‘A perfect Easter moment’
What would you do if you discovered that you had a caterpillar wrangler in your congregation? Well, obviously, you’d invite them to bring their caterpillars to the Easter Sunday service and talk about what happens to caterpillars. And you’d do that especially since in your church you have a large butterfly decoration hanging from the ceiling at Easter.
A few weeks before Easter I discovered I had such a person in my congregation. Elsie is 13 and enjoys breeding caterpillars and, from them, Monarch butterflies. It is something she has been doing for almost two years. When she explained to me the life cycle of the butterfly, I knew I had to ask her to bring her expertise to church on Easter Sunday.
Like most pastors, I had used the illustration of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly as part of a children’s address before and related it to Jesus’ resurrection, but I’d never thought to have a real-life butterfly on hand, let alone be able to show the whole life cycle during an Easter service! ‘Is it likely we could get a butterfly to emerge from its chrysalis during the service?’, I asked her. ‘Maybe’, Elsie said.
She said it was possible to tell when they were likely to hatch because the chrysalises turn from green to black, and then they hatch within a few hours. On Easter Sunday, she was confident because the chrysalises were black, and the butterflies usually emerge in the morning.
So, Elsie brought along her caterpillars, eggs, chrysalises and butterflies and we gathered at the front of the church with the rest of the children there that day. Elsie immediately pointed to a butterfly clinging delicately to a branch. It hung there, limp and beautiful, its wings drying, preparing for flight. In between the start of the service and the children’s talk, it had emerged from its chrysalis – one of three to hatch that day. It was a perfect Easter moment, for at the earlier dawn service, I had preached about Jesus’ resurrection happening without any fanfare. New life comes often without us even noticing! As I looked at this newly emerged butterfly, resting, waiting, I wondered whether Jesus had taken a few moments of quiet in the garden after he left the tomb. Resting. Waiting.
As children and adults alike listened enthralled, Elsie explained each part of the life cycle, starting with the tiny eggs on a leaf, smaller than a mustard seed, and concluding with the beautiful new living creature we could see in front of us. We talked about new life, about beauty and about the hope that Jesus brings us at Easter. It was there before our eyes.
Our ‘He is risen!’ had extra oomph that morning.
People who witnessed this approached Elsie after the service to take photos of the butterflies and told her they were stunned and inspired by the way this event related to Jesus’s resurrection, and how miraculous it was to see up close the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly. ‘The resemblance between the butterflies and Jesus is how Jesus died and was laid in a tomb, he returned from the dead and was completely transformed – so much so that his disciples did not even recognise him’, Elsie said. ‘In the same way, the caterpillars are entombed in their chrysalis, transformed (completely turned into mush), then reborn as a new creature. This shows new life just like a resurrection.’
Pastor John Strelan serves at St Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Adelaide.
