There is abundant life in you, God’s dream for you, that only needs to have its shell, its husk die and break apart for you to bloom and grow as God’s gift to this world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year B
Texts: John 12:20-33; Jeremiah 31:31-34
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Seeds don’t die when they’re planted.
Pretty much everyone who plants seeds knows they contain within them the life of the plant to come. They’re not actually dead. Jesus certainly knew this, too.
That means he’s doing something with this metaphor. Stretching our imaginations, to see something different, something vital. Something about dying and rising.
That’s definitely not a new topic for Jesus.
This is the central idea of Christian discipleship for Jesus, and also the New Testament. Jesus constantly speaks of self-giving, of sacrificial love, of being vulnerable, as the path of Christ, his and ours. Again and again, including today, we hear of losing our lives to find them, of letting go as central to our walk of faith.
But notice: this way is always described positively by Jesus and the others. Lose your life, and you will find it. Die to this way of being and you will live. Die like a seed and you will see much fruit. Scripture believes that self-giving, sacrificial living as Christ is the path to the abundant life Jesus came to bring.
We make it out to be a negative thing.
We live in a society and culture based on acquiring, finding security in wealth and in things, no matter how unsustainable it is across this planet. We live in a country founded on equal rights, though still not yet for all. But somehow our culture individualized rights so that we’ve each been taught to believe for ourselves that what I want, who I am, what I have, is the paramount thing to care about and protect.
So, it’s hard to hear Jesus’ call, no matter how often he makes it, without wincing a bit. Voices like these often speak in our hearts and minds: “I don’t want to lose, because winning feels better. I don’t want to give of myself, because I might lose what I’ve acquired, or someone might take advantage. I don’t want to be wounded, because that hurts, and why would I want that?”
Maybe that’s why Jesus stretches the seed metaphor. Though a seed doesn’t technically die, it is profoundly changed. There is an outer shell, a husk, that, when the buried seed is watered and begins to germinate, is cracked open and left behind. If it stays intact, the plant can’t grow.
What if Jesus is asking what needs to die, be broken open in us for our true new life to begin?
Now, Jesus says the seed also applies to him.
So did something need to die in Jesus for him to be God’s Christ, to be what he was meant to be?
Certainly fear. Today he speaks of his troubled soul, which will worsen in Gethsemane. Jesus feared the cross, the suffering, and wasn’t sure he could do it. That fear needed to die, be broken open, so his courage to be the sacrificial love of God for the whole cosmos could bloom and grow.
And what of Jesus’ need to control? The eternal Word of God who participated in the creation of all things must have struggled not to control what happened in this earthly ministry. Satan thought so in his temptations, and in Jesus’ relationships with stumbling disciples and angry opponents, his need to control had to die so he could trust that what happened would lead to life.
And maybe we wouldn’t call it pride, but for the Son of God to willingly suffer the humiliation of the cross, something had to die in him. That sense of being one with the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity, that joy of his divine existence and power, had to die so he could let them hang him in public shame for all to see. So he could draw all things into the life of God.
So what husk is trapping-in your life, your future?
What if your fear could die and be buried? Your fear of the future, or fear of not belonging? Your fear of not being enough? Your fear of failure? What kind of courage could grow in you if that fear was dead and gone?
What if your greed died? Your need to have, to acquire, to find security in money or things. If that were dead and buried, what contentment could flourish in you and even bear fruit that would start changing the balance of privilege and oppression in this world?
Maybe shame is a shell around your true life. What if that were broken open, dead? Can you imagine a life trusting you were worthy of love, God’s and others’? What if you didn’t have to worry anymore about what others think?
And what if your need to control things could die, too? To live knowing that since important things, like life and death, were beyond your control, why try to control all the other things? Can you see yourself with such happy freedom?
There are so many more possible husks. But do you see what Jesus is offering you? A chance to bury the thing clamped around your life, your heart, your soul, and so find abundant life. Eternal life, right now.
When I am lifted up, Jesus says, I will draw all things to myself.
Jesus promises that in his dying and rising you will be drawn into God, to be like Christ. And so you’ll be given what you need to die and rise daily yourself. This isn’t a bar for you to get over, this is a gift of God for you.
God promised to write this covenant love in your heart, Jeremiah proclaimed, so you’ll have the ability to let all these hindrances embedded in you die. You will know in your heart, in your being, the way to life.
And the Holy Spirit will help dig the hole for these husks, too, even while breathing life into that newness inside you, gently watering it and drawing it out into the light of day.
And while Jesus is talking about seeds, remember that growing seasons take time.
No seed immediately becomes a huge corn stalk bursting with cobs. This new life, this dying of the husks and shells that are keeping you from living, this takes time. So ask the Spirit for patience, too. It will take your whole life to live into this growing.
But you’ve already begun. There are husks of whatever it is that needs to die in you that have already been broken open, and you’ve seen signs of the fruit to come. Maybe only a glimpse or two. But this life is already at work in you.
Unless a seed dies, it stays a tiny thing. But when it dies, it bears much fruit. Trust this, and live.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
