I’m not a good gardener. I frequently need help even with resilient house plants. Soil and seeds and harvesting are generally a mystery to me. But even I understand this metaphor Jesus is teaching today:
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. It’s the cycle of life every spring; seeds need to “die” and transform in order to grow. Right?
This is a life-giving story that I like, one I’m glad to hear and repeat as we get closer to Holy Week: to our annual remembrance of Jesus’ own death – and resurrection.
But then Jesus goes on, and starts talking about hating life, and losing it. And it starts to feel more personal for me, more uncomfortable.
Oh, I see. He’s not talking about death and life confined to a painless vegetable metaphor, but death and life that have real impact on me, on you.
He’s talking real loss as part of real transformation. Real commitment and risk, in following and serving him.
Now my soul is troubled, too, just like Jesus says his is.
Should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ he asks.
No.
For this I have come; Father, glorify your name.
Now Jesus is talking about not being afraid of the loss and transformation he’s telling us about. Not being afraid of the real and far-reaching impact of death and life on our own lives – or more truly, not avoiding that impact, the transformation, or the loss itself. Not letting fear stop us from growing into abundant life.
Again, that sounds good in the abstract.
It’s harder on the ground. Or maybe in the ground, right here in the earth, with the seed that dies and bears fruit.
We’re kind of there right now, all of us together.
We know the process of new life beyond the Covid pandemic has begun. As spring becomes more real, as more vaccines are produced and administered, the world around us is starting to prepare for a summer that includes actual gatherings.
We’re ready to imagine new opportunities at church, in our families, or at work that just wouldn’t have been imaginable five months ago, or twelve months ago – or two years ago, in the old “normal.”
And at the same time, we’re still waiting for that new life. We’re still buried in the earth. We’re still surrounded, every day, by the deep soil of loss – the conveniences and opportunities missed, optimism disappointed, the burden of work and school and relationships and church all crammed into our homes and phones and computers; the burden of an imperfect world where injustice and division are so visible and disruptive to our comfort and sense of our selves and our community – or where injustice is invisible to many, while cutting deep into our own lives.
This eart we’re in affects each of us differently, but it’s around us all.
Some of us are deep in the soil of grief, surrounded by the reality of illness and death, when healing should be so near. I find myself taking it really personally now when beloved people get ill, or die, because we should be so close to healing and protection, as a whole.
It's tempting – natural, faithful even – to want to cry out: God, save us from this hour.
It’s hard to be seed, buried in the earth, waiting through the processes of death and life. Hard to accept the losses, and lose ourselves to transformation, instead of holding tight to what we were, how we used to be. Hard to wait out the time it takes for loss and death to slowly grow into new life.
Yet that is what Jesus is calling us to.
I’m reminded of a classic Frog and Toad story,* in which Toad plants seeds and expects a beautiful garden “quite soon”. The moment the seeds are in the ground, he expects flowers.
“Start growing!” he begs the seeds, urges them, commands them.
Until his friend Frog suggests that the seeds are afraid to grow.
Now Toad’s concern changes. In the middle of the night he wonders if the seeds are afraid of the dark – afraid of the unknown.
So Toad brings light and stories and music to his seeds, commits himself to nurturing those seeds through the fear they might be feeling. Until his seeds aren’t “afraid” anymore, until they grow.
Jesus is telling us – like Toad’s seeds – not to be “afraid of the dark”; not to be afraid to grow. Jesus is telling us that he himself will be with us in this confining soil; nurturing and encouraging us through the loss and uncertainty or change we might fear.
More, Jesus is encouraging us to follow him into transformation – to open ourselves to everything that can’t happen if we are stuck, if we believe that the earth surrounding us now is a prison, an ending, rather than a place to put down roots, open ourselves, be nourished, and grow.
Because by himself falling into the earth and dying, Jesus turns death into the home of God, the nurturing soil of new life for us all. The presence of God in death itself is revolutionary; it changes everything.
By himself falling into the earth and dying, Jesus demonstrates that neither death itself, nor the losses we fear, will separate us from God, but are actually full of God’s own presence and abundant life. That when we ourselves “fall into the earth” – whether of a global pandemic or a more personal trouble, change, or ending – that earth will be full of God’s power: a place where the loss is acknowledged and real, and also full of potential for transformation and growth.
That’s why Jesus can talk about his own death and say, not “Father, save me!”, but rather “this is why I have come; this is part of God’s glory!”
Jesus invites us to do the same.
And to hear, from the voice of thunder that answers Jesus, that God’s glory isn’t something for the distant future, but is ongoing. Glory has already started, is happening now in the earth that we fall into, as well as in the growth that is yet to come.
God’s name is already glorified in the same deep soil of uncertainty, loss, and change we share now.
As a congregation, in the midst of this, we’re meeting and exceeding our outreach challenges, stocking the food pantry that supports many who are struggling more than ever.
You and I are individually finding and giving of ourselves to organizations that save lives through medicine, disaster relief, shelter, and justice. Others are digging roots into the hope for transformation: for equity and reconciliation and generous love to come from the loss and death and inequity revealed in this pandemic year.
That’s taking part in God’s glory, happening already in the midst of the deep soil of need and longing and change.
Or perhaps, in this deep soil, in this waiting time, you are exercising hope by intentionally preparing to bear much fruit: through prayer, reading, reflection, and conversations that draw us closer to God.
Or by actively planning for how our new “normal” will be more creative, welcoming, hope-filled and abundant than the old normal that’s been dying for a year.
Perhaps you’re starting to grow, in this soil, by cultivating patience and generosity – reserving judgement and waiting to unmask.
Starting to grow by listening longer and more attentively, by cultivating trust that opens the heart to transformation.
God’s glory radiates from that rich, dark soil, even before the leaves and fruit appear.
And not just in this pandemic, but in all the other times in our lives when we “fall into the earth” through a sudden diagnosis or loss, or find ourselves “buried” in work or grief. God’s presence in the deep earth that surrounds us welcomes us to a place of transformation; welcomes us to be at home with God in the depths of true sorrow and loss, in the dark of waiting and uncertainty, as God unwraps the new life within us.
When we fall into the earth, we don’t have to rush to the surface.
We don’t have to plead to be plucked from the depths.
God sings and whispers to us in the deep soil itself: don’t be afraid to grow in the dark. I am here. I am with you.
*"The Garden", from Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad Together, Harper Collins, 1971
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