Guest post: Virginia Johnston on cicadapocalypse
Plus an announcement about my summer schedule
Gentle reader,
I hope the beginning of summer is wrapping you in gentle arms. This summer at Church Blogmatics, I’ll experiment with posting once a week (on Thursdays) instead of my usual twice weekly schedule. I need some extra space to work on book projects this summer, and perhaps you need some extra space in your inbox too! Let me know what you think of the new schedule, and I’ll reassess in the fall.
I already wrote about the cicadas, but they’re so wonder-full they deserve another post, especially when that post comes from the also wonderful Virginia Johnston. Virginia is a third-year Doctoral student in Theology at Wheaton College. This coming academic year, she’ll also serve as a teaching fellow at Northern seminary. Johnston specializes in Theological Anthropology.
She moved me to tears with this piece about cicada wonders.
The Cicadapocalypse, as it has come to be called in our neighborhood, is in full swing here in the Western Suburbs of Chicago. It’s what the experts call a “super brood.” It’s a double emergence of two broods, one on a 17-year cycle and one on a 13-year cycle, that have converged. A convergence like this happens every 200 years, resulting in trillions of cicadas all emerging from the ground within the span of a couple of weeks. For reference, the last occurrence of this convergence was when Thomas Jefferson was president.
Experiencing a rare phenomenon can be exciting, a means of encountering our realities in a new way, helping us gain new perspectives. We had a rare eclipse earlier this year that sent record numbers of travelers on the road in search of a place to experience totality, and it was magical. Playing host to trillions of winged bugs in our communities, however, has not attacted visitors. I am not aware of any travelers, in fact, who are venturing to experience our swarms of cicadas. But I would like to suggest that the experience is similarly meaningful, even though perhaps a bit less pleasant.
Photo by Beth Felker Jones
There is a great theological tradition of viewing the natural world as “the Book of Nature,” a book that gives deference to our inspired texts of Scripture, but which also bears witness in its own way to who God is as its creator. Jesus himself points us to the book of nature as revelatory of wisdom for our lives. Both Matthew and Luke record this teaching of Jesus in their Gospels:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”
In this summer season, I myself have been considering the cicadas, who admittedly make themselves difficult to ignore! I am determined to see God’s beauty in His world wherever I look, and though I have a longstanding aversion to bugs, God has been faithful to reveal to me this beauty afresh as I have considered the cicadas.
When the emergence first began a few weeks ago, I was absolutely crushed by the overwhelming amount of death that I saw around me. Apparently, cicadas emerge all at once to overwhelm their little habitat with sheer numbers in hopes of a critical mass surviving, enough to breed and lay eggs which will emerge again in 17 years and carry on their unique life-cycle. But the casualties from such an overwhelming emergence are huge. Seemingly overnight, the sidewalks began to look like war zones. The children at our elementary school set up cicada hospitals on the playground. They had little leaf ambulances that would rush those who seemed they could be saved to the doctors in charge (who presumably used all the extraordinary means at their disposal to try to help save the half squished, the wingless, the maimed). Even for the children, death seemed to be in the air, and they fought hard against it.
I soon came to ponder, however, that it was not just death that surrounded us, but also skies absolutely teaming with life. Never have the stark realities of our existence been so apparent to me in such an immersive way. As I continued to reflect, I realized that of course not a day goes by when I am not surrounded by such incredibly abundant life on our rich planet: from the tiny creatures with no words (as my children call them) to the soaring birds, the majestic trees to the dancing flowers. Our home, created by the effectual spoken word of our God, is a home marked by abundant life. Considering the cicadas has helped me to see anew the life all around me, but also to ponder afresh the abundant life of God that we are called into.
After being underground for 17 years, these cicadas finally emerged en masse into the sun, shed their old shells, opened their wings for the first time, and now soar to newness of life in the skies. No wonder they are flying so vigorously! John tells us in his Gospel that Jesus came that we, humanity, may have life, and have it abundantly. God has called us out of the darkness, and into his marvelous light. He has delivered up out of the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. He has given us new life in Christ, an invitation to open our wings and soar. I so appreciate Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians in Ephesians 3. He writes:
“And I ask [the Father] that with both feet planted firmly on love, you will be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.”
As we consider the cicadas, may we cultivate wonder over the abundant life that we are called into, a life that is animated by the love of God. May we stretch out our wings and live full lives, full in the fullness of God!
Finally, as I have considered the cicadas, I have pondered anew the impact and the beauty that unity and singularity of purpose can have. As the cicadas have begun to breed, the sound, especially in the warm afternoon sun, has become deafening. It is an extraordinary testimony to the presence of literal abundant life, in surround sound! The male cicadas, tree by tree, attempt to sing in unison in order to attract females to their tree. When you listen intently to their music, the symphony comes alive. There is no doubt that coordination is taking place amongst the cicadas, and yet there is beautiful layering to their songs. There is dynamism, texture, and waves to their music.
After Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 referenced earlier, he exhorts the church. What does it look like to live into this new and abundant life in Christ’s love? What does it look like to soar? Paul writes,
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
Our song, our witness to the world, should be of one accord, though richly textured by the individuality and uniqueness and complexity of each member. Our bond of peace through the Holy Spirit brings unity across diversity. And it is the diversity that makes that unity so extraordinarily beautiful. Diversity of confession, diversity of culture, diversity of worship, diversity of heritage. The cicada symphony illustrates both the variance of the multitude and the unity of the collective song. They are both integral to the beauty and compulsion of the performance.
Dr. Emily McGowin, a theologian at Wheaton College, recently commented that,
“without a community of embodied witness, the apostolic gospel appears incoherent and impotent. Faith flounders without a communion of saints.”
Our witness is indeed communal, not individual. Our wings are meant to take us further up and further into the whole, not off on a solitary journey. And our witness is indeed embodied, in the magnificent and singular body of Christ. Our new abundant life in Christ gives us opportunity to soar, but we must soar as one, with one textured song. It is Christ’s Gospel song of redemption. It’s a song that makes the lame walk, the blind see, and sets captives free. It is an effectual song, and we must sing it together, in singularity of purpose. There is much work to be done in the name of Jesus through the power of the Spirit, calling those crippled by the chains of death to stand up and walk, driving out blind hate with fervent love, and breaking the shackles of injustice with the prophetic word of hope. We as Christ’s body cannot cease in our efforts to realize His kingdom on earth until that glorious day when the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth like the waters cover the sea.
As we consider the cicadas, let us marvel in, rejoice over, and continually grow to know and inhabit the abundant life offered to us in Christ; and as we consider the cicadas, with patience and humility let us make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace, singing Christ’s song of redemption with one beautiful, layered, textured, dynamic voice.
Grace & peace,
BFJ
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