These days students observe caterpillars in school AND train Caterpie in Pokémon!
Sunday's Gospel Reading from Luke is about metamorphosis, although most English Bibles use "transfiguration."
If we read our Bibles and pray every day, then we know that Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all experience mountain-top encounters with God. All three went through very trying and challenging times in their lives and their encounter with God enabled them to complete the tasks that God has called them to do. The three went up caterpillars, they came down butterflies.
Metamorphosis.
But not everyone who encounters God come back as butterflies--like Peter. In the mountain Peter experienced something so special, so unique that we expected him to come out as a butterfly, yet he does not.
He opposes Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem. He denies Jesus. Three times! He attempts to cancel his metamorphosis.
Have you ever seen caterpillars stop the "magic" that turns them into butterflies?
Everyone who encounters God in God’s Mountain needs to come down. When Moses came down, he led in the birthing of a people whose love for Yahweh was expressed in love for neighbor, especially the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers. When Elijah came down he continued the struggle against Israel’s oppressive kings and began a prophetic tradition that ended with John the Baptizer. When Jesus came down he followed the path that led to Jerusalem and eventually to the cross.
All butterflies begin as caterpillars.
To believe in God's "magic" to effect metamorphosis is to believe that goodness will always triumph over evil, that hope is stronger than despair, that faith conquers fear, that love is greater than indifference, that life will always, always, conquer death! To believe in metamorphosis is to believe in God's power to transform each and every caterpillar into a butterfly.
Yes, in the end, even Peter.
And, yes, even you and me!
*Art is a Microsoft 365 copilot generated image of two children and a butterfly.
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