April 27, 2025 Reflection

When I offered to take on the leadership of this morning’s service, picking up Anne’s plans for today, I assumed that on this first Sunday after Easter she would be preaching on one of the resurrection stories that are always in the lectionary this time of year.  I knew that theme she had chosen was “metamorphosis.” Remembering that we had done an Easter series called emerge a few years ago in which we used the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly as our central metaphor, I was certain I had numerous sermons in my files I could pull out and preach for you this morning.

And then I saw that the scripture reading she chose for today was not a resurrection appearance. Instead Anne has chosen for us today a reading from the season of lent which takes us right into the intersection of death and resurrection.

“Very truly I tell you” says Jesus “unless a grain of wheat fall into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Surely Anne’s focus on metamorphosis is meant to invite  us to ponder the transformation that happens when what has been at one time, no longer exists because it has changed into something else, something that has come forth from what has been, is more abundant than what has been, yet is barely recognizable in its new reality even though the imprint of its former self is still there.

I wonder if what she is really wanting us to ponder this morning is the mystery of how it is that what we cannot control and protect in our lives, what we can’t stop from happening can somehow become a place of new creation and renewed purpose.

It doesn’t escape me that Anne’s congregation, Summerland United Church, has recently gone through their own metamorphosis, or at least they are in the process of metamorphosis.  During Anne’s tenure with them, they have made the decision to sell their church building  and the property it sits on to move in with the local Anglican church. Due to circumstances beyond their control and realities from which they could not protect themselves, namely the increased secularization of our world, they have chosen to allow their former way of being church to die. By doing that not only are they experiencing a new lease on life as a community of faith as they join together with the Anglicans for all kinds of shared ministry experiences, they let go of their property so that there could be a place for low incoming housing in their community.  It’s a beautiful example of a single grain of wheat falling to the ground, breaking open and bearing much fruit.

It also doesn’t escape me that Anne herself has undergone a metamorphosis over the last several years. Many of you  know that Anne was raised in the United Church on Berkley Road  that shut its doors in order to become Mount Seymour United back in 1989.  Like many of us, she spent a season of her life exploring her faith outside of the church.  I can still remember her showing up in my office to tell me about the dream she had which called her back to the church of her childhood.  I could not have known that day that what would emerge from the single seed of that dream would take Anne on a journey of becoming our Children and Family Minister, then getting an undergraduate degree in theology, then enrolling at the Center for Christian Studies in Winnipeg in their Diaconal Ministry program and then the completion of a Masters of Divinity from the Atlantic School of Theology culminating with her ordination last year. The young Anne who sat in my office that day is barely recognizable in the confident and competent leader she has become. She has let go and been broken open, buried in the ground of uncertainty and disorientation several times over until she is finally flourishing in the calling  she was meant for. Which is why I really hope there is another opportunity for her to come and lead worship with you so those of you who have known her in the past can see that metamorphosis before your eyes.

Maybe Anne would have spoken to us today about those experiences of metamorphosis she has gone through both with her congregation and in her own life these last few years.  Or perhaps she would have talked to us about the intersection of death and resurrection in our own church and in our own lives.

One of the things that really struck me in Anne’s description of today’s theme written in our e-news was the way she talked about change being inevitable in our lives and actually necessary for animating our spirits and finding renewed purpose in life.

As you know, I have been undergoing a lot of change in my own life. A big part of that change has come about from circumstances beyond my control, the death of my partner that I was unable to prevent and the way I was unable to protect my children from experiencing the loss of their parent. Although I may look a lot the same on the outside, I am not the same person I was seven months ago on the inside. My life as I have known it has been shattered and I have been broken open like never before. As part of my own process of change and transformation, which I am nowhere near completing, I have had to revisit my purpose in life. I have also come to realize that there will be opportunities that will present themselves to me now that would not otherwise have been.  I am coming to trust that one day I will flourish once again.

And the same is true for you as a community of faith.  You are also in a time of change.  It’s not something you asked for or deserved. It’s not anything you could have protected yourself from or controlled. During this time of change you are going to have to revisit your purpose and I trust that although you might not be feeling this way today, your spirits will be animated as you allow yourselves to be made new, as you yield to your own unfolding.

I am not a gardener but I know enough to know that after a seed is buried in the ground you don’t go out in the backyard to dig it up to see how its doing.  You have to wait to let nature takes it course.  Sometimes it can seem like the seeds that have been buried deep in the soil are never going to take root.  Sometimes the plant or the tree doesn’t bloom the first season or the season after that or even the season after that. We have to trust and be patient that the Creator is at work in what is yet unseen.

I’m not a gardener but I know enough to know that when new growth does appear, if you go looking for the seed that the new plant grew out of, you will no longer recognize it.  And yet, the imprint of the seed will always be there in the new growth.

These last few weeks as I have been winding down my ministry with you, preparing for the new life that awaits me, whatever that may look like and as you prepare for the same, I’ve been looking back on my 20 year ministry here with you.  The other night when I met with the Worship and Christian Development team for the last time I talked about what a typical worship service looked like when I first arrived here.  There was a choir, wearing choir gowns that processed into the church at the beginning of every service, sat in the choir loft and sang an anthem every week. The congregation sang out of hymnbooks because there was no screen to project the words. We had three scripture readings every week including a responsive psalm with sung refrain. There was a call to worship, a prayer of confession and a prayer of absolution every week. There were many communal prayers and those prayers were printed in paper bulletins along with the weekly announcements. We certainly did not set up spiritual practice stations around the perimeter of the sanctuary, nor did we get out of our seats and move around unless of course we were passing the peace.  Things looked very different then than they do now and yet the imprint of the seed of Christ buried in our life together is the same. 

Over the years, we have “buried” a lot of our old traditions. If we went back another 20 years, we would find even more things that the church has either allowed to die or have died of their own volition because change is a constant part of life. And although I know there are things we have lost over the years that many of us still lament losing, I suspect that there are aspects of every death that bury things that actually need to be buried once and for all.

Locked up in the tomb with Jesus was the violence, injustice and betrayal he experienced on the cross along with all the false beliefs that might and hatred are stronger than love.

There are grave yards all over the world are full of humanity’s regrets and mistakes, harmful habits, demons that were never overcome and suffering that was never redeemed on this side of death. If we look around our world today I’m sure we could find lots of things that we would like to throw in a hole and cover up until they have no hope of  ever taking root again.

The promise of the gospel around which we gather in this Easter season is that what we cannot redeem and make new, God can and what we let go of and lay to rest can actually break open and metamorphosize into something beautiful and far beyond our limited imagination. May it be so for us and for the world we love.