Brood (Easter - Day 40)

(Based on Hebrews 2:5-18)

In order to talk about today's passage, I need to talk about cicadas - specifically magicicadas. Any time now, these one inch bugs are going to crawl out of the earth in the eastern half of the United States. They are found nowhere else in the world. The amazing thing about it is, they've been sucking on tree roots for the last seventeen years, and will only emerge once the ground temperature reaches precisely 64 degrees. Once they come out from hiding, they'll flock to the trees and they're only looking for one thing: sex. They're going to mate for a few weeks, die, and then their offspring will travel underground for seventeen years and repeat the process. 

When they come out, they will outnumber humans 600 to 1, and they'll be heard for miles. While they stay underground, the bugs aren't asleep. They're going through four molten stages and sucking on tree fluid called xylem. They come out first as nymphs, and then go through a last molten process, turning into adults. As this happens, all these cicadas begin singing a chorus that can drown out the sound of a passing train. As they look for their mates, they continue singing, but once they find them, the song changes. They do a dance and then mate. The males keep mating and eventually the female lays about 600 eggs on the tip of the tree branch. Once the offspring come to life, they divebomb into the ground for seventeen years. 

Life . . . Death . . . Life . . . Death . . . Life

In order for new cicadas to live and thrive, adult cicadas must die. In order for new life to happen, a life must die. Sound familiar? 

I wonder if the cicadas are cowering through life, scared to death of death. I doubt it. They were wired and made to live 99% of their lives underground, preparing, molting, sucking tree fluid, and then to explode out of the ground with a billion others like themselves and mate for three weeks, singing, dancing, and producing offspring. Then, they die, going back into the ground - from dust they came and to dust they return. 

From life . . . to death . . . produces life . . . 

Before I came to believe that in the narrative of Jesus dying on a cross and freeing us from death, I was scared to death of death. My struggles in life had everything to do with after I die, and much less to do with here and now. I believed in a narrative that said God was keeping track of my mistakes, and that I would be judged in the end. This meant I had better keep a ledger myself to make sure my good was outweighing my bad. That way, I could constantly make up for my wrongdoings by doing something good for somebody, which was essentially doing something good for God. I needed to appease the god of score-keeping. If I didn't, then drought would come on my life. I would dry away and rot. 

Death and life were at odds with each other. 

In Hebrews, we're told that Jesus freed us from cowering through life, scared to death of death. The author says that Jesus took death into himself, becoming death for every person in the history of the world. Death would not be the final chapter for any of us, but life would be everlasting. The author claims that Jesus took all of our sins, our failures, our grosser handicaps, and took them before the Father, advocating and coming to a verdict: Not Guilty.

As I start another day reflecting on this verdict, I have to remember that this life is not all struggle and death. It is not a veil of tears. No matter what I'm struggling with, I have to believe that the price has been paid for this exact struggle I'm going through. The valleys do not determine where I'm going when I die, but determine how I experience the freedom that was bought and paid for - right here and right now. Though the pain comes and the night seems to last forever, there is song and dance waiting. There is the harmony of victory waiting. Though I wonder about the impossibilities of ever getting out of the messes I'm in, I also wonder about when the victory dance will come. With death, there is life. With burial, there is resurrection. 

Today's Action: Whatever the "keynote" struggle is in life right now, keep going to any length to see it through. Keep praying, keep looking out for the interests of others, keep hanging on like the cicada for the time of resurrection.