Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw, 4/10/2022, Palm Sunday
The upside of having a gourmet chef for a wife is that the smells and tastes that emanate from our kitchen, attract a whole lot of hungry mouths. And not all of them are attached to humans.
I say this in the shadow of our household's annual springtime house party, as I call it - even though, home invasion, is what others might term it - when coming up through crevices and cracks and making their ways onto our kitchen counters and credenza, come dozens and dozens of what we Americans commonly call "sugar ants."
Has anyone here met those adorable creatures before?
It is not, to be exact, something we confuse with the "banded sugar ant,” a native of Western Australia and found nowhere near Michigan. And, to be superfluous, I will also mention its scientific name of Camponotus consobrinus (Campo-notus conso-brinus). I use the Latin because, as you have heard me mention, we Episcopal clergy do so, that we might come across as educated, and you, dear parishioners, might feel like you've actually learned something.
However, here in America, this term ’sugar ant’ refers not to the species frequently found 'Down Under', but as more of a ‘catch all’ term for any number of varieties of ant who have an intense attraction to all things sweet.
This is not unlike my 12-year-old son, who some time ago ordered extra maple syrup with his pancakes prompting a friend to ask, ‘James, do you have a sweet tooth?’ To which he retorted with exquisite timing, “Yes, all of them."
The 'sugar ants’ that annually march into our kitchen may then, be ‘pavement ants’ - ‘pharaoh ants’ - ‘Argentine ants’ - ‘false honey ants’ - ‘cornfield ants’ — ‘acrobat ants’ - or even the catch-all category, which denies all scientific nomenclature, the 'little black ants.’
I am not apt to capture one and send it out to the lab for analysis because I hate to think what kind of poking, prodding, and even worse things scientists might do to this industrious and certainly desperate creature - whose forest home I invaded, not vice versa.
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My fondness for the pavement ant, Tetramorium Caespitum (Tetra-morium Seez-spitum) I use for further erudition, lies in our common origins; both of our ancestors immigrated from Europe in the 18th century and have become well-established throughout much of the U.S. and parts of Canada. Our shared heritage may account for our shared predilection for dinner's last course: as none of our ancestors have been known to turn down anything remotely associated with chocolate.
My fondness grows as I observe these ants to be models of fidelity: their reproducing queens are fiercely monogamous: one queen stays with the colony forever - “till death do us part.” To our modern "cut-off" and "cancel culture", sugar ants bear witness to the virtues of loyalty and steadfast commitment that Kanye and Kim, and all the rest of us, do well to attempt emulation.
And my admiration swells at the protective instincts of sugar ants - not just for themselves, but for me - as these little, sweet-seeking kitchen-counter creatures are known to attack and wreak havoc on the recently imported habitats of the "red fire ant," whose colonies of stingingly assaultive members also thrive on our property, but thanks to my courageous sugar ants, do so at a safer distance.
I am most impressed, however, with the “sugar ant’s" extraordinary resilience - being one of only a few species of ants found to re-colonize an area after intense human development. Slash through a hillside to put up a house, and these hard-headed and well-armored little guys may scatter, but they will be back! Lock up the sweets. Plug the holes. 7 years in my house, 7 annual house parties!
Theologically, I see these impossibly industrious creatures as quite Anglican in nature. After all, Michigan sugar ants are catholic in that they are universal, finding a home in every one of our Great lakes counties. And, judging by their work ethic, one might mistake them for Protestants… perhaps well considered, then, as the via media of the insect world.
Not unlike Mother Church, sugar ants are also intensely communal, interdependent upon one another, and reflective of their creator. To study the life and vocations of sugar ants is to open our minds to a complexity and intricacy of life that bespeaks a creative, intelligent, and even whimsical designer.
Like we believers, pavement ants like to congregate. They cannot be found living alone, but in large towns - a single colony can contain more than 10,000 members - all in distinct castes - designated by job description versus ethnicity - like the Body of Christ, there are many members, but one body.
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This week, my first instinct upon discovering the advent of this season's house party, and the arrival of these most diminutive of God's creatures was to find a way to redirect their course, to somehow manipulate them off the kitchen counter and to head back outside, towards more appropriate insect fare. I tried sweeping them into a dust tray, using a soft brush and a gentle stroke. Then trying to juggle my prize out of doors, seeking to minimize injury and maximize inclusion.
However, concern for their tiny, fragile appendages combined with their stupendous ability to resist all sorts of human manipulations, met with little success. After all, at the slightest sign of intrusion these peripatetic little creatures immediately erupt into an all-out frenzy, seeking shelter and safety from whence they came, breathlessly crawling over one another, breaking rank to cut corners, and frantically trying to evade any threat of danger.
And so I thought: How might I assist these, my beloved tiny icons of industry, who regularly fill my soul with inspiration and my heart with admiration? When my well-meaning hands inspire terror - and my fond interventions are perceived as aggressive malevolence?
How might I inspire their trust? How might I show them, by the strongest means available, that I am sincerely taken with their well-being?
And so I wonder what it might be like to be a “sugar ant” — to spend my entire life of 42-63 days in round-the-clock service to the greater good? If I became one of them, then, surely I would be accepted and understood as one working solely and solemnly for the common good.
We're I to trade my chest and appendages, sinew and muscle, for the thorax, abdomen, and exoskeleton of a sugar ant, increasing my strength tenfold, but losing my eyesight, my Facebook friends, and my ability to play guitar, to name a few, surely my companions would understand the sincerity of my filial motivations and respond accordingly.
Oh but the difficulty of such a task!
If my admiration ascended to a place of such deep affection that I could, actually, consider giving up the wealth of my human life and become one of these beautiful but lowly insects:
What of the marital bliss of daily life, for most sugar ants are non-reproductive.
What of the joy of playing pickleball, reading a Dick Francis mystery, and the taste of Hunter House hamburgers?
Or what of the experience of ocean cruises, airliners, and leisurely country drives in a convertible?
Were I to disregard my humanity, and empty myself, taking on the form of the lowliest of sugar ants, and was willingly born in their likeness putting out on the table the sum total of my love and affection, I just may begin to understand the magnitude of the story of The Passion of Jesus Christ that is before us.
Dear friends, I need not unpack the metaphor any further, for we all understand how God's love for us can only be fully understood through Jesus, and his self-tempting decision to descend from heaven, to be as we are, in order to redirect our paths to the way of Glory. And that God's appearance among us was to shelter us from harm, redirect us to greener pastures, and open for us the way of abundance and prosperity.
It is my desire that you listen to this sermon with a sincere and open Spirit, sensing that this is not your rector, yet again, blathering on about something that touches not even the periphery of my life or anyone I have ever known, but that the contemplation of the self-tempting of God to which we will bear closer witness in a few moments as our readers recount, in traditional narrative form, The Passion of the Christ, actually holds the key to living the life that we want to live, indeed the life God wills for each of us, which is centered on charity, altruism, giving, forgiving, and a self-tempting empathy that puts others before ourselves.
My brothers and sisters, there is such love in your hearts, such charity, such care, and I bid you to grow in love even more. Let us open ourselves even wider to the awesome spirit of God whose desire is that all of our wanderings would be well directed.
Let us dedicate ourselves anew to following the way of the cross, having faith that God will take us through every challenge we are now facing, and allowing us to be places of Hope and encouragement to the world around us.
So, the next time our paths cross that of a lowly sugar ant, may we remember the boundless love of Christ whose graceful act of selfless incarnation, made possible the abundant lives that we live. And may each encounter with the lowliest of insects, inspire us to honor and obey Christ's precious example by going forth and treating all of creation with boundless love in both word and deed.
Amen