Lent 5- The Death of a Seed Produces Much Fruit- John 12:20-33
When Jesus speaks about his “hour” and being glorified he is referring to the cross. As you know, the symbol of Christianity is a cross. It is so normal to us that we don’t usually grasp how strange it is. To pre-Christian Rome It was offensive and grotesque. It was a shameful and horrifying way to die.
The cross has sometimes been a difficult aspect of Christianity to explain for missionaries in non-Christian societies. It is natural to think, if the universe was just and made sense, that Good people shouldn’t die that way. If a good person does die that way, then we quickly jump into questions about how the universe can be a just place when things like that happen in it. The universe doesn’t make sense if they do.
In the 16th century, a Jesuit missionary named Matteo Ricci arrived in China. He was a brilliant renaissance man who quickly mastered Chinese language and culture. In the style of Paul in Acts, Ricci attempted to find the truth in Chinese culture and use those truths to teach Christianity. He actually became a very respected expert in Confucianism, for bringing them western scientific knowledge, and also for teaching a method of memorization called the Memory Palace. … A difficult aspect of Christianity for Ricci to teach was the cross. Many philosophical and moral teachings of Christianity had their compliment in Chinese values. Ricci taught that Christianity was a perfecting of those already existing truths. However, Jesus’ crucifixion was not easy to communicate. It did not make sense in that ideology, especially in a culture where authority was highly respected. Jesus’ condemnation by the highest religious court of the day was an offence to Chinese values. So, he didn’t present the cross right away. One day, however, a servant of the Chinese court happened to come across a crucifix (a realistic statue of Jesus on the cross) among Matteo Ricci’s belongings. The shocked servant confronted Ricci, screaming at him, believing that he was practicing black magic in some attempt to kill the Chinese ruler. It was a horrifying image, so he thought it must have some horrifying purpose. Jesus’ moral and philosophical teachings were acceptable, but the cross was an offense.
We have become so used to the cross that we hardly see the horror of it anymore. … It is unavoidable, though. The cross isn’t on the edges of Christianity. It is right at the heart of Christianity. It is the very symbol of Christianity. … At the heart of Christianity is self-sacrificial love. It is a love that expresses itself by being willing to go to through the very worst for the beloved. Jesus explains that his sacrifice will bring good.
“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” (John 12:24).
We are alive because something else dies. We harvest a vegetable and it starts to die. We kill a cow, to feed ourselves meat. But it is through that death that we are able to live. We see this reflected in the practice of sacrifice, that was a part of almost every society, which offered animals and sometimes human beings to a divinity for some benefit to those performing the sacrifice.
The sacrifice of Jesus expressed God’s love for humanity- it mysteriously broke through the barrier erected by Sin. … Previously, sacrifice was always something humanity did to please the gods. Now, in Jesus, God offers the sacrifice of Himself to bless humanity. Jesus holds nothing back to show us his love for us. That is the central claim of Christianity.
This is also a calling for the followers of Jesus. In a different way, of course. We don’t die to deal with the sin of the world, but we are called to imitate him. The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote,
“When Christ calls a [person], he bids [them] come and die” (The Cost of Discipleship).
Bonhoeffer recognized that to be a Christian requires picking up your cross and following Christ.
When Jesus said,
When Jesus said,
“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” (Jn 12:24)
he was referring to his own death. However, he also called his followers into a way of life that was marked by self-sacrificial love. Jesus said,
“Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor” (John 12:25-26. See also Mark 8:35; Matt 16:25; Lk 9:24; Matt 10:39; Lk 17:33).
If we want to be with Jesus then the way to walk with him is by means of self-sacrificial love. There is courage required here because it is a frightening thing to be challenged with.
For many in the Early Church this meant literal death at the hands of those persecuting Christians. Sadly, this is the case for many modern Christians around the world as well. … The early Christian teacher Tertullian, probably reflecting on Jesus’ words in our gospel reading, once said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”. This certainly seemed to be that case for the Roman Empire as it went from persecuting Christianity to embracing it. The few grains of wheat that died seemed to produce a crop.
We understandably pray that we would be saved from being tested this way. None of us knows how we would respond to that kind of test. Thankfully, it is very unlikely that any of us will literally be killed for our belief in Christ. … However, the same self-sacrificial love is required of us that is required of the martyrs, and it will require a kind of death. This call of Jesus confronts our desire for a comfortable life. Growth almost always requires discomfort and change.
Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him. He says,
For many in the Early Church this meant literal death at the hands of those persecuting Christians. Sadly, this is the case for many modern Christians around the world as well. … The early Christian teacher Tertullian, probably reflecting on Jesus’ words in our gospel reading, once said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”. This certainly seemed to be that case for the Roman Empire as it went from persecuting Christianity to embracing it. The few grains of wheat that died seemed to produce a crop.
We understandably pray that we would be saved from being tested this way. None of us knows how we would respond to that kind of test. Thankfully, it is very unlikely that any of us will literally be killed for our belief in Christ. … However, the same self-sacrificial love is required of us that is required of the martyrs, and it will require a kind of death. This call of Jesus confronts our desire for a comfortable life. Growth almost always requires discomfort and change.
Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him. He says,
“Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor” (Jn 12:25-26).
Jesus doesn’t literally mean “hate your life”. He is exaggerating to make a point. He is saying that our priorities should be such that our commitment to the self-sacrificial love of Jesus makes our desire to maintain our status quo lives look like hate- it looks valueless by comparison.
What does it look like to die to our false selves in a culture where we are being socialized to have our every desire appeased? To deny a desire is almost seen as cruel, or as an injustice. It is the opposite if becoming “self-realized”, which usually means following your desires and fulfilling them. … It is interesting that most cultures have practiced fasting from food, even western cultures until quite recently. Now, when we have so much abundance, we consider fasting from food for a day or three to be extreme or even dangerous. We tend to think it is anorexia, which is a different issue altogether. … To deny our bodily desires can help us get in touch with our deeper desire for God. It teaches us that we don’t have to obey every desire of our body, or every emotion that passes through our mind. Your hunger doesn’t always mean you are starving. Your anger doesn’t always mean you have been wronged. Fasting teaches us that life is more than the calories we put in our mouth. … It is interesting to think about Adam and Eve and how they were tempted by a food. We can think about how Esau, controlled by his hunger, exchanged his birth right as the eldest son for some of Jacob’s stew. And the first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness was a temptation to make bread from stones. The temptation of hunger, and the desire it symbolizes in our lives, if foundational to understanding spiritual growth. … Self-denial is a kind of death. It is a death to the false self, … so that we can awaken to true life.
There are a number of ways we can die to our false self. We might die to our false self as we refuse to take our anger out on others. We might refuse to allow our desire to have our own way control our relationships. We might refuse to allow fear to control our behavior. We might be being called to die to a set of intellectual ideas so that we can embrace a new way of seeing the world. We might have to die to a status quo in the church, or in our society. The civil rights movement led by people like Martin Luther King Jr. in the southern United States was a kind of death to a status quo where people were treated differently on the basis of the colour of a person’s skin. … We are called to die to our false self, so that we can embrace our true self in following Christ to glorify God.
There is a cost to being a disciple. But, we should never forget that there is also a cost to not being a disciple. Jesus says the cost of not being a disciple is losing our life. It is missing out on the life God has created us to have. There is a death needed for our false self, so that the true self can live. Jesus wants our joy to be full (Jn 15:11). Jesus wants nothing less than a full life for us. But That life cannot be a reality until the false self dies. AMEN
What does it look like to die to our false selves in a culture where we are being socialized to have our every desire appeased? To deny a desire is almost seen as cruel, or as an injustice. It is the opposite if becoming “self-realized”, which usually means following your desires and fulfilling them. … It is interesting that most cultures have practiced fasting from food, even western cultures until quite recently. Now, when we have so much abundance, we consider fasting from food for a day or three to be extreme or even dangerous. We tend to think it is anorexia, which is a different issue altogether. … To deny our bodily desires can help us get in touch with our deeper desire for God. It teaches us that we don’t have to obey every desire of our body, or every emotion that passes through our mind. Your hunger doesn’t always mean you are starving. Your anger doesn’t always mean you have been wronged. Fasting teaches us that life is more than the calories we put in our mouth. … It is interesting to think about Adam and Eve and how they were tempted by a food. We can think about how Esau, controlled by his hunger, exchanged his birth right as the eldest son for some of Jacob’s stew. And the first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness was a temptation to make bread from stones. The temptation of hunger, and the desire it symbolizes in our lives, if foundational to understanding spiritual growth. … Self-denial is a kind of death. It is a death to the false self, … so that we can awaken to true life.
There are a number of ways we can die to our false self. We might die to our false self as we refuse to take our anger out on others. We might refuse to allow our desire to have our own way control our relationships. We might refuse to allow fear to control our behavior. We might be being called to die to a set of intellectual ideas so that we can embrace a new way of seeing the world. We might have to die to a status quo in the church, or in our society. The civil rights movement led by people like Martin Luther King Jr. in the southern United States was a kind of death to a status quo where people were treated differently on the basis of the colour of a person’s skin. … We are called to die to our false self, so that we can embrace our true self in following Christ to glorify God.
There is a cost to being a disciple. But, we should never forget that there is also a cost to not being a disciple. Jesus says the cost of not being a disciple is losing our life. It is missing out on the life God has created us to have. There is a death needed for our false self, so that the true self can live. Jesus wants our joy to be full (Jn 15:11). Jesus wants nothing less than a full life for us. But That life cannot be a reality until the false self dies. AMEN
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