Written as a sermon for the weekend of the EcoFaith Summit of the Upper Midwest
Earth’s Cries, Earth’s Call:
Becoming Midwives of Hope for the Healing of Creation
This Sunday's reflection also comes with a Video Sermon for use in your church or worshipping communities. You are welcome to show this video in addition to or for your sermon time in worship, or however you find most helpful to your context. Find the video here: https://youtu.be/aqC2bY5dEK8
ANACONDAS & IMAGINAL CELLS
Rev. Emily Meyer invites us to let go of constricting institutions and systems and embrace God’s ‘new thing’.
….
Hymn suggestions:
When Pain of the World Surrounds Us - ELW #704
For the Troubles and the Suffering - ACS #1051
Can You Feel the Seasons Turning - ACS #1065
Sisters and brothers, siblings in Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Creator, from our Savior Jesus the Christ, and from the life-giving, in-dwelling Holy Spirit. AMEN
On his way to Jerusalem - to the cross and death –
Jesus stops at the home of his friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
In traditional Hebrew fashion, Mary washes Jesus’ feet before the meal –
but not with the traditional basin of water and towel.
Mary uses costly perfume.
And wraps Jesus’ feet in the silken threads of her own hair.
Mary is preparing Jesus’ body for burial - before he is even on trial.
Mary, Martha, Lazarus - and Jesus - knew what was to come:
the loss of normalcy, the loss of quiet dinners with friends,
the loss of life as they had known it.
The loss of life.
Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Jesus ate this meal feeling much like many of us are feeling, today: that loss was all around them; that significant loss was unavoidable; that they were powerless in the onslaught of loss.
Life - these days - is full of loss.
There are losses that we’ve needed to lose for a long time - what Isaiah calls the ‘former things’ - like colonizer systems and institutions that benefit a few and disempower many; loss of deadly war machines that have plagued this nation and globe for millennia; and what Paul identifies as the power and privilege associated with citizenship and credentials and political clout.
These are losses we who follow Jesus will willingly let go so we are better able to strain forward and hold onto the future, the goal, the prize of New Life Christ offers; losses we will gladly incur in the hope of God’s ‘new thing’.
But there is other loss, too. Loss that feels like being crushed, being squeezed, being held in a stranglehold we are powerless to overcome. Loss that feels like we are being consumed, with no recourse for our fortunes to be restored and no reason to rejoice.
These losses are meant to overwhelm us; these losses are designed to make us feel helpless and hopeless. These losses are intended to squeeze out of us every ounce of hope and joy.
A recent radio ad invited small, local businesses to sign up as couriers, delivering packages for a certain mega-corporation. This mega-corporation wants small, local businesses to willingly offer up their information in exchange for a few hundred dollars a month and the responsibility of delivering goods purchased through the mega-corporation rather than in their own stores.
Neighbors are encouraged to ‘nominate’ small, local businesses who might ‘benefit’ from this arrangement, just in case those small, local businesses don’t want to nominate themselves.
I first heard this ad the day after a week-long national boycott encouraged people to support small, local businesses, rather than this particular mega-corporation.
The ad felt extremely predatory. It made me wonder if there was an actual predator - from the namesake waterway of the mega-corporation - that exhibited similar behavior.
Which is how I discovered the Northern Green Anaconda.
The Northern Green Anaconda - which lives in the Amazon and Orinoco Basins - is the biggest serpent in the world - weighing up to 550 pounds and running over 30 feet in length.
If you want a visual on that, ask five ten-year-olds to lie down head-to-feet and you’ll approximate its length.
Get eleven of those ten-year-olds and stick them in a pile, and you’ll approximate its weight.[1]
These incredible creatures, which spend most of their time in the water, eat everything from the little fish to their main competitors, including wild boars and jaguars. They’ve been known to eat adult bulls. They are constrictors: they hug their prey to death. Then swallow them whole.
They are one of the most dangerous animals on the planet and have no natural predators. Their only threat is human fear.[2]
It is ill-advised to snuggle up to a Northern Green Anaconda.
It feels like a few Northern Green Anacondas are voraciously squeezing the life out of everything, from the littlest fish to giant (and also dangerous) competitors.
And swallowing all of us whole.
Yet as dangerous as the mighty waters feel…
As treacherous as the wilderness appears…
As terrifying and depraved as the daily tragedies and losses are…
As deep and long-lasting as the planetary fallout will be..
As real and warranted as our individual and collective grief is…
Even in the depths of this unholy quagmire, God’s prophetic vision shines:
‘Do not remember the former things…
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.’
Even now, in the muck and the molten wretchedness of these days of relentless wars and rampaging billionaires wielding chainsaws of mass destruction; even now in this murky jungle, God invites us to forget what we have known - from human initiative to even God’s amazing acts - forget what has been, open our eyes, and see:
God is making a way out of no way. God is about to do a ‘new thing’.
Yesterday, a bunch of church folx and allies and friends got together in Duluth - and online - to recognize the intersections of creation care and faith, the economy and stories, and to find the moral spiritual power to become midwives of hope.
Our theme text was the story of Shiphrah and Puah, two midwives who defied Pharaoh by keeping healthy Hebrew babies alive, rather than killing them. These two midwives embodied God making a way out of no way. These two midwives were two beautiful, brilliant, nobody-important women who stood up to Empire; whose hands helped birth God’s freed people as God did one of God’s ‘new things’.
Our featured presenter, yesterday, was Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy, an Indigenous theologian whose stories refueled us with resilience in this season of crumbling Empire and dissolving structures.
Our keynote speaker was Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, a theologian, teacher, and author whose book, Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage, contains numerous stories of God’s people rising up out of the rubble of Empire - or - like Shiphrah and Puah - birthing God’s ‘new thing’ within and despite Empire.
In Building a Moral Economy, Dr. Moe-Lobeda recounts an interview with economist, educator and innovator, Emily Kawano, who shares ‘a metaphor to describe… the challenges and opposition sometimes faced by this movement to “build the new”’.[3] Emily applies this metaphor to what she calls ‘the solidarity economy’. Isaiah refers to the same reality as God’s ‘new thing’. Emily is quoted as saying:
When a caterpillar spins its chrysalis, its body starts to break down into this nutrient-rich group, and within that nutrient-rich group are what are called imaginal cells. Those cells have an imagination of what it could be that’s different from the caterpillar, and it’s so different that what's left of the caterpillar’s immune system starts to attack these imaginal cells and to kill some of them. But many of these imaginal cells survive. They find each other and they begin to clump, they begin to survive the attack of the immune system. As they continue to clump and come together and recognize each other, they start to specialize into a wing, an antenna, an eye, and a leg until they emerge as a butterfly, a transformed creature. And so, this is a nice metaphor for the solidarity economy right now.
If you think about this… we’re sort of like imaginal cells. We don’t all recognize each other, we’re not really clumping yet, and we’re not pulling together in the same direction to give birth to this transformed economy, society, and world. But that is the role of the solidarity economy [of God’s ‘new thing’], to provide that framework - [to make that way out of no way] - to get us recognizing each other and building together.
We are, right now, in the chrysalis. The form we have known - all that we’ve been, every structure, system, function, and institution we have known since this nation’s colonizer founding, is being squeezed and crushed; is crumbling, being torn apart, dissolving.
And not in a way that any of us who follow Jesus would choose: with children losing lives, with families losing safety, with neighbors losing livelihoods, with war torn countries losing everything, with students and seniors losing finances and dreams, with veterans losing care, with farmers losing farms, with healthcare, education, and wild lands all losing protection and provision.
Yet even in the midst of loss and dissolution, there is a whisper of Good News that reminds us: God is, even now, making a way out of no way:
Can we embrace it?
Can we bring it to birth?
God is, even now, doing a ‘new thing’:
Can we see it?
Can we imagine it?
As the silken strands of Mary’s hair cocooned Jesus’ feet, Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Jesus clumped together, imaginal cells birthing life after loss: rooted in the joy of Lazarus’ resurrection, together, in that meal, they practiced New Life with gracious hospitality, deep friendship, delicious food shared together. And the simple act of defiant hope that was the costly perfume.
Individually and collectively, we are imaginal cells.
As Beloved Children of God - an identity that cannot be stolen from us by any tech bro - we are co-creators with God as we clump together with others who also imagine God’s ‘new thing’.
As we ‘bump into one another’, finding partners and allies already doing or newly ready to co-create, we become a new future. We are the midwives through whose hands God is birthing God’s ‘new thing’.
It is Lent. I imagine many of us feel like we are already in the tomb. But despite the sloshy abyss of reality, this tomb is not the watery domain of a Northern Green Anaconda.
This tomb holds nothing that can squeeze or suffocate or crush us to death. No.
Christ holds us in a chrysalis tomb.
It is murky and mucky and messy with loss. It is gooey in here,, to be sure.
But God is even now making a way out of no way.
This is where we imaginal cells do our thing.
This is where God is doing God’s ‘new thing’.
Can we see it?
Can we imagine it?
Can we embrace it?
Can we birth it?
AMEN
Originally written by Rev. Emily P.L. Meyer for Green Blades Rising Preacher’s Roundtable.
ministrylab@unitedseminary.edu
Find more from Emily Meyer at www.theministrylab.org.
[1] Please do this during worship - mid-sermon, as here, or pre-sermon as your children’s sermon/storytime for you. Have fun with this!
[2] https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/species/green-anaconda/; accessed 03.22.25
[3] Moral Economy, pg. 136
Rev. Emily Meyer
The Ministry Lab
Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Emily Meyer (she/her), Executive Director of The Ministry Lab
As an ordained pastor in the ELCA, Emily interned in Seaside, OR, served as pastor, liturgical artist, and faith formation leader in suburban, ex-urban and rural Minnesota congregations, created and directed the multi-congregational affirmation of baptism program, Confirmation Reformation, and was pastor of Fullness of God Lutheran Church in the retreat center, Holden Village. She currently serves as executive director of The Ministry Lab (St Paul, MN), where she consults and curates and creates resources for progressive UCC, UMC, and PC(USA) congregations throughout Minnesota and the United Theological Seminary community. Rev. Meyer leads contemplative and creative retreats and small groups. Between pastoral gigs, she has enjoyed costume designing, choreographing, and performing. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, with spouse Brian, daughter Natasha, and two Wirehaired Pointing Griffons, Kiko and Zip.