wonderful, and I wish you were there, but there's something I can't shake.

It's a question that I read in a book of Easter reflections by famous theologians

and Christian thinkers, and the question that one writer raised was about those

very same caterpillars that turn into butterflies.

He asked, does anyone tell the caterpillars of their impending resurrection? direction?

And if they are told, do they believe?

Are caterpillars told how in dying they will be transformed from poor earth

crawlers into creatures of the air with exquisitely painted wings?

Can caterpillars conceive that one day they will shed their constricted,

inch by inch, belly-to-the-earth existence and become butterflies of all things,

flying light and and free upon their wings.

The writer continued, I imagine the wise old caterpillars sitting around shaking their heads.

No, it can't be true.

It's fantasy. It's self-deception. It's just a silly dream.

The story of Easter as we hear it retold in the Gospel of John this morning

is full of wise old caterpillars.

And while we aren't sure if anyone tells caterpillars, I don't think they do,

the disciples cannot feign as much ignorance.

We know that Jesus told his disciples of his impending resurrection many,

many times throughout his earthly ministry.

He told them that the Son son of man, must suffer, die, and in three days be raised again.

They're told. Do they believe?

Could the disciples conceive that one day their leader, their teacher,

their friend, would die constricted on the cross, nail by nail, tomb in the earth?

And then be raised, free to go, hang out with his friends.

Can we? Can we believe in this type of change?

In a world where there's so much sin, so much destruction, so much hurt,

so much war, so much sickness that constricts our lives, making it seem like

progress is moving inch by inch,

where all we can do is just keep our eyes to the ground of our everyday existence,

and just get on with it.

Can we proclaim Easter resurrection?

Well, let's start at the beginning of the story with Mary, with that stone.

When we are told on the first day of the week, while it was just becoming light,

Mary Magdalene saw that the stone was rolled away.

Did she believe this could truly be happening.

I mean, a stone rolled away, someone must have rolled it away and taken the

body because that's the only thing that makes sense.

The alternative was too impossible to imagine that from the inside of the tomb,

some power was brought to bear by someone or some power of God to move it. No, no way.

A gravestone like that one, it should have been permanent.

When the stone was rolled into place, that should have been the end,

the end of any questions about resurrection, about anything changing for good or ill.

But life and hope and joy and faith can even transform something as hard and

lifeless as the inside of a rock-hewn tune, tune.

I want to share this with you. It's the story behind the words to a famous song.

The words to the song go like this. It's sort of a poem. Maybe you've heard it.

I believe in the sun, even when it isn't shining.

I believe in love, even when I do not feel it. I believe in God, even when God is silent.

Those simple words are set to beautiful music, but the true power of this song

and those words comes from the place where the words are from,

literally the place where the words were found.

Those words were etched into stone.

The stone walls of a cellar basement underneath the city of Cologne, Germany,

Where nine Jews hid from the Gestapo for six months during World War II Without

coming up even once to see the light of day Having the food delivered by friends

out of their meager rations,

The entombed in that cellar cooking only at night So that people during the

day didn't see the smoke rise.

Living for months in utter darkness constantly worried of the threat of death

that sealed them within their tomb-like dwelling.

And yet it was there, of all places, into the stone of their confinement that

one of them, or perhaps all of them, chiseled those words into the stone.

I believe in the sun, even when it isn't shining.

I believe in love, even when I don't feel it.

I believe in God, even when God is silent, as silent as God is on that Good

Friday and Holy Saturday, that first holy week.

And yet there upon the stone, within their tomb like Jesus' own,

a story was being written,

unseen from human eyes, unknown except perhaps by God, a proclamation of life

within war-turned Europe, which at the time was overcome by destruction.

So yeah, friends, stones can move from the inside.

Stones can tell stories of life and hope even when they're supposed to contain death.

But those are just stones, after all. Maybe the stone did roll away. What about Jesus' body?

Could it rise? Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, those two old caterpillars,

we are told, stood looking at the tomb, shaking their head in disbelief.

No, it can't be true.

For they did not understand the scripture St. John says that he must rise from the dead.

And so the story goes, they went home.

Mary Magdalene, she was an old caterpillar shaking her head until her vision

of the gardener turned out to be her rabboni, her teacher. her?

Or what happened when Mary Magdalene finally made it back to the disciples as

Jesus instructed her to do at the end of our reading?

And she told them what she had seen.

I imagine they shook their heads like wise old caterpillars. Listen to her.

Nah, can't be true. We saw him die, pierced and and broken.

Bodies cannot rise. Stones, that's one thing.

But there isn't a power on earth strong enough to change a body like that.

There? And if you, an old caterpillar, are starting to shake your head out there, let me tell you a story.

It's from God's storybook of all places, God's storybook of creation,

and the story is about some other old caterpillars.

There's a scientist, a biologist by the name of Bernd Heinrich,

who was otherwise a well-respected and eminent 20th century scientist who came

up with a seemingly crazy idea

that made other scientists shake their head like wise old caterpillars.

And here's what Dr. Heinrich pondered.

In thinking about moths and butterflies and how they radically change shape

as they grow from little wormy caterpillar critters to airborne beauties.

Why, he wondered, do these flying animals begin their lives as wingless, crawling worms? worms.

Baby ducks have wings.

Baby bats have wings. Why not baby butterflies?

His answer, what he found through extensive cellular and DNA research, led him to this finding.

He said, the radical change that occurs in a caterpillar does indeed involve

death followed by resurrection.

You heard that right, old caterpillars. He goes on, the adult forms of these

insects, butterflies, are actually new organisms.

In effect, the first one lives and dies, and then the other emerges.

And to make this transformation possible, a caterpillar enters a death-like intermission,

in which most of its cells and organs are liquefied, turned into a primordial

goo, and those cells and organs, they die.

Within this morass, the DNA of the butterfly, which had always been there next

to the caterpillar since the very beginning comes to life.

It starts to reorganize. It begins with just a few cells born out of the decay

and death of the caterpillar within its tomb-like chrysalis.

And that DNA latches on to free-floating proteins and other nutrients,

and they turn what once was a caterpillar into a being with wings,

with which to soar to the heavens.

And the only word Dr. Bernd Heinrich could come up with to explain this natural

phenomenon, resurrection.

The amazing thing for us today,

you and I, as old and caterpillary as the best of them out there,

is that even though we can't see it, even though we might not believe it,

in the very fiber of our being, in the very essence of creation,

from our very first breath, God has infused this world with the building blocks of his saving love.

Within you and within me, God, through the death and resurrection of of Jesus,

shows us that even in life's darkest hours,

when we feel broken down cell by cell and completely destroyed,

our hearts adrift in primordial chaos,

God can find a way, a small strand of DNA way to build you back up,

to resurrect your body, to destine you for a life God would have you lead,

and on the last day, to raise you up once more for the life God invites you

to live for all eternity,

creatures destined to soar to heaven.

On this Easter day, on this day of Jesus's resurrection,

we celebrate God's purpose and power to restore and change the broken things, the sinful things,

the hateful things, to etch a new story into the stones of this world that seem at times unmovable.

On this Easter day, we are bold to proclaim a truth written in the stars and

on every blade of grass and within every cell of creation that even the oldest

and wisest caterpillars among

us who shake our heads can go home this Easter proclaiming it's true.

It must be true.

For I have seen how butterflies take to the sky.

Alleluia. Amen.