When I was about seven I befriended a huge brilliantly colored black and orange caterpillar. It looked like a lively fat jujube with hair. Grandma told me it would change into a butterfly. I could just imagine how big, beautiful and brilliantly coloured a butterfly it would be. With Grandma's help and the aid of a gallon pickle jar, I soon had a terrarium with the caterpillar suitably ensconced. Grandma talked me into keeping the thing in our screened porch instead of the bedroom I shared with my teenage aunt, who if memory serves me correctly, wasn't that keen on bugs and spiders.
First thing every morning and several times during the day, I would hightail it onto the porch to see what had developed. I couldn't wait to see what kind of beautiful butterfly would lively dance from the impressive larva I had found. Eventually the colorful jujube with hair became a large dead looking cocoon. Undaunted I continued my frequent daily observations, even though the cocoon just lay there attached to a twig looking as dead as dried grass. I soon lost patience and hope. There was no way that the ugly cocoon thing was still alive, let alone going to change into anything beautiful. One morning, there was the flapping of wings in the jar. Jubilant, I ran to peek in. I was deeply disappointed with what I saw. It turned out that the big, brilliantly coloured, black and orange caterpillar that looked like a lively fat jujube with hair wasn't a big, brilliantly coloured, beautiful butterfly at all. It turned out to be just a fat, lumbering, nondescript ugly brown moth. The caterpillar didn't turn out they way I wanted it to. Disgusted, I took the top off the pickle jar and shook the moth out into the air. I had just learned two hard facts of life about metamorphosis.
Metamorphosis means a total change from within. Metamorphosis is from the same Greek word used in the Bible by Paul, when after he has urged the Romans to present their whole selves as an offering to God for God to work on. He writes, “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.” (Romans 12: 2) “Let God perform a metamorphosis, a complete transformation from within.”
I can almost hear one Roman talking to another after receiving Paul's letter. “That Julius is a real piece of work. You know if anyone ever needed to be changed he does. But you know what? Julius just continues to go from foolishness to foolishness, from ridiculous to sublime, from dumb to dumber. His life just looks like so much dead grass to me and I don't see any hope that he will ever change.” The first hard fact of life with regards to metamorphosis, especially one wrought by God, is that the change that is happening happens within. It happens beyond the sight of all the hangers-on offering commentary. What looks like so much dead grass on the outside of a person's life; all the foolish, ridiculous, dumb and aggravating stuff; is usually cocooning the work of God on the inside. After all, who knows a person's heart and what is going on there? The attitude of all the Jobish hangers-on best not be commentary or judgement but rather love and support, such as the kind Paul offered his friends in Philippi: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)
I can hear another Roman conversation too. “Man, oh man, that Cassius is a real piece of work. He sure needs to be changed by God. He needs to … (and a list follows).” But the second hard fact of life with regards to metamorphosis, especially one wrought by God, is that those standing around observing don't get to have any input into the outcome. Fellow Christians often have way too many opinions about what sanctified Sally and transformed Tom ought to be like. Who knows the heart of God and what He wants his new creation to be like? If the clay doesn't get to tell the potter what to make of it, surely the other cracked pots on the shelf have even less say. The attitude of a fellow Christian best imitates Paul, who looked upon his siblings in Christ with faith. Rather than having expectation of how his fellow Christians would be changed, he approached them as already changed. In fact, he looked at his fellow Christians in the same spirit as he looked at Christ: “No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do so. Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5: 16a-17)
I write this in the face of all the despicable, appalling (and I would argue satanic) habits that fellow Christians seem to have of talking about others behind their backs and sometimes disparagingly to their face. This judgemental habit, it seems to me, has developed into a new art form amongst us Christians today. Surely Paul could have done the same thing. What does he do instead? He has confidence in God; that God is at work behind the scenes completing what he has begun in another's life. He approaches other Christians, not with his own expectations of what needs to happen in their lives, but with faith that what God wants to happen is as a done deal. A fellow Christian is already a new creation, a real piece of divine work. What would our churches be like if each one of us were confident that the other was a real piece of divine work rather than just a real piece of work? What would our churches be like if we approached each other with faith rather than expectation? William Willimon writes, “Someone who comes on board with Jesus is someone who's empowered, washed, cleaned up, dead and buried, raised, adopted — the images are all baptismal.” What would our churches be like if we really treated each other like the washed rather than the great unwashed?
