Life Comes In the Morning
“Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” (Joshua 5:9)
Joshua 5:9-12; Luke 15: 11-24
A sermon delivered on March 18, 2007
Dr. Thomas J. Boone, Ph.D.

A story is told of an anxious child who decided that a butterfly’s life in a cocoon rnust’ve been pitiful. She saw how large butterflies are and how they like to fly, but then she discovered in school that they spent a lot of time in a crusty cramped compartment as a chrysalis. After school she went home and looked in a tree where she had seen a cocoon. “I need to let this butterfly out of its cocoon because it doesn’t like being trapped like that,” she thought to herself. So, she pulled the cocoon off its branch, and noticed that it was on there very tightly, almost as if it were meant to be anchored. She tried to peel open the cocoon, but noticed that it wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be, almost as if that cocoon was supposed to be hard and difficult to break. But, with a bit of effort she was able to open it, expecting to see a grateful butterfly emerge and fly away from its prison. Instead, what she saw was a bunch of goo and she tossed it aside disgusted that her fingers had become spoiled with its contents.

Life in the cocoon may not be the most pleasant of experiences in a butterfly’s life, but without surviving its chrysalis stage a caterpillar will never experience the glory of being a butterfly. And, like a chrysalis, our own periods of transformation can be long, uncomfortable, and chaotic. Each of us knows this if we’ve lived beyond our thirties, and I think a few of you have. Of course, who wouldn’t agree that all of life is a series of one transformation after another. I thought in my twenties that one day I would “get there,” but now I’ve come to see that “getting there” isn’t the goal. It’s the process that’s the point.

A Methodist preacher and theologian by the name of Aiden Tozer wrote keen words on this subject. “Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust” (The Pursuit of God, 47). In other words, let’s not interrupt the process of transformation lest we jeopardize becoming who or what He’s destined us to be.

I think that if I were listening to this sermon I might try to fmd some sort of practical application like taking my time with a painting project at home, or procrastinating on a project that should’ve been done yesterday. But, my goal isn’t to justify slower approaches to house projects, so if you’re elbowing each other you need to stop. There is, though, an application for us if we turn our eyes toward a more spiritual stance.

The Hebrews spent hundreds of years becoming the nation of Israel. They started as a loosely connected, wandering, and opportunistic band of nomads, which ended up in Egypt as slaves. Eventually a man called Moses rose up to lead them out of their enslaved condition, but for sake of their grumbling they spent forty years wandering m the desert to get to a place that should’ve taken not even a year. If only GPS had been invented then, and no I don’t want to hear any jokes about how it would’ve been different if a woman had been an the driver’s seat because she would’ve stopped to get directions.

For Israel, this desert sojourn, as toilsome as it was, helped transform them from wandering and enslaved nomads to a people united through struggle to become God’s people The day they emerged from their cocoon was a memorable one, and they gloried in these words of God “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” Finally, after years of being without an identity, they were God’s people Finally, after years of not knowing which place to call home, they were in their new land. Finally, after years of “not yet,” they had arrived. Finally, they were unshackled from their past.

Israel’s transformation took years to achieve, but there did come a day when they took wing as butterflies. The process itself was sloppy, chaotic, and painful. It caused bruises where they didn’t want bruises. They saw loss among people they loved and didn’t want to lose. They spent years longing for a time in history they had thought was better, not realizing that their glory lay before them rather than behind them.

One lesson for us is that as long as true transformation takes God wants us to get to the party. He may lead us down a path of painful transformation where it seems like we’re doing more zig-zagging than we are getting anywhere straight away. But as any sailor knows, even the zig-zags are forward movement, it just doesn’t appear that way immediately.

This is what I want to focus on in the story of the Prodigal Son. The son began as many of our children do, under his parents’ protective wings. Life there was secure, but it was marked by a curiosity of what life would be like without that security. He had a lot while under his father’s care, but somehow that wasn’t enough. He wanted to launch out on his own, be his own man, and he found out that life with his parents wasn’t all that bad after all.

His transformation was characterized by foolish spending practices that led to bankruptcy. He didn’t start out sleeping with pigs, but he certainly ended up that way. One night, after he had finally had enough, he looked around and wondered, “How did I ever get here?” We don’t know all the details, but whatever happened to him, this young man’s experience wasn’t pleasant, it was unfruitful, and it proved him wrong about all he had thought should have been right. So he comes back to the father, a humbled human; the cocoon opens and out comes the butterfly.

So often we get stuck on the way things should be, that we forget the importance of what happens while we get there I suppose that’s a natural consequence of living in a culture that elevates the superstar and leaves unmentioned the anxious training and defeats. Our children see someone in leadership in their fifties and emerge from college thinking that’s the way they need to be, but what they don’t see are the thirty years it took to become a true leader. We see the:final product of an artist and don’t pay heed to the countless hours of frustrating rejection that’s involved in any work of creativity. Life is a constant process of transformation, as Parliamentarian Harold Wilson once said, ‘He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”

I think we all know this intuitively, but how often do we peer into the process as we would through the smokestack of a steamboat passing under a bridge, and become discontent with the inner workings of transformation and rush headlong to finish? How often do we become discontent with transformation without recognizing it for what it truly is: God’s providence in perfect motion.

It was natural for the Hebrews to complain about .their poor lot in the desert because, after all, they had received the promises of God. They were to inherit the land of milk and honey! So what was this desert all about? The prodigal son, I’m sure, at one time felt that his circumstances were unjust, not fitting for someone who had come from a family of means. It would’ve been natural to complain about his dismal, existence in a pig sty. It would have been natural for him, to grumble about the way people took advantage of him.

But eventually something happened in the Israelites and the prodigal son: transformation gave birth to humility. The cracks of the cocoon began to appear, and soon a butterfly emerged. The Israelites saw victory upon victory in the Promised Land. The prodigal son was prodigal no more, as he donned the honored coat of the family and ate the fattened calf. The party could begin, because the transformation had gone forward uninterrupted.

We want the party, but we don’t like the process that gets us there. That’s human nature. As Tozer wrote, there is a real danger when we interrupt that process. The butterfly will die if we insist on opening the cocoon too early. The gooey muck of transformation must be allowed to happen, if we are to emerge closer to what God intends us to be, And, if we rush too quickly, we’ll have a real mess on our hands.

This is the first sermon that I’m privileged to preach among you as your Interim Pastor. This means two things. On one hand, I am your Pastor while you’re looking for another one. That means I take my role seriously when it comes to visiting you in the hospital, when you’re at your breaking points personally, and when you need to be heard. Invite me to your homes, let’s go have coffee or eat meals together. Let’s golf; sail, and learn about each other. Let’s do the stuff that pastor’s and congregations do together, and do it with joy. I will love you, serve you, and work hard for you as any good Pastor would.

On the other hand, I have an additional role, which is different from a called Pastor. I’m here to help you through your transformation that began several years ago. I’m here to help ensure that this process of transformation take its due course, even if it means discomfort. We will not agree about everything, but on two points I hope we do agree at the outset.

First, I want to shut down all conversation about closing the doors of Central Presbyterian Church, and I want to give no one outside this church any further cause for having such conversations. God did not bring you to this place in history, and entrust this church to your care, with that intention in mind. This church needs to survive, and this transformation you’ve been going through has been a process of figuring out how to survive. I don’t know what the answer is yet, and apparently you don’t either or else I’d not be here as an Interim preaching to a sanctuary that is 1/4 full. I do know that the answer doesn’t lie behind us; it lies somewhere ahead of us. So I intend to visit you in groups and as individuals to begin the dialogue, of what needs to happen here. And I see this happening in two stages. First, I want to meet with groups of like minds and hear different, unopposed views of what happened to get to where you are now, and your opinion of what we can do together to change the tide. Second, when we’re ready, we will meet in small groups where we think differently about what happened and how to get things moving toward growth. Eventually, you’ll be ready to decide together on what needs to happen here not only to grow, but to ensure that your mission to the community will live beyond your years.

A second point on which I hope we can agree, is that we need to stop criticizing each other and make every effort to more fully understand each other. Here are some basic places I think we can begin. First, there is our identity. We are one family of Christ-followers in the Presbyterian tradition. Second, there is what we do because of who we are. Our faith tradition calls us to be good disciples, good Presbyterians, and good evangelists. We need to learn how to put our best foot forward at all times when we gather, whether for worship or otherwise. Whether you’re a pillar of this church, a rock-solid faithful Centralite, or a newer member, we must do these things, and if we’ve not done them we must get to the point where we are.

The future of this church depends on your agreeing with me on these points. I’m here to help, and to love you through it, but I can only help if you let me. .I’ll be faithful to do my job; be faithful to do yours with me. I know you can. So let’s begin; life’s too short to stay where we are. And with that we await the promise of new life that is ours to celebrate come Resurrection morning. Amen.