Throughout Lent we have been looking ahead, preparing to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is above all on Good Friday that we focus on the cross of Jesus, what God was doing in this terrible but beautiful event, and what it means for us and for the world. But although Good Friday is still twelve days away, today, Passion Sunday, is also set aside for thinking about the cross. We will look especially at today's Gospel reading, in which Jesus pictures himself as a seed that must be broken open – must die – if it is to bear fruit
But first some comments on our reading from the prophet Jeremiah. Some of you took part in the Bible study on Jeremiah two weeks ago – part of a series that has included the prophets Amos, Hosea and Ezekiel. (The series ends on Tuesday when we focus especially on the passage in Isaiah about a mysterious 'suffering servant' of God, whom Christians have always identified with Jesus.) In the messages of all these prophets we find a mixture of judgement and hope. The prophets announce God's judgement, the condemnation of God's covenant people Israel, because they have turned from God, adulterously, to other (illusory) gods that bring no long-term good; they have abandoned truthfulness, justice and compassion, bringing disaster upon themselves. Jeremiah unrelentingly holds before his people the reality of their sin and its dreadful consequences. Furthermore, they cannot disentangle themselves from their sin; they cannot heal themselves.
But this bleak diagnosis is not God's final word. In terms of mere word-count, judgement is Jeremiah's dominant message, but light regularly breaks through the darkness. The prophet knows that although in the short term he can speak of little else than God's judgement on his faithless people, the central, defining truth about God is his faithful, covenant love. In the end, God's love must triumph and bring about the reconciliation, healing and flourishing that are what God fundamentally desires for his people and for his whole creation. That is what we hear in today's reading from Jeremiah 31, where God says that he will make 'a new covenant', will restore his relationship with his people, writing his law on their hearts: 'and I will be their God and they shall be my people'. Jesus echoes these words just hours before his death, sharing wine with his friends and telling them, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood', words we hear whenever we celebrate the Eucharist. The shedding of the blood of Jesus on the cross is how the new covenant is made. Approaching his death, Jesus knows that this is what is required of him if he is to be faithful to his mission, so that God's loving purposes can be fulfilled.
Which leads into our reading from John's Gospel. It's only a few days before the last supper. Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph, but, knowing what lies ahead, he speaks about his approaching death. As so often, Jesus uses picture language, simple enough for a child to grasp, but deep enough to keep us all thinking. Jesus speaks about a seed, a grain of wheat: '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' (12:24). Jesus speaks about seeds, and he contrasts the before and the after. A seed is a small, dry, unimpressive thing. Looking at a seed, you'd never guess – if you didn't already know – what would grow out if it. But afterwards, that seed will produce a rich harvest; there will be much fruit.
Between the unimpressive beginnings and the rich harvest lie two important truths.
First, the seed has life within it.
Second, the seed must fall into the ground and die. It is only if the seed cracks open and dies that the life within it can come out and produce a rich harvest.
As he approaches his death, Jesus compares himself to a seed. Like a seed, he has, within himself, life. Of course, in one sense we all have life within us. But merely to be physically alive is not real life. Life in its fullness, Jesus says, comes from knowing God and God's love, and living a life rooted in God, serving God's purposes. That kind of life was in Jesus in a unique way. I am a living being, yes, but I cannot say of myself, nor can any of us, what Jesus says of himself: 'I am the life' (John 14:6). Jesus was uniquely alive; he was the source of life itself: 'In him was life' (1:4). And the purpose of Jesus' coming into the world was to share that life: 'I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly' (10:10).' Jesus is like a seed, with the secret of abundant life hidden within him, waiting to come out.
But if that life is to be shared with us, then the seed must fall into the ground and crack open. Just as a seed must die if new life is to grow out of it, Jesus knows that he too must die; he must be broken, if his life is to be shared with the world.
Jesus paints this picture as he approaches his death. He knows God has sent him into the world with a great treasure to share with the world, the treasure of his abundant life; he is like a seed, pregnant with a rich harvest. But Jesus also knows that the treasure can only be shared, the harvest can only be enjoyed, if, like a seed, his protective shell is cracked open and through his death his life is poured out for others.
As he faces this, Jesus says: 'My soul is troubled' (12:27). The prospect terrifies him, because he isn't actually a seed but a man, and he's facing the reality of a whipping that will lacerate his body, the hammering of sharp iron into his flesh, and a slow death by asphyxiation as he hangs naked on a cross. That is the brutal, humiliating way that this 'seed' must fall into the ground and die. Jesus is fully human and he is genuinely tempted to back out.
But Jesus can face this death because he knows it is the goal of his mission; he knows that up ahead, through and beyond his death, there is a harvest to come, a rich harvest. He is thinking of that harvest when he says, at the end of today's reading: 'I, when I am lifted up from the earth [on the cross], will draw all people to myself' (12:32). There is also a glimpse of this harvest at the start of the reading, where we hear about some Greeks who have come to the disciples and said: 'We want to see Jesus' (12:21). These are Greeks, Gentiles, not members of God's people Israel, and they want in; they want what God is giving the world in Jesus. And they will find their way in; they will see Jesus, they will find the life that is in him, because he has come not just to renew God's covenant with Israel but also to open it up to all people: 'I will draw all people to myself.' But when Jesus hears that these Gentiles have come looking for him, he immediately speaks of himself as the seed that must fall into the ground and die. The making of God's new covenant with his people Israel and its opening up to all the world requires the blood of Christ. Jesus must go the way of the cross if the harvest is to come.
And we are part of that harvest, part of that drawing of all people to himself for which Jesus died. If, like the Greeks in this story, we say 'We want to see Jesus'; if we have begun, however dimly, to see that Jesus is the Lord of life; if we are drawn by his words: 'I came that you might have life in all its fullness'; then we have begun to share in his life and to be part of that harvest for which he died.
We've been thinking of this picture Jesus paints of a seed falling into the ground and 'dying', and so producing abundant life, and how that applied to him and his unique mission. But this picture of life through death also applies to us. Right after the saying about the seed dying, Jesus goes on to apply the point to us: 'Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.' (12:25) When Jesus speaks of those who 'hate their life', he is not telling us to despise and loathe ourselves, but is using deliberately shocking language to flag up that he is telling us something we will struggle to accept: that to find our lives, we must let go of them and surrender them to him. As he says elsewhere: 'those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the gospel, will save it' (Mark 8:34).
If we want our lives to achieve their true purpose, if we want truly to live, to bear much fruit, we must lay our lives down, we must let go of them; we must die in order to live. This doesn't refer just to the death we must all go through at the end of this life before entering eternal life; it means a kind of dying-in-order-to-live within this life. Many poets and sages, many religious traditions have seen something of this truth. As the mystics of Islam put it, we must 'die before we die'. But Jesus does not leave this as a general spiritual truth; he focuses it upon himself: if you would save your life, you will lose it; if you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.
This teaching clashes head on with our normal instincts. We instinctively protect ourselves; we hold onto our life; we grasp our life tight to ourselves, fearing that if we don't we will lose it. We fear our lives will lose all significance and substance if we give up our life-long struggle to save ourselves. But it's a fundamental mistake, a failure to see what life really is. As William Blake puts it: 'He who binds to himself his joy/doth the winged life destroy'. If we cling to our life, desperately asserting our own control over it, it will slip like sand through our fingers: 'Whoever would save his life will lose it.'
What will it mean for us to lose our life for the sake of Christ and so save it? Losing our life does not mean abandoning all responsible thought, living like someone walking across a busy motorway without looking. It means handing our lives over, in gratitude and trust, to the service of Christ and his way, knowing that that is actually the only way to 'save' our lives, to bring them to their true goal. But that will often be a hard way to live, so hard, so much against our natural instincts, that Jesus calls it 'hating your own life'.
Jesus lived in this way, and died in this way, in order to fulfil his mission and bring about the rich harvest of a world restored to God, living in the new covenant with God and at peace with each other. This is the way of the mission of Jesus, and it is the way of the mission of the church: dying in order to live, dying in order to bring life to others. A church that is living out the mission of Christ faithfully and fruitfully will be a church in which the people are learning to die in order to live and to bring life to others. People who are learning not to cling to their own lives, their money, their time, their dignity, their self-image, their priorities. People who are gladly learning to live by the same logic that we see in Jesus: dying in order to live and to bring life to others. May that be so among us.
David Marshall