The Easter Season
As many of you probably already know, Easter is not just the Sunday where everyone dresses up as best they can, goes to church, smells the white lilies, sings: “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” and then goes home to find Easter eggs and baskets. Easter is a church season which last 7 weeks! EASTERTIDE!!! And yet, every Day is Easter!
O that we could know, as Christians, that we can live in the assurance and trust that we are a part of the power of the resurrection. I have heard people often say they wish Christmas could be all year around, but rarely do people want Easter all year around.
I do understand that. Christmas is presents and warmth and party and hope in the darkness. Christmas is a special highlight marking the dreariness of the long winter nights beginning to get shorter. But Easter all year around means we can be a part of the true power and meaning of the resurrection! And that we are. As a Christian Church (Disciple of Christ) we have communion every Sunday, which means we are Easter people. People who remember the suffering that Jesus did and are grateful that God gave this man to us, so that we know God empathizes with us when we suffer. And we know that we can be risen again in our lives, just as Jesus showed us in his resurrection.
From my sermon on Sunday:
according to “Scientific American” this is what happens in a cocoon:
First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out. But the contents of the pupa are not entirely an amorphous mess. Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. Before hatching, when a caterpillar is still developing inside its egg, it grows an imaginal disc for each of the adult body parts it will need as a mature butterfly or moth—discs for its eyes, for its wings, its legs and so on . . . Some caterpillars walk around with tiny rudimentary wings tucked inside their bodies, though you would never know it by looking at them. Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues except for the imaginal discs, those discs use the protein-rich soup all around them to fuel the rapid cell division required to [form all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth].
So, before a caterpillar can become a butterfly, it has to allow itself to suffer a tremendous amount of loss. Loss physically and loss of itself. It will never be able to walk around on all those legs and eat leaves like it used to. But the hints of who it would one day become were always within it, even in the egg. And before it could develop those wings to fly and the proboscis could sip the sweet nectar from the flowers, this crawling leaf eating creature had to dissolve.
This is what we are promised, through Christ, when we suffer on this earth, that even as human beings we can become good and loving and compassionate human beings anew. And through that compassion and unconditional love and non judgment of all others, we will experience the wings of joy and the nectar of sweet love! Both human and godly! This is what Jesus came to this earth to share with us, this is what Easter is all about! God is love! Jesus is our Savior from hopelessness! Life is about Joy! We are witnesses and we are the Embodiment to all the possibility for goodness that this earth knows! May this year bring us all the sweet, sweet nectar of hope and the wings of Bliss! AMEN
As many of you probably already know, Easter is not just the Sunday where everyone dresses up as best they can, goes to church, smells the white lilies, sings: “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” and then goes home to find Easter eggs and baskets. Easter is a church season which last 7 weeks! EASTERTIDE!!! And yet, every Day is Easter!
O that we could know, as Christians, that we can live in the assurance and trust that we are a part of the power of the resurrection. I have heard people often say they wish Christmas could be all year around, but rarely do people want Easter all year around.
I do understand that. Christmas is presents and warmth and party and hope in the darkness. Christmas is a special highlight marking the dreariness of the long winter nights beginning to get shorter. But Easter all year around means we can be a part of the true power and meaning of the resurrection! And that we are. As a Christian Church (Disciple of Christ) we have communion every Sunday, which means we are Easter people. People who remember the suffering that Jesus did and are grateful that God gave this man to us, so that we know God empathizes with us when we suffer. And we know that we can be risen again in our lives, just as Jesus showed us in his resurrection.
From my sermon on Sunday:
according to “Scientific American” this is what happens in a cocoon:
First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out. But the contents of the pupa are not entirely an amorphous mess. Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. Before hatching, when a caterpillar is still developing inside its egg, it grows an imaginal disc for each of the adult body parts it will need as a mature butterfly or moth—discs for its eyes, for its wings, its legs and so on . . . Some caterpillars walk around with tiny rudimentary wings tucked inside their bodies, though you would never know it by looking at them. Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues except for the imaginal discs, those discs use the protein-rich soup all around them to fuel the rapid cell division required to [form all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth].
So, before a caterpillar can become a butterfly, it has to allow itself to suffer a tremendous amount of loss. Loss physically and loss of itself. It will never be able to walk around on all those legs and eat leaves like it used to. But the hints of who it would one day become were always within it, even in the egg. And before it could develop those wings to fly and the proboscis could sip the sweet nectar from the flowers, this crawling leaf eating creature had to dissolve.
This is what we are promised, through Christ, when we suffer on this earth, that even as human beings we can become good and loving and compassionate human beings anew. And through that compassion and unconditional love and non judgment of all others, we will experience the wings of joy and the nectar of sweet love! Both human and godly! This is what Jesus came to this earth to share with us, this is what Easter is all about! God is love! Jesus is our Savior from hopelessness! Life is about Joy! We are witnesses and we are the Embodiment to all the possibility for goodness that this earth knows! May this year bring us all the sweet, sweet nectar of hope and the wings of Bliss! AMEN
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