A Swarm of Angels Descending

The Reverend Seth Ethan Carey

May 27th, 2007

First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois

www.firstconge.org

630-469-3096

Introduction to the Scripture: Exodus 10: 3-20

The scripture you are about to hear emerges from a strange battlefield of the Old Testament; not a valley of conquest from the book of Judges, or a skirmish from David’s campaign against the Philistine’s. Rather it is a war between slaves and their overlord, a contest of wills between Moses and the Pharaoh of Egypt. As the familiar story goes, God sends Moses to contend with Pharaoh and demand that he free the Israelites from the bonds of slavery. But Pharaoh refuses. With every refusal, Moses attacks Egypt with a new plague, each one more terrifying than the last. As the scripture begins, we are already up to plague #8: Locusts. I’m sure you’ll be able to relate to the imagery this morning, but the locusts are of secondary importance. Rather, listen for the words of these two men who fight. For beneath the nightmare of the eighth plague of Egypt lies something far more dangerous—and even closer to home.

***

It was a day like any other, only worse—the day they came.

They rose up out of the Earth like something radioactive from of a bad 1950’s horror movie, taking to the trees and deafening the world with the buzz of their horrid mating call, littering the sidewalk with the wreckage of their twisted, broken wings.

Their advent was marked by a strange sort of joyous anticipation. In recent weeks, storefronts in Glen Ellyn have been decorated with cartoonish renderings of the so-called 17-year locusts, and I even hear that T-shirts went on sale, emblazoned with this year’s hottest slogan: Hear the Buzz! I only wish I could join in the revelry. But speaking as one who hates bugs, I can only view the invasion of a giant insect army—however harmless—to be a hellish prospect indeed. It’s not that I’m afraid, mind you. It’s just that I’d rather be somewhere else.

I’ve often wondered if certain creatures are inherently evil. Even if God created them all, I confess that I have a hard time coming to terms with the dreadful existence of spiders, scorpions, poisonous snakes, plague rats, hungry vultures, and carnivorous sharks—to say nothing of the giant squid discovered two years ago at a depth of 900 meters off the coast of Japan, a hulking monster at the dark core of Davy Jones’ locker. And I’m tempted to add the Cicadas of Brood XIII to that list. I know they never hurt anyone, but their crimson eyes make nervous.

You can only imagine my shock when I first read about this phenomenon in the local Oak Park newspaper. The article read like a bad fortune cookie: “You are about to have several hundred thousand new neighbors—for at least six weeks.” When I realized what was happening, I wish I could say that I ran out and bought a Hear the Buzz! T-Shirt. But I didn’t.

I boarded up my windows and started scouring EBay for an affordable flamethrower.

***

It’s no secret that locusts find due representation in the Old Testament. They make their most infamous appearance in the book of Exodus, at the heart of Moses’ epic showdown with the Pharaoh of Egypt. Now, it may be tempting to read this scripture literally at a time like this. But the metaphors at work in this story are just as powerful as its imagery, if not more so.

The operative motif in the legend is an unrelenting pattern of stubborn behavior. It’s a story about two people who stand at odds with one another, refusing to compromise, refusing to back down even an inch. We generally find ourselves routing for Moses, of course; he’s a liberator of slaves, whereas Pharaoh is the perpetrator of grave injustice on a national scale. But this passage gives us just a little insight into Pharaoh’s thought process. And it helps us to understand why is heart is really so hard. In verse 10, while Moses and Pharaoh are arguing about who will be allowed to go free and who will have to stay behind in Egypt, Pharaoh tells Moses: “Plainly, you have some evil purpose in mind.”

He says it quickly, almost in passing—but it’s just enough to give us that ever-important reminder that Pharaoh doesn’t see Moses—or himself—the way we see him, the way history sees him. In Pharaoh’s eyes, Moses is an invader; a terrorist even, a man who betrayed his own country, a marauder who left Egypt in ruins. And it’s that ambiguity of perspective, that refusal to see both sides of the big picture that often makes it so hard for people to get along.

As for the locusts, well—you might call them the inevitable consequence of human discord. They become symbols, each one of them, of the suffering that devours homes and nations when human hearts are too hard—too petrified—to love.

***

And thousands of years later, some of us are devouring them. It seems that the Midwestern cicada is a rare delicacy, high in protein and shock value when consumed in the company of friends. In fact, the Internet is rife with recipes for such refined dishes as Cicada-Portobello Quiche, Curried Cicadas and Chickpeas, German Chocolate Cicada Cake, and Cicada Cheese Wontons.

I don’t understand it either. But if someone deep-fried them, I’d consider it.

As human beings, we like to think of ourselves as being at the top of the food chain. Being as most people nowadays don’t have to worry too much about being eaten alive by some larger predator, we like to think we’ve conquered the world. And from a dietary perspective, that’s probably true. But hierarchies revolve around more than what—or as the case may be, who—is for dinner. Hierarchies are more than just biological; they can be spiritual, too, at least in theory. And if we were to sketch out a spiritual hierarchy, it would probably look something like this:

At the bottom, you’d have unconscious plant life, probably followed by insects. Further up the ladder you’d find the animal kingdom, and then human beings. Beyond that would lie the realms of the angels, surpassed only by Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God—the holy Trinity itself.

But such an approach can be misleading. According to some legends, for example, upon creating human beings God commanded the angels to bow down and worship us. And when you consider that Jesus is both human and divine, the whole house of cards begins to fall apart.

So allow me to suggest an alternative to this celestial food-chain, as it were. Perhaps we should be thinking of our souls, not in terms of rank and file, but in terms of transformation and evolution. I personally find it helpful to think of Jesus Christ as the living manifestation of humanity perfected—the incarnation of God, but also a fully realized human being. He was a teacher, and his teachings all converge upon a single point: Love your neighbor.

That’s the point we all need to be evolving towards. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is credited with saying, “Whoever drinks from the words of my mouth will become like me, and I myself shall become that person.” A lot of people think that to take such things seriously is arrogant heresy. But all it means is that we have to try and live as Christ did, to orchestrate our spiritual transformation through Christian faith and practice—

—to be as Christ-like as we can hope to be.

But still, so many people imagine the universe as a hierarchy; not just of insects and angels, but of human beings. We organize ourselves according to class, or race, or ideology. We fear what is different. We don’t understand one another, so we build walls; sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. The Berlin Wall has collapsed, but a dozen others are rising to take its place in Israel, in India, in China, in Russia—even along the Mexican border of the U.S.

Once the walls go up—proverbial or otherwise—it seems like we understand each other even less. And then we can throw bombs over the fence without even looking each other in the eye.

***

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Maybe that’s why the red eyes of a cicada make me so uneasy. But I’ll tell you, cicadas aren’t the worst of it. A more loathsome entity has already compromised my apartment, stalking its prey by night, a nocturnal invader of unimaginable speed that strikes without mercy.

House Centipedes; they’re definitely on the aforementioned list of the Devil’s own.

They’re big and ugly, and unlike cicadas they will sometimes bite you while you sleep. But in spite of their revolting appearance and predatory nature, at first I tried to be nice. I tried to catch them and put them outside where they could bother somebody else; but tracking them down proved to be nearly impossible. It seemed as though each new sighting developed into a hunt of epic proportions as I chased after the beast, its hundred legs sprinting across the floor, under furniture, and up the walls, eventually finding safe haven in some impossibly small crack or fissure.

I swear I could hear them laughing at me. After a few weeks of failing to catch them, I decided I would have to kill them.

But every time I sneak up on one of them with a phone book, or a magazine rolled up in my white-knuckled fist, or my trusty samurai sword, I pause. Staring into its obsidian eyes, I wonder if it could be more than an empty husk, more than just a life without a soul. And after it’s done, I ask myself, every time:

“Why can I not co-exist with this creature?”

I’ve yet to find an answer to that question. I don’t know if the centipede has a soul. I know that I do, but is it evolving? Does it grow? Can it ever transform into something that bears even a passing resemblance to love?

Maybe it’s not fair to compare insects to human beings. But I think my fear of the swarm is the same fear that builds walls and fights wars. It’s a fear of something alien. It’s a fear of that which we do not understand. Sometimes, it’s a fear of one another. Even if the angels swarmed down from heaven like locusts, I imagine our hearts would stop in fear.

The question of why I can’t bring myself to co-exist with the insects in my apartment or angels in the sky begs another question: Why can we not co-exist with one another? Why can we not tear down the walls between us and gather as one people, even as the disciples united the nations in a common language on the day of Pentecost? Why do our tongues burn with hateful words, instead of the fire of the Holy Spirit?

There’s a short answer to that question, and it’s this: Because life is complicated. But the short answer is the first clue to the long answer. Life is complicated. And everyone has their reasons for feeling the way they do. The world isn’t black and white. And neither is the human heart, however hard and cold it may seem from a distance. The fact is, you can’t really know how hard someone’s heart is until you can bring yourself to reach out and touch it.

We aren’t always going to understand one another. We just aren’t, not every time. And understanding isn’t always a guarantee of friendship. But it’s a step in the right direction.

***

A few days ago, I found a cicada’s wing lying on the floor of the Sanctuary. Just the wing—the rest had been torn away. I forced myself to reach down and pick it up, to examine it closely. Maybe it’s strange of me to say so—

—but it was beautiful in its own way.