Sermon: Renewed and Set Free!

They asked a biologist friend to explain what had happened. The scientist said that the difficult struggle to emerge from the small hole actually pushes liquids from deep inside the butterfly's body cavity into the tiny capillaries in the wings, where they harden to complete the healthy and beautiful butterfly. Without the struggle, there are no wings.

The Butterfly has long been a symbol of Christ's resurrection and the new Life that emerged from that ancient tomb to change the world. But it was not until I read this story that I understood the depths of why that might be so. "Without the struggle, there are no wings." Without death there is no New LIFE! Without letting go there is no future to embrace.

Mary of Mandela knew about the struggle, the death, the letting go, but that was all she knew as she came in the dark, alone with her grief, embracing her agony, holding tight to the painful memory of what was and the tortured defeat of what might have been. Grief and anger hung around her shoulders like a lead weight as she walked. How could he desert her? She still needed him! How could he let this happen? What was she going to do without him? How could her life possibly go on?

We know those feelings don't we? They come to all of us in the wake of a great loss. Fear, pain, uncertainty and a deep, deep hole in the very center of our soul. Why? How? What now? We know the questions all too well.

It's no wonder Mary was not comforted by the emptiness of the tomb. It meant nothing to her but more pain, more loss, more grief. Looking at the emptiness of the tomb she could not see the glimmers of the new life that was already taking flight in her soul. A vision of angels didn't even ease her agony; their question simply rubbed like salt in the wound of her aching soul, "Woman, why do you weep?"

She flung an answer into the empty coldness of the tomb and then turned around. Perhaps a rustling among the flowers caught her attention. Perhaps she caught sight of a butterfly in flight. Perhaps she simply turned away from the emptiness, ready to make her long agonizing journey home. And when she did, she saw a gardener -one whose job it is to nurture new life. Even in her misunderstanding, her soul was trying to break free.

"Mary," he spoke her name and her eyes were suddenly opened. "Mary," he spoke her name and a new day dawned. "Mary," he spoke her name and her heart took flight. "Mary, do not hold on to me. Mary, do not cling to the past. Do not stay beside this empty tomb. Mary, go to your friends and mine and tell them. Fly, Mary, fly free. Become my dance, Mary; sing my song, Mary; tell my story, share my life. Live for me!"

Her name was Amalia. She and her husband Adriano, both in their thirties, came to worship one day. During the sharing of joys and concerns, she stood and addressed the congregation. "I came today to say thank you;" she said, "thank you for all the months you have been praying for me when you didn't even know me. I can't even begin to tell you what it meant to me."

As I got to know Amalia and Adriano, I learned a bit more of her story. It seems that when Amalia was diagnosed with breast cancer, Joyce, a member of the congregation, herself a breast cancer survivor, went to visit Amalia. Before they met in Amalia's hospital room the two women did not know each other or realize just how intertwined their lives would become. Joyce asked Amalia if it would be all right if she put her name on the congregation's prayer list. "Yes," Amalia said. "I need all the help I can get. But why would they pray for me, they don't even know me?"

"I know you," Joyce replied. "That's good enough for them."

Talking to me about what followed that first meeting Amalia shared her journey of transformation. Here's some of what I remember of her story:

"I'm a completely different person now than I was before my diagnosis," she said "Then I worked in a large corporation in downtown Chicago. I was driven to succeed. Money and the things it could buy me were what mattered most in my life. Cancer stopped me cold and drove me to my knees. I had more or less believed in God. I had more or less believed that Jesus was God's son, that he rose from the dead and that somehow, because my parents had me baptized, his resurrection guaranteed me an easy life. But that was pretty much it. I believed, but rarely felt the need to go to church, pray, or even think about God. And I certainly didn't know Jesus as a friend or companion.

"Through all the surgeries and the long months of treatment, I began to search for alternative treatments, for a cure, and eventually for God. The more I searched the more I was pulled into prayer, not just the kind of prayer that says, 'God, please cure me;' but the kind of prayer that says, 'God, please show me how you want me to live, no matter how many days that might be.'

"Gradually I began to feel God's love embracing me. Gradually I began to sense the powerful presence of the Spirit holding me, guiding me, showing me step by step the way to LIFE. Gradually I began to hear the echoes of Christ speaking my name; sometimes with the accent of Joyce's love, sometimes through the knowledge that people who didn't even know me were praying for me; sometimes in the flight of a butterfly; sometimes in the sounds of birds; sometimes just in the stillness of my own heart. The resurrection became, for me, not just something that happened along time ago to someone named Jesus, but something that was happening in my life, in my soul, in my entire being. It was as if Christ took up permanent residence in my heart.

"I know this isn't true for everyone. I know while I was going through it if anyone told me that this might be true, I would have said, "you were crazy!" But for me, the way I feel now , the freedom and joy I experience every day, well it makes me say that for me the cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. Whether I live another day, another week, another year or another forty, I will really live and that's what matters."

Like a butterfly, emerging from the cocoon, Amalia flies, free and filled with joy! God can and will and does use every experience of our lives to grow us into the beautiful creatures we were created from the beginning to become. I don't believe that God sends the struggle or the pain. Such things are just a part of life. But God does work through them. God does use them. The point of Easter, the point of the resurrection for me is not the empty tomb any more than the point of a butterfly is an empty chrysalis. The point is to live, to really live in the fullness of God's love.

Mary did not begin her freedom flight until her eyes were opened and she recognized the Living Christ. Amalia's soul did not soar until she came to know the Living Christ alive in her heart and see what was true from the beginning God was with her -through it all. Wherever you are today, struggling to let go, locked in the dark tomb of your chrysalis, laboring to emerge from your tomb, or ready to try your wings, know this: the power of God's life-renewing transforming love is at work through it all. Christ lives in you! God's deepest desire for your life is that you fly free on the winds of the spirit and dance on the wings of grace! Amen.