Wombs, Tombs & Cocoons: Learning to Trust the Dark
Luke 1 & John 19
We just completed a Lenten season in worship that focused on finding love in the wrong places and culminated in our Easter reminder that Love wins. And what happened during my easter sermon was interesting: I got together with my colleague, Lori , and we spent an hour taking stock of the past 4 years or so of ministry at Lakewood UMC. Because what I wanted to say was how Love Wins at our church...
And I was blown away by all we came up with.
Sometimes it can be easy to get to the next thing without taking stock or reflecting on how far you have come! I am so proud of this church, and constantly surprised by the ways God shows up in what we are up to. After taking stock, I found that our next worship series was a perfect segue from Lent. Because I think we are in a perfect state of potentiality and possibility given all of the remarkable things that have happened here at our scrappy church.
Our next worship series is "Emerge" and for the next few weeks until Pentecost we will be exploring through scripture the slow motion metaphor of a butterfly as it emerges from a chrysalis. In many ways I find that a chrysalis is a very appropriate symbol for where we are at Lakewood UMC mid 2023, because I think we are also, like the butterfly, in a state of emergence. God is inviting us to come out and take flight!
One of my favorite quotes is from an episcopal priest, Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor in her book "Learning to Walk in the Dark: “I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light....new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”
A cocoon or chrysalis is pretty similar to Mary's womb and Jesus' tomb. Because both places were vessels for the holy, and were places of preparation for a great miracle to happen. Some of the most important expressions of divinity in scripture happened in hidden ways, or from darkness--and yet we frequently paint darkness with a negative brush!
Imagine what would be possible if we embraced and truly lived into the in between places we find ourselves: wombs, tombs, OR cocoons!
