Though Worms

I made two full serving pans of worms and dirt for our church Christmas celebration.

If you’ve never had worms and dirt, it is chocolate pudding with oreos crumbled throughout, topped with gummy worms.

The pans weighed about twenty pounds each. It was a lot of pudding, but it all got eaten. We had over a hundred people at church, and I think only three plates of pudding ended up on the floor.

When the celebration was over and the people had gone home, I sat down with the empty pan and spoon, to enjoy some myself before cleaning up.

I thought I would be safe from gummy worms. Surely they had all been snatched up by the children, but as I took my first bite, hidden there in the pudding and oreos was a gummy worm.

Yuck. I ate it, but it seemed to slither all the way down. It reminded me of the time I was gardening and looked up to see my youngest son with an earthworm halfway to his mouth.

Ew. Worms, both the earth and the gummy varieties, are gross.

My family listened through Handel’s Messiah during the Advent season, and on the night I choked down the gummy worm, the soprano sang words from the book of Job: 

“And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God…”

The apparent contradiction is striking. The first declaration says the body has been destroyed. Only resurrection could make the second assertion possible: “in my flesh I shall see God.” 

If worms destroyed a body, no one would want it back. We hide such things from view. It must be true that the body was not only resurrected but also restored in order to see God.

I thought about the big, lumpy smears of worms and dirt on the church floor. One of the lumps was even complete with chocolate pudding shoeprints leading down the hallway. However, after we cleaned, the church was restored. You couldn’t even tell that a gummy worm had been there.

I also thought about the worms of sin, sickness, aging, and death. They may destroy the body, but the resurrection destroys them, restoring the body to be able to see God without them. You can’t even tell that death has been there.

The very next part of the Messiah that the soprano sings explains how this is possible: “For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep.”

As the new year dawns, though there may be worms to destroy, the life of Christ restores and resurrects. This hope frames my plans and goals and it gives me purpose.

Then, with Handel’s chorus, I can respond: “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

No need to be afraid of worms.