Sunday Reflection - "Unless a Seed Dies... " - Sunday 17th March

Jeremiah 31.31-34      Psalm 51.1-13   Hebrews 5.5-10    John 12.20-33

"Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."  (John 12.24)

Remember how Reverend Margaret decided early in her time here to get the children to plant potatoes in the plot by the side of the Choir Vestry at the back. They planted a line of seeds early in the year, covered them with soil, and then waited until the Autumn to see what would happen. Nothing much took place on the surface. A few green shoots, but nothing to make you think that much activity was taking place in the ground beneath.

Harvest Festival was approaching. The big day came when we had to dig up what was there. We were all reconciled to a courageous failure. However, as we kept digging, one potato after another came to the surface. The children brought their buckets. They began to fill them. And they took them to Ron at the front of the church, who brushed and cleaned them. I can still see him leaning over the bucket, with his sleeves rolled up.

Neither he nor the children realised that we were harvesting more than a hundred potatoes. Then one of the gardeners dug up a shrivelled husk of a potato skin. It looked good-for-nothing. Margaret told us not to throw it away. She explained that it was the seed-potato. It was thanks to this dead husk of an old potato skin that we had unearthed such a great harvest. It was because this seed-potato died that the hundred were now in our buckets, about to be peeled, boiled, fried or roasted.

It was this simple picture that Jesus applied to himself as he looked towards his future in Jerusalem. If he were to continue travelling around Galilee, the villages around Jerusalem, and teaching in the Temple itself, he would continue to inspire, heal and transform many within the region. But those who wanted what he gave would be limited by the geography, the timetable and the personnel available to share it with them. He understood that God his Father had another plan. But, to go through with it, he would have to go through such a radical change that his friends would have to get used to relating to him in a new and transformed way.

He would die like a seed dies when it’s planted in the earth. Yet, when a seed dies, it’s not obliterated, but it becomes a plant that bears seeds itself – that has within it the power of its own life to spread and grow out of all proportion to its original size and limitations. It has a new body. 

So when Jesus rises again from the dead, he is not merely resuscitated.  He is transformed, capable of relating to his friends in a new way, ultimately through the gift of God’s Holy Spirit, available to each one of us, bringing to each person the benefits and impact of the ministry that he exercised in his body in this small part of the world in which he lived and cared for people.

Jesus’ friends are changed completely through their encounter with him through witnessing the suffering and death that we remember in the next two weeks of this Passiontide season – and meeting him again when he is risen from the dead in a way that totally transforms their hopes and fears, and their vision for what is possible.

That leads them to remember, and to take courage from, the challenge that Jesus makes in our reading today: “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.” (John 12.25-26)

There is a pattern of death, resurrection and transformation that we each undergo when we trust him with our future – and walk the path of obedience that he walks ahead of, and alongside, us. 

Many losses and sufferings are forced upon us: a change of job, the diagnosis of a serious illness, a changed future, bereavement itself. That’s where the word “Passion” comes from – referring to the “passive” suffering that Jesus is forced to endure. But in embracing the Passion that he is about to suffer, Jesus also shows himself, in an unusual way, to be active. He is saying, “I’m going to go through with this”.

In John’s Gospel, although Jesus is clearly suffering what the authorities are doing to him, he is also refusing to run away. There is a sense in which he is ultimately in control of himself. “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep…. I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10.11, 17b, 18).

The moment I “die” to myself is the moment I choose to give the situation to God and to put him first – instead of going the way of self-preservation and ducking out.

Everything that Jesus needs for the next steps of the Passion that we will walk with him in the next two weeks he has. Everything that the seed needs to become the seed-bearing plants, the tree, the potato, is already there in the seed. It’s waiting for the nourishment of the soil, the water, the warmth and the light of the sun, for the death of the old body and the transformative creation of the new.

For us, that soil, water, warmth and light, are the gifts of the Holy Spirit encouraging and envisioning us – through the presence of God in this Holy Communion, the word of God as we seek to hear him speak to us through the pages of the Bible, and through the fellowship of the church. We also need each other!

If you think that the loss you are encountering today is too trivial for God, remember that God shows his love for the whole world by working through what seems small and modest to us. Be sure – if it matters to you, it matters to him.

Consider this well-known poem, attributed to James Allen Francis.

“He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never travelled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend.

Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned--put together--have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.”

"Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."  (John 12.24)