30.10 | Bury the Seed
John 12:20-50
‘And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’
John 12:23-24
There’s not enough of me to go around.
I sometimes know this feeling—as the demands of messages, people, emails, family, my own standards and expectations, and simply existing in a world where the measure of problems always seems beyond my capacity to fix. I remember my dad, reflecting on a similar season of life, saying that it felt like wild horses were pulling him in many different directions.
If we feel this sometimes, imagine how it was for Jesus. The crowds, the disciples, the sicknesses, the oppressed and hungry and lost. As He put it, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. The demand exceeded the capacity.
Today’s question introduces a crucial moment in the ministry of Jesus. Because there are some Greeks (read: Gentiles — i.e. Greek-speaking Europeans who were not Jews) at the festival. And they want to see Jesus.
Philip knows this is no simple question. There were clear lines of delineation between Jewish rabbis and the Gentile world. He knows that Jesus has His hands more than full enough with the demands and expectations of the Jewish people. And yet He also knows that Jesus works in a different paradigm to most rabbis. He takes the question to Andrew. And then they both take it to Jesus.
Jesus’ response is cryptic:
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Cryptic. But Jesus is answering the capacity problem.
For the issue with a seed, He suggests, is that it is small. It is unable to feed people, give shelter, give beauty to a world. A seed is limited.
And yet, He says, if this seed is dug into the earth, and surrendered to soil and water and time, it grows. The seed becomes a seedling. The seedling becomes a sapling. The sapling becomes a tree. And the tree bears much fruit.
And yet, these mathematics of multiplication requires something that is costly above all else.
Death.
The seed has to be abandoned as a seed. It can no longer be held in the hand or sprinkled on your salad. It has to be utterly given over, dug into dark earth, and surrendered. The seed has to die to everything that it has been, in order to become all that it can be.
Jesus is telling His disciples what is coming. He is describing to them how this movement that He has begun in them will multiply to every nation in the world. He is telling them that His crucifixion is the response to the capacity issue that they have observed, for in His death the power and presence of Jesus will be multiplied vastly beyond anything they have yet imagined, unto every nation of the world.
And yet, there’s something else here. Because Jesus goes on:
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
This confronts us personally. Because, it seems, that Jesus is not merely telling His disciples what He will do; He is telling them the pathway that His followers, too, will walk. This is not merely how He will save the world; it is how we will live—a movement of Jesus-shaped, cross-carrying, life-laid-down followers through who the harvest will be greatly multiplied. For the limited offerings of His followers, released in surrendered obedience, also may meet the limitless power of the God who turns willing sacrifice to resurrection possibilities.
Reflect:
What does sacrificial love look like today?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
I know this feeling:
The stretch;
The overwhelm;
The expectations;
The impossibility of keeping up.
And yet, Lord,
It seems in these words you invite me into another way—
Not of superhero might and diary acrobatics,
But rather,
Of abandonment.
Abandonment of what I cannot control;
Abandonment of ego expectations;
Abandonment of trying to meet each exhausting demand—
Into the laid-down life that walks the way of your cross,
And lets every other priority die in the soil of your care.
And here, Lord,
I find
That my letting go
Opens resurrection possibilities.
In Your Name,
Lord Jesus,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Esther 8-10 | Psalm 120