God of all things, grant us to follow in the
way of your Son this week, that through his Death, we might receive the riches
of your grace ☩ in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Tonight, we continue to consider Holy Week through the lens of sacrifice and we do so focusing on the phrase from Jesus found in St. John’s gospel, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” I’m sure we all remember from our elementary school days how plants grow – a seed is planted, buried in soil, and then, usually within a few days, a green spout shoots up from the ground. This is basic botany, but Jesus uses it to make a deep theological point about sacrifice and new life.
You
might notice a problem with this metaphor though. When a seed is planted – it
doesn’t really die. Sure, it’s buried in the ground in the same way that we
bury a corpse. But whereas a corpse is decaying and devoid of life, a seed is
growing and full of potential life. No one really thinks that when we are
planting a seed that we are killing it. But thinking a bit further about the
life of a seed, in some sense, it does die.
I like spicy food,
so let’s go with jalapeños. If we plant some jalapeño seeds, eventually we’ll
get a plant with roots, a stem, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit in the
form of delicious and fiery peppers. And if we were to dig up the jalapeño
plant and dissect it, we’d find all of those various parts. But you know what
we wouldn’t find? The seed. Sure, we’d find new seeds in the fruit, but the original
seed that grew into the plant is gone. And in that sense, we can say that it
has died. It is no more, but something more glorious is there in its place.
Going
up from a jalapeño plant, think of a tree of some sort, maybe an apple tree. It
provides shade for us to sit under, a home for birds, fruit for humans and
animals, it absorbs carbon dioxide and gives us oxygen. All from a tiny little
apple seed. But if cut down the tree and search through the trunk, we won’t find
that original seed anywhere. It’s not that Jesus didn’t understand botany when
he gave this short parable; and he wasn’t trying to give us a lesson about
plant growth. Rather, Jesus was teaching us something about how we understand
death. In the sacrifice of the seed, what we find is transformation. Death is
not an end, it is a transformation. As our Burial liturgy says, “for to thy
faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended.”
St.
Paul in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians writes about this, “But
someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they
come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what
you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of
wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to
each kind of seed its own body… What is sown is perishable, what is raised is
imperishable… Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also
bear the image of the man of heaven. What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is
this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the
perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery!... For
this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put
on immortality.”
What
exactly the transformation of Resurrection life is like, we can’t say fully.
The Risen Jesus does give us glimpses into it, but the glory and reality of the
Resurrection is as different as an oak tree is from an acorn. What we can say
though is that death is no more final for us than a seed being planted. Rather,
it is about transformation.
That
being said, change is not easy. They change the type of lid that comes on your
favorite beverage and we get upset about that. If small changes cause us so
much anxiety, it ought to be no surprise that a change as significant as death
would give us major anxiety. And I do not want to deny the pain and grief of
death. There is a real loss in death and this should not be denied. This is why
Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – ‘Father, save me
from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.
Father, glorify your name.” There is an element of loss, even suffering, in
transformation. Most transformations come through explosive chemical reactions
or through heat – these are purging and intense changes. So, there very much is
sacrifice in this transformation. Things are given up and some things will
never be the same.
What
this shows us is that suffering really is a normal part of the Christian life.
As we are constantly growing into the full stature of our Baptism, or at least
trying to, we shouldn’t be surprised to encounter suffering, as Jesus certainly
experienced suffering as he bore the transformation that raises us from death
to Resurrection life.
In
the seminal book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, theologian James Cone
writes about the “terrible beauty of the Cross.” In writing about the life and
legacy of Martin Luther King, Cone writes, “For King, Jesus never promised that
his disciples would not suffer. Quite the opposite: suffering is the inevitable
fate of those who stand up to the forces of hatred. Jesus freely accepted the
consequences that led to Calvary without turning away. He called upon his
disciples to do the same. Just as God was with Jesus in his suffering, black
Christians believed that God is with us in our suffering, too.” I’m always so
amazed that communities, and especially African Americans in our context, that
have suffered so much injustice and racism for centuries, are not known for
their resentment or depression, but rather for their endurance and persistence.
That only comes through knowing that what feels like death is not eternal
death, it is transformation.
Saying
it another way, another theologian has said, “It is that people who bear
crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that
belief by [analysis], nor by winning some of one’s battles for the control of
one’s own corner of the fallen world. One comes to it by sharing the life of
those who sing about the Resurrection of the slain Lamb.” This is what St. Paul
is getting at in the portion of First Corinthians we heard read tonight about
the cross being foolishness and a refutation of the so-called wisdom of the
world.
Holy Week puts before us a sacrifice that we see as the salvation of the world. When Jesus compares his death to that of a seed being planted and dying, we see the tremendous, gracious, and glorious power of God to transform death from an end into a means, from finality into eternal life. Yes, death still involves pain, as it is a change. But in death, there is so much more happening than we can see. It is not unlike a seed which appears to be lifeless in the soil. But, through the power of the Holy Spirit, new life will sprout from our deaths just as surely as the harvest comes each year. Thanks be to God that we get to enjoy these sweet fruits of our salvation.
