By Elizabeth Freese, preached at Earth Ministry’s 15th Annual Celebration of St. Francis: Creation-Care Sermon Contest on September 26, 2009.
Winner of the Franciscan Philanthropist Award
Background:
I originally wrote this piece earlier in the year for a Lent series on my blog called “Sustainable Life Sermons” – it was the entry for Palm Sunday and so assumes that the congregation would have just heard verses from Psalm 118 and the Palm Sunday gospel, to which I refer. We do not have time to do the readings now, but I do want to remind you that Psalm 118 is a celebration of “God’s steadfast love that endures forever” that takes “the stone that the builder refused” and makes it the “chief cornerstone” to achieve righteousness. Celebrants then walk through the “gates of righteousness.” The gospel, is, of course, the story of Jesus and his followers triumphantly marching and celebrating the reign of God in Jerusalem, despite looming violent backlash from Empire. I ask you to be in that story, recalling Holy Week, as I resurrect my Palm Sunday sermon.
“The Stone that [‘Caterpillar’] Refused”
and the Irresistible Sustainable Future – Hosanna!
I don’t think I had ever heard the detailed account of the process of metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly before reading it recently. According to evolution biologist Elisabet Sahtouris, after the caterpillar has consumed enough food and grown to almost pop, it slows and enters its chrysalis to start its dissolution. “Organizer cells” begin to gather other cells to form “imaginal buds,” which exist in a sort of parallel state with the rest of the caterpillar. These multi-cellular clusters – the imaginal buds – initiate the formation of the organs of the new creature.
However, the caterpillar still exists. Its intact immune system perceives these buds to be a threat and attacks them, presumably killing or disabling some. In the end, though, the imaginal buds grow and link with one another to such a degree that they overcome the old caterpillar form and bring the rest of the dissolved being into the form of a butterfly, which beautifully emerges when it is time.
This phenomenal story of biological change is being re-told and spread by several commentators on cultural change to demonstrate the exciting possible similarities – I’ve read it in The Cultural Creatives and in The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, for example. Their point is that at the same time we are seeing the postmodern chaos of deconstruction and crumbling Empire – analogous to the caterpillar – we are also in the midst of the powerfully innovative stages of a new culture – analogous to the butterfly. Particularly now, with all the web and wireless enabled connectivity, it is rather awesome to think of justice and sustainability activists, artists, and all others who dream of and work for a better world – awesome to think of these courageous people (such as those gathered here!) as “imaginal buds,” gaining strength and connecting to bring us all to butterfly-hood…
With that concept in my head, I almost laughed out loud when I heard President Obama talk last spring about the importance of the well-being of the company Caterpillar, which produces equipment for road construction, mining, industrial logging, and oil drilling. When Caterpillar is doing well, the fossil fuel and resource-intensive growth economy is doing well, and of, course, the growth economy is at the core of Empire’s earth-consuming culture. But, if Empire’s way begins to dissolve and if a radically new culture – a culture oriented to eco/social justice – starts to gather momentum, then “Caterpillar” – Caterpillar the company and the Caterpillar growth economy culture – in its current incarnation, would necessarily have to die or radically transform. In other words, the caterpillar and the butterfly simply cannot both thrive at once.
So, of course, we see attempts by the immune system of “Caterpillar,” to, on the one hand, strengthen the stalwarts of our Empire, such as the company Caterpillar, or the auto industry, or the engine of consumerism, or the massive banks – to somehow save the old form of being – and, on the other hand, to squash the new culture threats such as carbon taxes, mass transit, and anti-consumerist lifestyles. And, yet, if the biology analogy is true, then cultural evolution is ultimately as undeniable as biological metamorphosis!
(An important aside here is that this is by no means to demonize the people of dying companies, who deserve compassion and help with transition, or to deny our need for some natural resources or to dis our little friends the caterpillars for that matter, but simply to identify that when it is well past time to change an organizing system, it is best to surrender and to “lose life to gain it.”)
With reference to Palm Sunday’s gospel, I believe it is this undeniable, inevitable evolution – at the DNA level of culture, willed by the universe’s Creator – that Jesus and his followers stood for when they openly shouted Hosanna’s in Jerusalem at the coming of a new “kindom” culture.
Recalling again the detailed biological process, as the “organizer” extraordinaire, Jesus called disciples and formed the initial “imaginal bud” of a society oriented around profoundly different principles than those of the surrounding “Caterpillar” Roman Empire. For example, leaders in this new society would humbly ride donkeys and champion fairness, rather than careen around in multi-horse chariots and exploit the oppressed. Jesus knew the Caterpillar would attack in resistance to this new culture assertion, but he was so fully converted to the divine force of love that was pushing for change that he was willing to suffer the consequences of Caterpillar’s wrath.
Jesus’ certainty was that eventually there would be no stopping the life of the butterfly.
All he had to do (all!) was rally the beginning of its creation and provide the ultimate witness to God’s and his (Jesus’) love for this new life. In so doing – in standing faithfully for a new type of life, despite violent backlash – he proclaimed the positive future on the one hand, and illuminated the negative reality of the old Caterpillar system of being, on the other. And so his Palm Sunday and later cross witnessing drew even more people to love the butterfly’s cause.
Thus, Jesus could be “the stone that the builder refused” (or the justice challenge or the early imaginal bud) – he could be that rejected stone of the Caterpillar society of the time, because he knew that, in the end, the creators, or builders, of a new culture would make that stone integral. He knew that they, that we – these cultural innovators – would accept a “precious cornerstone” from God (the principles of love and justice) as a “foundation” whereby, as Isaiah says, “justice [is] the line and righteousness the plummet” of a new kind of society (Isa. 28:16-17).
Indeed, now our Caterpillar Empire is so bloated and so past due for change and so unsustainable that it is dying, despite any immune response to the contrary. And if there is to be any life going forward, its “chief cornerstone” will necessarily be the principles of mutual, caring community that Jesus and his followers stood up for and celebrated, even as the cross loomed. In our confrontation with ecosystem limits, these are the only principles which enable sustainable life, and so it is no accident that the essence of the current global movement for eco/social justice is hauntingly similar to that of the kindom inaugurated by Jesus long ago. In other words, The Earth Charter is the divinely inspired equivalent for today of the 10 Commandments or Jesus’ command to love thy neighbor as thyself in ancient times.
We have only to allow our full conversion to and faith in “the life of the butterfly” to participate in the exciting “new thing” that God is doing. We the Church, as carriers of Jesus’ kindom dream, can and must form more “imaginal buds” and link and strengthen them as new culture oases. We must more completely deconstruct the cultural stories, values, and habits of Empire, and set to the task of creating a beautiful community of life, along the lines of the Earth Charter and undistracted by the increasingly empty existence of “Caterpillar.” Up until now, Caterpillar was able to resist – killing or co-opting whatever butterfly initiatives emerged. But at this point its food source is dwindling and the inevitable chrysalis stage is at hand…
With Jesus’ same certainty in the ultimate outcome, the Church can initiate anew and facilitate an undeniable and irresistible new way. And, as the psalmist today directs us, transforming, or metamorphosizing, in “God’s steadfast love [that] endures forever,” we can look forward to the eventual opening of the “gates of righteousness,” or chrysalis, whereupon we can “rejoice and be glad in” a sanctified, liberated butterfly flight into the beloved earth community of God.
Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!
Amen