February 14th, 2021: "Metamorphosis"
The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland
“Metamorphosis”
Rev. Amy Morgan
February 14, 2021
Mark 9:2-9
2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.
4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"
8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
“This is when Jesus was taken up into heaven, right?”
I was packed into a tiny, ancient chapel on a little island in Greece with several other women on a writing retreat. Being the only pastor in the group, the other ladies figured I could decipher the meaning of the icon we were examining. Jesus is depicted in the center in a gleaming white robe, standing above three of his kneeling disciples. Haloed figures stand to Jesus’s right and left. I could see how they might think this icon depicted the ascension.
But the words etched on the top of the icon revealed its true meaning. I sounded out the Greek letters – “metamorphosis.” At first, I couldn’t recall an episode in Jesus’s life known as the metamorphosis. On closer inspection, I realized Jesus was standing on top of a mountain, and one of the figures next to Jesus held a book, which I knew represented the law, meaning that was Moses. I finally put it all together.
“This isn’t when Jesus was taken up into heaven,” I explained to my fellow writers. “It’s the transfiguration – the metamorphosis.”
Until I realized the Greek word for the transfiguration was metamorphosis, I had never thought of this episode as a process. It all seems to happen so quickly. Jesus and a select few of his disciples take a jaunt up a mountain, and suddenly there he is all shiny and glorious and hanging out with some ancient heroes of the faith. When you think about the transfiguration as metamorphosis, it takes on a whole different meaning.
Most often, we think about the process of metamorphosis in reference to butterflies or moths. We love to teach children about this amazing and beautiful process. A squiggly little caterpillar winds itself up in a snuggly cocoon, and one day, a pretty, pretty butterfly emerges. Well, this week, I found out what really happens in that cocoon. Just a warning, if you’re easily grossed out, you might want to mute this part if you can.
According to the Scientific American website, here’s what the process of metamorphosis looks like: “First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out.”
In other words, metamorphosis is messy. And no one knew that better than Jesus. Just before his transfiguration, Jesus reveals to his disciples that he will suffer and die and be raised after three days. On the way down the mountain after his transfiguration, Jesus again talks about being raised from the dead. Jesus’s mountaintop metamorphosis is part of a larger transformation, a microcosm of the process he has been going through since his baptism, a process that will involve a messy death that dissolves every hope he inspired. His resurrection, like his transfiguration, is not sudden and simple and miraculously beautiful. Jesus must allow his divine and human natures to melt together, dissolving into one another. He must submit himself to destructive forces. There is mess and misery in the miracle of metamorphosis.
But, says Scientific American, the contents of the cocoon “are not entirely an amorphous mess. Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. Before hatching, when a caterpillar is still developing inside its egg, it grows an imaginal disc for each of the adult body parts it will need as a mature butterfly or moth—discs for its eyes, for its wings, its legs and so on…Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues except for the imaginal discs, those discs use the protein-rich soup all around them to fuel the rapid cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes…and all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth.”
Imaginal discs! What a fantastic phrase. Even in the mess of metamorphosis, the essential elements of what will emerge from this process remain intact. There is something that survives in the soupy mess that imagines what will come to be.
This is what the transfiguration of Jesus really shows us. It isn’t the beauty of the butterfly, the glory of the ascension. The transfiguration allows us to see the imaginal discs of God’s glory, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the love of God overshadowing Jesus. These are the things that cannot be disintegrated in the process of Jesus’s metamorphosis, even when the cross strips Jesus of everything else.
Imaginal discs start out as these tiny groups of cells – maybe only 50 or so – and then explode with growth, expanding to 50,000 cells or more until they form a complete leg or wing and finally, a butterfly, a new creation. And they are able to do that because of the soupy mess inside the cocoon. That gooey grossness becomes a powerful force for transformation and growth.
And that’s just what happens with Jesus. His messy life and death become the transforming power, not just for his own resurrection, but for the metamorphosis of the whole creation. The small glimpse of glory, guidance, and grace we are given in the transfiguration multiplies exponentially through his death and resurrection, through the spread of the gospel, through the life of the church, through you and through me. That powerful force for transformation and growth continues the process of metamorphosis, continues the process of making all things new.
Transfiguration Sunday is our opportunity to peek inside the chrysalis of Jesus’s metamorphosis, to glimpse those imaginal discs, the true essence of what Jesus will become in his resurrected glory. In all the mess of clueless disciples, faithless followers, adversarial religious elites, and the general suffering and pain of humanity, the transfiguration is the promise that something glorious and wonderful will come of this, that the very things that are his undoing will ultimately nourish new life.
And if we listen to Jesus, as God commanded, we will find ourselves participating in the ongoing metamorphosis of the whole creation.
But first, we must be willing to undergo our own messy metamorphosis. It is only natural and human for us to seek out the comfort of constancy, to find equilibrium and stability. And if we all want to keep inching along with our noses in the dust, that’s fine. But when the possibility of flight and beauty and freedom is available to us, we should be motivated to change. That change might require us to dissolve every fiber of our being that doesn’t belong in our new life. It might be a painful and messy process. But, as my mother, who adores butterflies, said, it’s “probably worth going through so you can go from crawling in the dirt to flying all over.”
Personal transformation, however, is not the endgame. The whole creation, Paul says, is groaning together in pain, is churning in the soupy mess of metamorphosis. And as part of that soupy mess, we also have the power to ignite the division and expansion and growth of those imaginal discs, those clusters of imaginative possibility. We can nourish and empower the imaginal discs of the church to grow into the hands and feet and heart and mind of Christ. We can nourish and empower our community, our neighbors and friends and families, our nation and our world to grow in the glory, guidance, and grace of God.
In a meeting I was in this week, someone remarked that they couldn’t easily articulate what the mission of the church is. Many of us support non-profits that are clear about the difference they make in the world. Educate children. End poverty. Provide clean water. They can show you the transformation taking place. Young people with college degrees. Decreasing statistics on poverty. The number of wells installed.
But what about the church? We don’t have notches in our belts for souls saved. The number of members or dollars in our bank account don’t paint a compelling picture of transformation. People aren’t moved by the number of worship services we hold or church meetings we’ve attended. We support other missions in the community, but it seems disingenuous to claim their transforming work as our own. What is it the church does?
There may be no more essential question in our time, and I’ll be inviting us all to explore that more deeply in the months ahead. But I will say this for now: unless the church is in the business of transformation – metamorphosis – transfiguration – it is not in business at all. The church of Jesus Christ is not a place that exists primarily for the comfort of souls or the preservation of doctrine or even the practice of faith. All those things may very well occur in the church, but it they don’t occur to the purpose of transforming individual lives and the whole creation, they have missed the mark.
As Presbyterians, it may be hard for us to hear that church should be messy. But a messy church is one that is working in the soup of metamorphosis, that is allowing itself to dissolve all the trappings of what it once was so that it can emerge as something new and glorious. There are plenty of churches right now that are still trying to crawl around in the dirt, happier to be what they were, even if that means they are going nowhere slowly. There are also plenty of churches that think they can be transformed in the blink of an eye, that if they just find the right pastor or have a better children’s program or put up a new website – they can bypass the painful, messy part of metamorphosis.
But we are not those churches. We are in the messy muck of metamorphosis. Wrapped in a cocoon of love for each other, we are slowly dissolving our notions of what the church once was – 20 years ago or 12 months ago. We are dissolving our sense of what the church is supposed to do and be. We are dissolving our vision of what the church is supposed to look like.
And right now, I’ll admit, it’s hard to see what will come of this mess we’re in. But we do have imaginal discs, little clusters of identity and possibility, waiting to multiply and grow. The glory, guidance, and grace of God are evident here. The imaginal disc of God’s glory can be seen in the music and smiles of our children, in the songs we hear and sing, in the radiance of insight and passion from our church leadership, and in the image of God shining forth from each one of you. The imaginal disc of God’s guidance can be seen in our book group and faith formation studies, in our deep conversations and in the advice and wisdom we seek and share. The imaginal disc of God’s grace can be seen in the devotion you all feel for one another, in your loving commitment to this family of God, and in all the ways God has sustained us and held us together.
On this Transfiguration Sunday, may we recognize the metamorphosis that continues in our lives, in our church, and in the world. Let us not confuse it for the triumphal ascension. There is still work to do. Jesus descended from the mountain and went right back to healing the most hopeless cases. The church is not the final product of Christ’s metamorphosis. The church is the enzyme that keeps dissolving everything we don’t need, it is the soup that feeds the imaginal discs of God’s new creation, until that time when we are ready to take flight.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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