I was touring the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg, Mississippi in 2001. As I stopped at one of the historical markers, I noticed a butterfly sitting on the hood of my car. I got out, read the marker, looked around and imagined the action at this spot in that late spring and early summer of 1863. Then I walked back to the car. The butterfly was still there. As I drove to the next marker, the butterfly held on to the rusting metal of that old Toyota. For 15 minutes, that butterfly stayed with me and my car. And then, when I sat down on the grass to contemplate things for a while, it came and softly sat on my shoulder.
Something about those moments with the butterfly just put me in awe of the magic and the mystery of the universe. It gave me a sense of the magical, mystical nature of life. Now remember, I was on a battlefield of a brutal and bloody civil war. So it may seem strange that I was focused on life in a place where so many had died. Yet those deaths brought life and freedom to others; to the tens of thousands of African-Americans who were held captive as slaves. More than 600,000 men had to die before those slaves could be liberated. But out of those deaths came a new birth of freedom.
They were farm boys from Illinois and Iowa and Missouri, and even a few from Ontario. These where the soldiers who came down to Mississippi and paid the ultimate price of death that others might have life. Farm boys not unlike James Miller. He came from the Orkney Islands in Scotland. With is wife, Ellen Thomson, he farmed land near what is now Kennedy and St. Clair, beginning around 1860. Each Sunday they would hitch up the horse and buggy and ride all the way up to the tiny village of Agincourt to worship here at Knox Free Presbyterian Church. We’ve spoken in the past about how Knox began as a Scottish immigrant church. The Millers would be an example of the immigrants who were among the early members of this congregation. They had to pass by the nearer Church of Scotland Presbyterian congregation because, the evidence would suggest, they were Free Church people. They were among those members of the Church of Scotland who broke away from the mother church and established the Free Church in about 1840. The crucial issue behind the division was the question of who got to vote on calling a new pastor to a Church of Scotland parish. The British Parliament said that all local property owners had a vote. The Free Church people said, “No way! You have to be a member of the congregation to cast such a vote.” So, the Millers were among those courageous folks were cut their ties with family and friends and joined the Free Church. Thus it was to Knox Free Presbyterian Church that they came when they settled in Scarborough, and their connection remains to this day, 5 generations later, through Marian Miller Kramer and her children. And I want to thank you, Marian, for giving me permission to reflect on your forbearers’ lives, and upon the lovely window which you and your siblings and the late Dora Brown have placed in this sanctuary, in memory of your parents, Arthur and Marjorie Miller, and of Dora’s husband, Louis.
Actually, there are two Miller windows. The first one was placed in the north side of the Sanctuary in 1939, in memory of Marian’s grandparents, William and Margaret Smith Miller. The more recent window, the one that we are reflecting on today, in the southwest corner of the Sanctuary, was given by the Miller and Brown families in August of 2000.
When you grow up on a farm as the Millers did, and as Louis did, when you grow up on a farm you become acquainted at an early age with both death and life. Indeed, you become acquainted with the dynamic relationship between death and life; with the fact that it is often death which gives birth to life.
Jesus put it this way: “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
The farmer experiences this dynamic in the act of planting and nurturing and harvesting a crop. The soil has to be torn open with a plough. The seed must split apart and die, its outer layer shrivelling to dust in the cold spring ground. That’s what must happen before that crop appears in those fertile fields. Violence and death are part of the process by which life is coaxed out of the soil.
The farmer experiences this as he toils in his field, and the caterpillar experiences this dynamic as she hangs from the milkweed, feeling mysterious forces convulsing her body and surely thinking that this is what it feels like to die. To watch this process is awful in every sense of the word: awful in the sense of violent and terrible, and awful in the sense of full of awe. The caterpillar’s body literally splits apart, and a green goo emerges from deep inside that fractured body and envelopes the creature. The body twists and contorts in what must be a terrible struggle as that green envelope begins to take the shape of what we know as a chrysalis. We’re filled with awe and taken by the beauty of it because we know how that process will end. But the caterpillar doesn’t know that. What the caterpillar knows is that she’s dying.
But just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became a butterfly. A beautiful monarch butterfly, emerging first with wings wet and crumpled from that green chrysalis adorned with a ring of gold. But the struggle to free itself from the now fractured chrysalis strengthens and straightens the wings. And once she has rested and waited for a while, the wings are dry and the butterfly soars into her new life.
If a seed falls into the ground and dies, it bears much fruit.
When a caterpillar’s dull life of creeping and crawling and eating comes to a close, it becomes a beautiful butterfly.
We know not what new life the Holy Spirit will bring out of our struggles with death. And in the midst of great pain, it is hard to believe that anything good can emerge from our anguish and our grief. But God is full of surprises. The experience of the ages tells us that suffering is redemptive. The wisdom of the ages tells us that there is a creative, life-giving dynamic between death and resurrection.
Out of death comes new life. That’s one of the eternal principles of the universe. And we know this as Christians because out of the death of Jesus on the Cross came the victory of life on Easter morning. The lilies that we have up here each Easter morn; they’re not just pretty flowers, although they are at least that, and their beauty alone would be reason enough to have them in church. But beyond their beauty, those bell-shaped flowers are like trumpets, sounding forth the victory of life over death. They bring to mind St. Paul’s vision of the last day, when the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised (see 1 Corinthians 15:51-58). We’re not crushed by grief when we witness the apparent death of the caterpillar because we know how her story will end. Well, brothers and sister, we know how our stories will end as well. We know that as children of God – we know that as those who have been saved by the unconditional love of Jesus the Christ – our lives here in time and space are but a prelude to the fullness of life in eternity. And not only is our physical death the doorway to eternal life, but all of the little deaths that we die along the way – the death of a relationship, the loss a job, the letting go of our egotistical selves, the death that we die within ourselves when a loved one passes away – all of these little deaths are doorways to new life and to little bits of eternity that we can experience right here.
I think of the woman whom I was dating in the early ‘80’s. I thought that I was going to marry her. And when we broke up, it seemed like my life was over. But that period of pain and anguish was prelude to an amazing moment on a Toronto street corner, when time stood still and I experienced the presence of God like I’d never experienced it before.
We know how the story ends. We know how the story of death ends. And it ends not in a dark, bottomless pit of despair, but in new opportunities, in new life, in abundant life.
There are times when it won’t seem that way. Even when you know on one level how the story will end, there are times deep in your heart when it doesn’t feel like death can ever give birth to anything good. It’s kind of like standing on the shore of Georgian Bay. Standing at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. And you’re saying good-bye to a loved one who’s taking the ferry across the bay to Manitoulin Island. And at that moment it doesn’t matter how beautiful the water and the shoreline and the sky might be. All you can think of is your friend or your partner sailing away and how much you will miss him or her. But the fact of the matter is that the water and the shoreline and the sky are beautiful. And they’re even more beautiful on the Manitoulin side, where maybe a great adventure of camping and hiking awaits the one to whom who’ve said, “Farewell.” And the time will come when you’ll be together again, and there will be stories to tell, and new skills and insights to share, and both of your lives will be that much richer because of the experience.
I’d like to think that heaven is something like camping on the shore of Georgian Bay, or looking out at the Atlantic from the rocks of Peggy’s Cove. I’d like to think that no matter how many painful good-byes we have to experience in this life, and no matter how many difficult lessons we have to live through in this world, all of those gut-wrenching experiences bring us closer to that glorious day when we will be gathered with all of our loved ones on that distant shore; gathered with all the saints from every age and place. Freed, like the butterfly, to soar into newness of life. Amen.
Honouring the Memories of
Louis Brown and Arthur and Marjorie Miller
Text: John 12:24
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
19 July 2009
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