A fresh and powerful Easter service
We built an entire service around this concept, called “Let Go“, with the primary image being that of a little girl watching the butterfly she had captured and placed in a jar. The opening video followed the chase, capture, and eventual release of the butterfly. A drama featured the discussion of a mother and her child just after the child has reluctantly released her butterfly back into the world. As worshipers entered the sanctuary they were given origami style butterflies made from tissue paper to use during a prayer time, and to later reflect on the worship experience.
The pastor even incorporated the metaphor in to the sermon, holding a mason jar high as he talked about hoarding, and in the process killing, our faith memories. A sermon illustration told the story of 19th century English Botanist Alfred Russell Wallace, One day in his laboratory Wallace was observing an Emperor butterfly seeking to get free from its cocoon. The scientist was struck by the little butterfly’s painful struggle and the length of time it was pushing and pulling, working to get free. He thought, “What would happen if I assisted in the process?” And so he took his scalpel and he cut down the length of the cocoon. He watched to see what would happen, and noted in his book that, “The butterfly emerged from the cocoon, spread its wings, drooped perceptibly – and died.” That butterfly needed the struggle. It needed the pain, all that intense work. Otherwise, the juices would not be distributed throughout its big, beautiful wings. Without the struggle of letting go, there is no beauty and life.
As with every good metaphor, the butterfly in the jar opened up all kinds of creative possibilities for sharing the good news of Jesus resurrection on Easter morning. The service was very meaningful and made Easter feel fresh and new.
But, the most powerful part of using metaphor to communicate the gospel happens when worship is over. Even though we’ve been doing it for years in our ministry, sometimes it even takes us by surprise. Not long after Easter we received this letter from the pastor:
A couple of weeks after Easter I received a call from one of my church members. The man on the phone and his wife have been in the midst of an intense personal hell. They have had extreme difficulties with their teenage son, so much so that the son is about to become a ward of the state. This distraught dad told me that the previous night he went out to sit by the family pool. He began to reflect on his son, wondering what they had done wrong along the way. As he obsessed over his own failures as a parent, a butterfly that landed on the chair next to him interrupted his thoughts. He watched as the butterfly flew up, around the pool, came down and landed on the chair again. The man said the butterfly then paused a second and flew off. And in that moment, he felt God’s presence with him, telling him to let go of the pain of his son and give the situation to God.
In that moment, this man experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit and the Easter message all over again. Had we done the usual Easter service, and used all of the familiar imagery and elements, this moment may not have taken place. But through metaphor we can take the gospel outside the walls of the church and make it real in the world of our faith communities.
Metaphor has the special almost supernatural ability to sear into our minds God experiences in ways that other methods just can’t. Days, weeks, even years later, metaphor can bring back a message we need to re-experience in our lives for reasons of comfort, conviction, healing and beyond.
One of our goals at Midnight Oil, with “Let Go” and our other resources, is to use media to tell stories with everyday metaphors such as a butterfly, and through these metaphors and stories to allow people to experience the truth of God’s transforming grace. When we transform ordinary, everyday moments into supernatural encounters with the presence of the Holy Spirit, people can see beyond their troubles to the hope of the risen Christ.
From our point of view, the real power of media to tell the story of Jesus Christ in worship is obscured when we merely use the screen to project the same old typical stuff. This Easter, consider using metaphor to make the story of the resurrection more powerful and memorable.
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The MO Guys said,
Wrote on February 8, 2008 @ 11:58 am
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ray gormann said,
Wrote on February 27, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
Hi Guys,
thanks for the thoughtful article on metaphor and Easter. I appreciate it and certainly try to use metaphor where appropriate in preparing worship. Something about it all disturbed me though and I am struggling to put my finger on it. I think it, for me, is about this implied assumption in the article that the absolute basic Christian metaphors of cross and empty tomb are tired and can now be retired as we go in search of new ones that are adequate to carry the immense weight of all Easter says. Sure we can use them but I would really struggle to come away from an Easter day service that had at its central place a little girl with a butterfly in a jar. still I wasn’t there and maybe it did convey the awesome (in true sense) wonder of Easter. Paart of it is the images drawn from nature that so often get used at Easter (cocoons, shoots from burnt trees, sunrise after darkness) we have come to expect. They are built into our mentality. We assume upon them and think we have a right to expect them. I reckon the stunning thing about Easter is it happens when we have no right to expect it. All is dead; life is not about resurrection. And precisely at that moment it happens. This makes Easter the sole event there can be no metaphor for. What happens so often is we end up making the cross/empty tomb a metaphor for what happens in nature. It makes Easter just another example of what we see all around us (butterflies, shoots etc). I think the best we can do with those nature images/metaphors is to reverse this whole thinking so rather than the cross/Easter point to them they are used to point to what they can never hope to point to – that which is beyond metaphor ie the resurection of Jesus.
Hmm still working this out obviously; but love exploring it.
All the best
Ray Gormann
The MO Guys said,
Wrote on February 28, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
Hi Ray,
Thanks for posting. We’d say that there’s nothing wrong with saying there’s metaphor in the Easter story. That doesn’t negate the truth of Easter. You might find “God in the Dock” by CS Lewis helpful here. He has a small essay toward the end of that book called “Myth Becomes Fact” which looks at parallel resurrection stories in other ancient texts, such as the Greek Osiris. Here is an excerpt:
“Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens?at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other.
“A man who disbelieved the Christian story as fact but continually fed on it as myth would, perhaps, be more spiritually alive than one who assented and did not think much about it. The modernist?the extreme modernist, infidel in all but name?need not be called a fool or hypocrite because he obstinately retains, even in the midst of his intellectual atheism, the language, rites, sacraments, and story of the Christians. The poor man may be clinging (with a wisdom he himself by no means understands) to that which is his life?
“Those who do not know that this great myth became Fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied. But Christians also need to be reminded?that what became Fact was a Myth, that it carries with it into the world of Fact all the properties of a myth. God is more than a god, not less; Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about ?parallels? and ?Pagan Christs?: they ought to be there?it would be a stumbling block, if they weren?t. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic?and is not the sky itself a myth?shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the chilled, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.”
Jesse C. Blythe said,
Wrote on March 29, 2008 @ 5:49 am
What an awsome way of puttting it, I as a Lay Speaker had never understood it that way THANKS, my wife is about to get a church, United Methodist as a Local pastor and I am looking to help her.
Bethany said,
Wrote on March 25, 2009 @ 12:07 pm
Hey Guys! Thanks for sharing your ideas and process. It is always beneficial to share what God is teaching us and it lends to that whole “iron sharpening iron” thing. So, here is my idea to share. Our theme this year for Easter is “Recylced Life”. It will focus on the resurrection. We realize that just when the world saw Jesus as dead, used up and discarded, God recycled His life into something greater than anyone could imagine. We will then kick off a six week series that explores other Biblical recycled lives and recycled lives in our congregation. Thanks again for all you do!!!
The MO Guys said,
Wrote on March 25, 2009 @ 7:36 pm
Good, Bethany! Thanks for the idea. That recycle logo is instantly recognizable and will be great for re-purposing into something fresh for worship.