On Sunday, December 8, 2023, I gave a sermon at Shalom Community Church. This is an adaptation of the sermon. Here is an audio version.

Swallowtail Catterpillar

Scripture

Malachi 3:1-4 (The Inclusive Bible)

[1] Well, pay attention! I am sending my Messenger to prepare the way for me; the One you seek will suddenly come to the Temple, the Messenger of the Covenant whom you long for will come, says God. [2] But who can endure the day of that Coming? Who can stand firm when that One appears? That day will be like a smelter’s fire, a launderer’s soap. [3] The One will preside as refiner and purifier, purifying the Children of Levi, refining them like gold and silver–then they will once again make offerings to God in righteousness. [4] Then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to God as they were in former days, in years long past.

Sermon

The Setup

Food is important to Ashley and I–I mean know it’s important to everyone but I’m talking about fresh, local, plant-first food, the kind of food that nurtures your spirit as well as your body–and so is environmental stewardship. And maybe you have things like this that are important to you. Because of this, over the years Ashley and I have “tried on” various practices that we feel align with these core values. Not all of them have stuck, but one that has is vegetable gardening.

We live, and always have, in small places like apartments and condos, and so these have always been pretty modest affairs. But this past summer, Ashley and I–and Leila and Clay–“leveled up” our gardening game. We finally said “yes” to using one of Shalom’s plots in the Community Garden at County Farm Park. For a vegetable garden. A big one.

We got a bunch of seeds from the Ann Arbor District Library’s Seed Sampler program–the Leafy Greens Bundle, the Squashes and Beans Bundle, and Mammoth Long Island Dill, all native to the Great Lakes region–and one Saturday in May we went over to our plot and planted them.

Once or week or so we’d return to TEND the garden: watering the plants, pulling weeds, and picking potato bugs off the leaves of some volunteer potatoes. A few weeks later, we had little seedlings. Our plants grew and grew until finally, by late July, our vegetable garden started yielding vegetables.

And we started harvesting and eating them.

And then harvesting and eating A LOT of them!

There were days towards the end of the summer that I was eating something from that garden for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and we STILL had leftovers to share with friends and family, including in dishes we brought to potlucks here.

Uno Oruguita

Fast forward a few months. It’s October–basically the end of the growing season–and we’re on one of our weekly trips to County Farm.

Actually, we ran into Laura Ponstein while we were there. (That wasn’t too unusual; it turns out that COMMUNITY Church plots in COMMUNITY Gardens live up to the “community” part just as much as they do the “church” and “garden” parts.) And so there we were, tending the garden, all of us, together.

And at one point Leila and Clay called us over. They’d discovered a few caterpillars munching on some dill–that Mammoth Long Island Dill–and they were excited and wondered if we could take one of them home to see if we could watch it grow into a butterfly. Now, I don’t really know the rules about this kind of thing, but Laura told us that these were swallowtail butterfly caterpillars–good to know–and that we might as well… otherwise they’d probably get eaten by birds.

And so we did.

When we got home, we made a little Mason Jar Terrarium for the caterpillar, and we looked up swallowtail butterflies, which are amazing: they’re these large, beautiful, colorful butterflies whose forked hind wings look like a swallow’s tail, hence the name. They are the favorite of butterfly collectors, the state insect of not one, not two, but SIX states (27 if you count any butterfly) AND a symbol of transformation, rebirth, and hope for the Hopi Tribe and the Blackfoot Nation.

Anyway! The whole point is that we were excited to see this butterfly and even more so after learning about its beauty and cultural significance.

And, so, just like the garden, we tended it. We made sure it had a safe home, space to crawl around, and enough food to eat. We watched that caterpillar eat, and poop, and eat and poop and get really, REALLY plump until, finally, it turned into a chrysalis!

And maybe it’s the novelty of the whole thing–I know that this is a normal part of a butterfly’s life cycle, just like it’s normal for seeds to turn into vegetables–but it still felt amazing, like a miracle… even if “just” an everyday kind of miracle. Mary Oliver has this poem The Gardener about a “simple man” tending his roses, where she writes:

Have I lived enough?

Have I loved enough?

Have I considered Right Action enough, have I come to any conclusions?

Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?

Have I endured loneliness with grace?

And while most of the time the answer to those questions–for me, anyway–is “no,” at least in this instance, it was “yes!” (Totally not the point of the poem… but still.) We had vegetables. We had a chrysalis; we were halfway to a butterfly. All we had to do was wait.

Anticipation… It’s Making Me Wait… (NCAA College Basketball 2K 😳)

And that waiting, that anticipation, it’s what Advent is all about, the often-overlooked season preceding Christmas where the open-hearted, empty-handed friends of God have recognized for millennia that when all is bleakest, we let go of our burdens and wait.1

And that’s what the text from Malachi we read earlier depicts: a beautiful people waiting for and expecting the beautiful and celebrated arrival of God.

(Malachi BTW was probably not a proper name, simply Hebrew for “My Messenger.” The real writer probably used it as a pseudonym to protect themselves from retaliation: their prophecies–just like the one we read today–have a very “God damn America” kind of vibe, just directed at Second Temple Judaism.)

And, yeah, there’s a bit of talk about refining and purifying… and people have taken those metaphors and run with them… but all Malachi is really getting at here is God’s people looking ahead and expecting and anticipating God’s arrival, and so taking stock of what they need to do to get ready. Keeping those practices, those Right Actions, that prepare the way for God, and discarding those that don’t. So that when God does finally come it’s not some scary thing but something to celebrate and, what’s more, so that there won’t even be a big difference between present reality and the coming kin-dom of God. It’s a hopeful message.2

Or at least tries to be.

It’s not easy to wait. And at Shalom we’ve been doing a lot of waiting: COVID, pastoral changes, a new building. We WERE ready to focus this Advent–this Sunday in particular–on “arriving” and “incarnation.”

And then Trump won the election. And it feels like we really NEED Advent because far from “arriving,” we find ourselves in yet another holding pattern:

  • Waiting… for the time when the “last shall be first, and the first shall be last.”3 For the world turned upside down.4
  • Waiting… for people to care more about their neighbor than they do the price of eggs.5
  • Waiting… for God’s kin-dom to come, God’s will to be done, on EARTH as in heaven. For Immanuel, God-with-us.

Waiting, in anticipation, kind of like we were for this chrysalis to transform–miraculously(?)–into a butterfly.

Becoming a Butterfly is a Dangerous Game

We diligently checked that jar, every single day. For weeks. Until one day, Ashley and the kids got home from work and school and saw movement.

They went to take a closer look and… it was NOT a butterfly in the jar.

It was a wasp.

And we were shocked and confused and disappointed; this wasn’t the outcome we were expecting. Ashley, in fact, almost couldn’t believe what she was seeing:

  • Maybe it really was a butterfly, but we’d made the terrarium too small, or didn’t give it enough food, and so it had something “wrong” with its wings.
  • Or maybe we’d been wrong about it being a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar altogether.
  • Or maybe we’d somehow gotten a wasp egg in the jar. But then there was this perfect little hole in the chrysalis where the wasp had emerged.

And eventually reality set in.

Our caterpillar–our beautiful little caterpillar who had such a promising future–had been eaten alive, from the inside out. By a wasp. Specifically, a parasitoid wasp, so called because it starts out life as a parasite, on or in the body of its host–our caterpillar–but ends up as a predator, eating the host entirely before emerging as an adult.6

Ashley, being the good, humane person that she is, SQUASHED that thing before it had a chance to sting us OR our children.

Just kidding. She took it outside and released it. We’d do that anyway but we looked it up and apparently, parasitoid wasps are beneficial to the ecosystem in general and to gardeners–like the ones we are trying to become–in particular, because they help control pests. Which is ironic because it was the CATERPILLAR that was eating our vegetables in the first place. Like a pest.

All of which means… and I say this reluctantly… that the wasp, even though it’s not what we wanted (and BTW it’s the state insect of only ONE state, and it’s a weird one: NM), is probably better than the caterpillar for both food and environmental stewardship. Which are important to us.

(Although a pollinating butterfly might give it a run for its money…)

Thinking Twice About Advent

And all this has me thinking twice about Advent. And what it means to wait… and prepare… and then to deal with disappointment when you don’t get the outcome that you LONG FOR or are expecting. Whether that outcome is a wasp instead of a butterfly, the result of an election, Mike Tyson losing to Jake Paul–like 2024 must be the YEAR of the stupid white man–Dana Nessel and the Regents of the University of Michigan pressing charges against those kids from the U-M encampment, or a new U.S. administration’s potential impact on higher education, particularly in areas like DEI.

And whether all of these disappointments might point to some HARD truth of more biblical proportions, about whether as God’s people it’s reasonable to expect that we’ll ever get what we’re hoping and striving for.

We’re the Human Beans

So. Yeah. I’ve been looking for hope, any kind of hope.

And there’s one school of thought–one I first learned from a karate mentor (of all people)–that says: OK, this isn’t the outcome we wanted. Actually, it’s terrible, but here we are.

But we have to remember that it’s also not the end, and in some ways it’s kind of like Day 1.7 Time to “go back to the drawing board” (RIP Calvin) and get back to work. And that’s because the work of making this world resemble one that we would prefer to live in–one that approaches, as Malachi might say, the world as it WILL look when God arrives–is a hard, thankless job. It’s a grind. And disappointment happens, and mistakes, and burnout, but the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice.8 A better world is possible, and we can’t lose sight of that.9

And that is a hopeful sentiment, especially when it comes to the election. But, I’ll be honest, it’s not sitting quite right with me this time around. Because it seems like it’s a PARTICULARLY hopeful sentiment… for people who look like me. The kind of people who seem pretty good at staying in power no matter which side’s in charge, the kind of people who can afford to wait, the kind of people I wasn’t really worried about to begin with.

We’re the Very Hungry Caterpillar

Which has me thinking that maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Maybe we’re all just open-hearted, empty-handed caterpillars right now, letting go of our burdens and waiting to see if, at God’s arrival, we’ll have become butterflies (or wasps). Hoping for–and working towards–the butterfly, but letting go of the outcome.

Or maybe, IF we allow ourselves to be honest, we don’t trust God right now to swoop in and sort things out. God’s track record is pretty questionable as of late, and besides, the last time anything swooped in, it was a bird, and it ate us.

Which might mean that we can do is see this as an invitation to not just action or Right Action but Right Action with creativity, the kind of creativity that only comes from places of darkness. Because we know from experience that when things are going well, we can get pretty comfortable with the powers and principalities of this world. But when they’re NOT, we can finally(?) get motivated to be the change we want to see in the world. And I hate to say it, but things feel pretty dark and bleak right now; we’ve got a lot to work with, a lot that we can turn into fuel for creative Right Action.

We’re the Alien from Inner Space

Or maybe that’s not the right move, either. Maybe we’re not the caterpillar at all; maybe… we’re the parasite, inside the host. The enemy, it turns out, wasn’t out there, it was within us and was us, the whole time.10

And this cosmic story that we tell ourselves we’re apart of, especially during seasons like Advent, with its protagonists and antagonists and its concern with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul it turns out, isn’t even fair. IRL, there ARE NO real protagonists and antagonists. Wasps are good for food and environmental stewardship, too.11

Devil’s Advocate

And I’ll just say it. I know we’re at church, about to celebrate Christmas. But maybe, just maybe, there is no cosmic story. And it would be really good for us to snap out of our stubborn(?) belief that there is one so that we can stop being so good at tolerating disappointment. There’s a lot at stake when we do that, especially for people who don’t look like us.

Here Comes the Cheese Monster

But I can’t end there. Or I won’t.

More than anything, I believe that regardless of where you or I fall on any of the above… or maybe, if you’re like me, that depends on the day…12 we are here for each other. That’s something I believe in the very core of my being. And we can draw on our friendships and connections and solidarity as we pilgrimage simply, peacefully, and together.

Because yes, our community will face challenges in the coming year(s), but it also loves, laughs, and evolves, and we have this wonderful faith tradition even if we aren’t always “traditional.”13

  • Mennonites and Brethren have a 500-year history of opposing Christian nationalism–which is one of the reasons, having been a kind of Chrisitan nationalist myself in the past, that I like you guys–and that makes us well-equipped to point out its connections to Trumpers and Christian Zionism.
  • More generally: Anabaptist traditions have dealt with state repression and nationalistic fervor many times over the centuries.
  • And our faith communities–and we have a broad umbrella of them here at Shalom–have always responded in situations like these by rooting our churches and the communities we’re a part of more deeply in our shared opposition to racism and consumerism and militarism14 AND our commitment to what Jesus called the already and not yet kin-dom of God.

It is Advent. There is no doubt about that. And we never know quite who we are in the story.

But God-willing, next summer, Ashley and I–and Leila and Clay–will be tending a garden at County Farm, together, with Laura, and I hope, even trust, that in the same way, and above all, TOGETHER, we will face whatever challenges come our way, until God breaks into a broken world again.

Amen.

Categories: talks

  1. Homebrewed Christianity ↩

  2. Lectiocast ↩

  3. “Ghost of Tom Joad” by Bruce Springstein and Rage Against the Machine, even though that’s really a Lent song… ↩

  4. Hamilton ↩

  5. You know who you are! ↩

  6. Natural History Museum ↩

  7. Us ↩

  8. MLK Jr. ↩

  9. Jon Stewart ↩

  10. Chestburster from Alien ↩

  11. Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us ↩

  12. “Lights Light Up” by Fenne Lily ↩

  13. Gerald Clarke, Native American and Cahuilla artist ↩

  14. MLK Jr., again ↩