Emerge

Oh, the colors, the beauty, the unabashed and exuberant expression of all that we are together! This celebration is like none other — brought to its fullest embodiment as we emerge and dare new heights! In the emerging of the church in the book of Acts, a series of events in the life of Peter leads him to the understanding that God shows no partiality and all are welcome in this journey of new life in Christ. Upon this rock, the Spirit builds a church that offers hope to the hopeless, strength for the weary, and new life to those who think theirs is over. Upon these things, this church will continue this mission to a world that so desperately needs a people who know the power of transformation!

Finally the moment has arrived! The butterfly launches into its new environment — the heights that are now possible through transformation into what it was always meant to be. Nothing will hold it back. When the crowds made it impossible for the friends of the paralytic to get him to Jesus, they broke through the roof of the home where Jesus was. We too can be roof-breakers, we can “raise the roof” into new ways of moving and being in the world. What was bound has been freed! Let us boldly look like, act like, know ourselves to be the healed and freed people we truly are!

Stretching to the fullness of new potential, the butterfly begins to sense the
calling to new heights. Expansion of wings, however, means something profound
— it cannot ever go back into the cocoon. Not even if it wanted to. And so it is
time to leave it behind. The Israelites that left Egypt were aching for freedom and
yet when faced with the disorientation of all that was new and familiar, many
began crying to go back. Letting go of the past requires deep trust in the God
who has promised to be with us always.

Once out of the cocoon, the new butterfly has much to do to prepare for flight. Wings are not yet ready. Small and undernourished, they long for expansion — to move beyond this awkward in-between-ness. As we consider our own metamorphosis, we remember how Jesus renamed “Simon” as “Peter” — a description of “the rock” upon which the church would be built. Are we willing to accept that God’s possibilities may come in ways we never imagined, perhaps expanding our notion of who we are in this world?

In the opening of the tomb of Lazarus, in the unwrapping of his funeral clothes, the community had to face their unknowing — and perhaps disbelief — and trust that the resurrection Jesus had facilitated was real. The range of emotions was vast. As the butterfly’s cozy environment cracks further open still, it is the effort of the process of emerging that makes change possible — waking up, rolling away the stone, unwrapping what will be.

The story of faith is not one of arrival but of journey. The new butterfly’s struggle to push out of its confines produces a fissure that cannot be undone. There is no going back, the journey to a new existence has commenced. The post-resurrection story of Jesus opening the hearts of his fellow travelers along the road to Emmaus invites us to be companions of the one who will open us into the light of a new day.

As ever-emerging spiritual creatures, we cannot contain our selves — the selves God has created us to be. Coming out as people and as a church from what we have known into a new identity is filled with anxiety and unknowing. Emerging will take effort and surrendering to “the assurance of things hoped for” even though we cannot yet see what the future holds.

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