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Parish Weekend, Wakefield Conference Center
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
Mr. S. D. Rasberry, October 6, 2013


Metamorphosis


Almighty Father, we pray that you would open your heart to hear our words of praise, and our hearts to hear your words of instruction. Amen.

First, let me thank Jeff for encouraging me and providing me with this challenge. He encouraged me, before putting pen to paper to listen closely over the course of a few days for the Lord's word. I believe I have heard it and while it may be only for me, I'll share it with you and you can decide.

Secondly, thanks to Judy for encouraging me to give Jeff a break after all the teaching he has been doing. She has helped me with advice as to how preachers of old prepared their sermons. Namely: "three points and a poem." Keats and I are not close, Walt Whitman and I never saw eye to eye, and I am not on great speaking terms with Girard Manly Hopkins. So will you accept two points and a story?

Thirdly, thanks to you for putting up with an amateur for this Sunday. I say amateur, because I do indeed love the Lord. If what he had to say to me does not seem to fit you, just nod off for the next 15 minutes.

Point 1 – Habakkuk hit the nail on the head, and the Lord answered him.

For the past 17 months, I have been an angry person. It might not have looked like it on the outside, but inside has been a different story. It started with the reversal of Judge Randy Bellows' decision that would have left the St. Stephen's property to our use. The anger was centered on the VA Supreme Court, the Diocese of VA and the Episcopal Church, including our former pew mates.

I won't try to rationalize it, because anger is often irrational and mainly hurts the angry person. I will say it was not a good place to be. The Tuesday night Bible study had taken up Habakkuk, before the court decision. I should have recalled it and let it instantly "smack away" my anger. To some extent Habakkuk suffered in a similar situation. He looked around at his fellow Jews. He saw all manner of evil and injustice. Further, he saw that the courts met with no truth and offered no justice.

How incisively Habakkuk's piercing words describe our situation 2600 years later. Let me read them again and perhaps we will have some poetry after all.

2 How long, Lord, must I call for help,
    but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, "Violence!"
    but you do not save?
3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
    Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
    Destruction and violence are before me;
    there is strife, and conflict abounds.
4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
    and justice never prevails.
    The wicked hem in the righteous,
    so that justice is perverted.

Does this not describe our situation? Violence to the Word. Injustice to the faithful. Strife and conflict abounding. Justice perverted. The faithful hemmed in. This appears to have been written in 2012, not 600 BC. But there was an answer then and there is the same answer today. The Lord is in charge. The wicked will not escape his attention.

The Lord told Habakkuk exactly how he would raise up the Babylonians to sweep down on the Jews and carry them away to captivity. It was a corrective for God's people that no one would want to watch, especially Habakkuk. He prayed

"I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy." Hab. 3:2.

So, here was my reminder: God is in charge, the evil will be dealt with, and my only business is to stay out of it, magnify God's holy deeds, and pray for his mercy for all concerned. The real clincher to this view came in our Gospel lesson and is point 2.

Point 2 – Millstones should be avoided.We just listened to part of Luke 17, in our Gospel reading. If there was any anger left in me toward those who have brought so much sin to us, this reading wrung out the last drop. Let me tell you why and let me give you what may be a new understanding for you of two key words in the reading. The words we need to give attention are "little ones." Let's look at the first three verses of 17 and see them in context.

17 And he said to his disciples, "Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. 3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, (Luke 17:1–4)

"Little ones" have been commonly seen as little children, for Jesus clearly embraced them. Certainly, when we read it that way we receive a very useful instruction. I believe there is also a strong case that Jesus spoke of adults who were new to or immature in the faith as "little ones." One example is found in Mark 10:24. In a discussion of the difficulties for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, that verse says, "The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, 'Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!'" The adult disciples were new to the faith, recently reborn, and thus appropriately called "children."

In this I saw a clear teaching to deal gently with any who are spiritually immature, especially any who have caused us so much pain and grief. I must avoid being a stumbling block and being a person through whom their sins come. God will deal with them and I must be helpful to them or stay out of the way. The point to me is that without a full measure of caution; I could be the one being measured for a millstone rope, not those who are immature! Not a pleasant thought!

The Story.

This story is one I have long wanted to tell in a class describing God's wondrous creative power. It is a true story.

When I recalled it in thinking about this message, I said "No, Lord, it does not fit the scriptures or the theme of the message. It is all wrong for the occasion." He said, "Tell the story."

About 25 years ago, Judy and I were enjoying a pleasant sail up the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. We had been in St. Mary's City to visit friends and were headed to Solomons for the night enroute to South River in Annapolis. It was about this time of year, or maybe late September, and a fall sun was providing a glorious day. I was looking to one side and I spotted a danus plexippus flying past us. Well, I did not know at the time it was a danus plexippus, but I looked it up at home. At the moment, I knew it only as a Monarch Butterfly. Judy looking to the other side said, "Here comes another one." And then another one. And then a hundred. And then a thousand. And then, perhaps ten thousand. All I know is it was one boatload of butterflies! Why do we call them that anyway? The Brits know them as "flutter bys," and that seems so much more descriptive

We were smack in the middle of the southbound migration. I figured they were headed to Florida for the winter. Not so – I found out in my later reading. About five years earlier a fellow named Fred Urquhart had located the Monarchs' winter camp in a remote stand of fir trees in upland central Mexico. So these little guys were on a three thousand mile trip!

The Eastern Flight of the North American Monarchs has its summer breeding grounds in the northeastern US and Southeastern Canada covering a range of more than 300 million acres, nearly ½ million square miles. The butterflies that are hatched in the summer live about 36 weeks and are full-sized but still immature when they make their 10-12 week journey to Mexico. All hundred-million of them find their way to one pinpoint of fir forest less than 30 acres in size, only 50% larger than our new church property. There they rest, feed, and prepare for their spring flight northward to our Gulf Coast.

What an amazing story, so far. But, now things get really interesting. The females begin laying eggs on the leaves of milkweed, as that is the single food the caterpillars will eat. In about four days, the caterpillars hatch out of the eggs and feast on milkweed for about 9-14 days. After resting in a chrysalis for another 9-14 days, the Monarch will be "reborn" as a butterfly, but one that will live only six weeks or so. This process is repeated for two more overlapping 6-week generations, successively moving the Monarchs north, where once again a 36-week generation is hatched. This is a bit like the Exodus as the generation that left Egypt did not reach the Promised Land.

Think about it. This is arguably the oddest life story in all God's creation. And, by the way, just try to tell me this incredible pattern of life could have developed by chance. It would be similar to us having a 100-year life, with the same for our kids, and the grandkids. Then the great-grandkids' generation would be born to live 600 years and travel back to a pinpoint 3000 miles away where neither dad nor granddad has ever been and absolutely cannot remember. God alone has his hand in this.

Besides being nearly overwhelmed by this incredible story of God's miracles in creation, I finally got the Lord's point that there are a couple of lessons for me in this story. First, just like the Monarch survives on one single food, we also need but one spiritual food. Of course it is not milkweed, but rather the bread and cup of our Holy Communion with him and each other. With our spirits revived, we can take on great challenges associated with our great commission. While the Monarch's commission is to show the mighty creative power of God, ours is to spread the gospel of his mighty power to save us and all who will follow him. Our job differs from the Monarch's, but so does our spiritual food.

The second lesson is that the Monarch cannot become an adult butterfly without a metamorphosis. There is an interruption in the life-cycle spent in a chrysalis. We also undergo personal metamorphoses; some in the Bible who did include Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, and Saul to Paul. Beyond that even congregations undergo them. At the metamorphosis called Resurrection, our worship day even changed from the Sabbath to the first day of the week.

It seems to me that, though very alive and moving forward, our congregation will emerge from a chrysalis when we move into a new place. It won't be Canada, and it won't be Mexico, but it will be a little 20 acre pinpoint of light for the Gospel in the Northern Neck. You might say we will leave a caterpillar stage and spread our wings.

When that happens for a Monarch there is a name change; caterpillar becomes butterfly. I have been very opposed to a name change for our congregation – that stance was one part of my sincere anger. "Darn it, that name belongs to the Scripture-honoring majority." But, as we go through metamorphosis do we, like the Monarch, also need a name change? Perhaps we do, and that is why the Holy Spirit said, "Tell the story." Amen.

© S. D. Rasberry, 2013

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