We’re seeing growing signs of spring here in the Rio Grande Valley. The daffodils have been up in
our front yard for a couple weeks, and a lot of the trees have blossomed and are leafing out. Some
of our noses are responding in the way that noses do at this time of year as well. “Gesundheit!” is a
frequently offered blessing these days.
The nature that God has crafted has always held wise lessons for those who are attentive to its
rhythms. Jesus knew this perhaps better than anyone. He spoke of the birds of the air who neither
collect nor store, yet their Father in heaven sees to it that they’re fed. He spoke of God’s provision
for the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, yet are clothed in incomparable beauty by their
Father. And in today’s reading from St. John’s Gospel Jesus uses another illustration from nature to
explain His own impending work and the response he expects from those for whom he accomplishes
that work. John tells of Jesus revealing what He came to do, and then, what He expects us to do in
response.
It begins with some Greeks showing up to worship at the Passover festival. Many Greeks of that day
were seekers after truth. Apparently this particular group was attracted to Judaism in their quest. In
any case, they clearly had heard about this wandering healer and teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and
wanted to check him out.
So they come to Philip, whose name is a comfortably familiar Greek name, saying, “Sir, we wish to
see Jesus.” Philip talks to Andrew about this, and together they go to Jesus. When Jesus hears of
the Gentile seekers’ request, he answers in a totally unexpected way. He doesn’t check his
Blackberry or his Day-Timer for his next available appointment. Nor, for that matter, does he say,
“Great! Show them in!”
Rather, his first words are, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”
The appearance of two inquiring Greek Gentiles plainly is an important signal to him. It’s an event
that He’d been waiting for. Jesus is now entering a new and decisive stage of his ministry. The
worldwide scope of God’s love is about to be revealed, but in a way that no one could imagine. The
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is about to be more fully revealed to the world He created. But
the glorification of God’s Son would happen in a totally bewildering way. “The hour has come for the
Son of Man to be glorified.”
And the next words out of Jesus’ mouth are, “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.” Here, in His
typically poetic and parabolic way, Jesus captures the most basic truth of His purpose in coming to
earth. If the grain of wheat doesn’t fall and die, nothing much happens. It remains just one more
lonely stalk waving in the random winds of time. It remains only a single grain. But if it does fall and
die, miraculous things happen. A new blade appears and bears fruit. Then many more. And before
long the field is spreading with golden waves of grain that offer their fruit and become for the world
the bread of life.
Jesus is proclaiming to His followers that something more terrible and more glorious than anything
they had imagined is about to take place. He will soon be crucified and die a horrible death. But the
outcome of that death will be not only His own resurrection, but also the offering of eternal life to all
who would believe in His name.
Glorification would come not by military conquest and earthly kingship, but by the spiritual defeat of
sin and death through, as our Prayer Book says, Jesus’ offering of Himself as “a full, perfect, and
sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.” Or as St. Paul writes,
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” The way of victory is the way of the Cross.
And it’s this truth that Jesus then applies to His followers as well. For next 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 be my servant, also. Whoever serves me, the Father
will honor.” Those who love their life will lose it. What could this mean?
Of course one way to interpret this is that one must be willing to die for the faith. Many through the
ages have given their lives for the gospel in which they believe down to their marrow. It’s still
happening today, right now, in many places around the world. In fact, it’s been estimated that, in the
past 100 years, more people have given their lives for the Christian faith than in all previous
centuries combined. There’s an old saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
This would surely be consistent with Jesus’ image of the dying grain of wheat ultimately producing
fruit. That is, only by spending our life in the highest way can we actually gain higher life for
ourselves and for others.
It’s like in the movie Braveheart, when William Wallace is on the verge of being executed for treason
by the English. King Edward’s daughter-in-law, the Princess, who has fallen in love with Wallace,
bemoans the fact that he won’t recant. She tearfully says, “But you’ll die.” Wallace’s famous reply
(at least Mel Gibson’s version of it) is, “All men die. But not all men truly live.” He had lost himself in
the cause of justice and freedom, which was something much bigger than himself or his own life. To
him, fighting and dying for freedom was truly living.
Similarly, Jesus calls on all who follow Him to be willing to sacrifice themselves in love. In John 15
Jesus says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one
than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” He seems to be saying, “Love each other so
much that you’re willing to actually die for each other and for the gospel.” But when Jesus says,
“Those who love their life lose it,” I think he’s talking about something much more general and more
essential than martyrdom. He’s talking about the believer’s entire life stance toward God and toward
oneself. He’s talking about who reigns upon the throne of our hearts. He’s talking about dying to
self, so that God can accomplish in our hearts the good He wishes to accomplish.
And Jesus says, “Those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Of course Jesus
isn’t talking literally about hating this life. You know, walking around with a cynical sneer and
copping an attitude like some aging punk rocker, or like the disaffected teenager who says, “I hate
my life!” Rather, He’s saying that we need to keep our priorities straight, and keep them in our
thoughts and actions at all times—that the transitory things of this world must take a decided back
seat to the eternal matter of following Jesus and being the vehicle through whom He accomplishes
His loving purposes in His growing Kingdom on earth.
In fact, this is what real conversion is all about. When we become committed Christians, it’s not just
about going to church on Sundays, or doing the liturgy properly, or doing the occasional good
deed. It’s about being the seed of wheat that falls from the stalk of its own heart, dies, and is
reborn. And that death and rebirth is what makes us vessels of God’s love and grace. The way of
victory is the way of the Cross. It’s the way of surrender to God.
This surrender is at the heart of Lenten discipline. Lent is the time in which we engage in
introspection to see whether we’re living the kind of life God wants us to live. The problem is, none
of us has the power on our own to live the kind of life God wants us to live. It requires us to
surrender in such a way that God Himself, through the Holy Spirit, has room to be our strength and
our goodness. In effect, we need to get out of His way.
This may sound simple enough, but it sure isn’t easy. I don’t think it comes naturally to any of us to
surrender the sovereignty over ourselves to God, no matter how good and wise and loving we
perceive Him to be. It’s a frightening thing. We reflexively resist it.
But the reward for this surrender is actually gaining a new self. A self which, paradoxically, is even
more genuinely who God made us to be. I like what C. S. Lewis writes about this in Mere
Christianity. In fact this message is important enough that he concludes the book with these words.
Listen carefully. “Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when
you are looking for Christ…Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you
will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day; and death of
your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep
back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has
not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only
hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with
Him everything else thrown in.”
Do we wake up first thing in the morning and give God thanks for our life and our salvation in
Jesus? Do we place Him daily on the throne of our heart? Do we acknowledge regularly that not
only the things in this life, but our very lives themselves, are a continuing gift of love? In response to
His love, do we prayerfully seek the Lord’s power to do what God wants us to do each and every
day? This is what it means to die to self. Jesus did this very thing in the Garden of Gethsemane
when He prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may
your will be done." He drank of the cup. He was the grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died.
And on the third day, he rose again.
There are two weeks left in Lent. If we really want to experience fully the joy and triumph of Easter,
may we spend this time learning to die to ourselves and learning to live to God. “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.” Amen.
our front yard for a couple weeks, and a lot of the trees have blossomed and are leafing out. Some
of our noses are responding in the way that noses do at this time of year as well. “Gesundheit!” is a
frequently offered blessing these days.
The nature that God has crafted has always held wise lessons for those who are attentive to its
rhythms. Jesus knew this perhaps better than anyone. He spoke of the birds of the air who neither
collect nor store, yet their Father in heaven sees to it that they’re fed. He spoke of God’s provision
for the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, yet are clothed in incomparable beauty by their
Father. And in today’s reading from St. John’s Gospel Jesus uses another illustration from nature to
explain His own impending work and the response he expects from those for whom he accomplishes
that work. John tells of Jesus revealing what He came to do, and then, what He expects us to do in
response.
It begins with some Greeks showing up to worship at the Passover festival. Many Greeks of that day
were seekers after truth. Apparently this particular group was attracted to Judaism in their quest. In
any case, they clearly had heard about this wandering healer and teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and
wanted to check him out.
So they come to Philip, whose name is a comfortably familiar Greek name, saying, “Sir, we wish to
see Jesus.” Philip talks to Andrew about this, and together they go to Jesus. When Jesus hears of
the Gentile seekers’ request, he answers in a totally unexpected way. He doesn’t check his
Blackberry or his Day-Timer for his next available appointment. Nor, for that matter, does he say,
“Great! Show them in!”
Rather, his first words are, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”
The appearance of two inquiring Greek Gentiles plainly is an important signal to him. It’s an event
that He’d been waiting for. Jesus is now entering a new and decisive stage of his ministry. The
worldwide scope of God’s love is about to be revealed, but in a way that no one could imagine. The
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is about to be more fully revealed to the world He created. But
the glorification of God’s Son would happen in a totally bewildering way. “The hour has come for the
Son of Man to be glorified.”
And the next words out of Jesus’ mouth are, “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.” Here, in His
typically poetic and parabolic way, Jesus captures the most basic truth of His purpose in coming to
earth. If the grain of wheat doesn’t fall and die, nothing much happens. It remains just one more
lonely stalk waving in the random winds of time. It remains only a single grain. But if it does fall and
die, miraculous things happen. A new blade appears and bears fruit. Then many more. And before
long the field is spreading with golden waves of grain that offer their fruit and become for the world
the bread of life.
Jesus is proclaiming to His followers that something more terrible and more glorious than anything
they had imagined is about to take place. He will soon be crucified and die a horrible death. But the
outcome of that death will be not only His own resurrection, but also the offering of eternal life to all
who would believe in His name.
Glorification would come not by military conquest and earthly kingship, but by the spiritual defeat of
sin and death through, as our Prayer Book says, Jesus’ offering of Himself as “a full, perfect, and
sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.” Or as St. Paul writes,
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” The way of victory is the way of the Cross.
And it’s this truth that Jesus then applies to His followers as well. For next 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 be my servant, also. Whoever serves me, the Father
will honor.” Those who love their life will lose it. What could this mean?
Of course one way to interpret this is that one must be willing to die for the faith. Many through the
ages have given their lives for the gospel in which they believe down to their marrow. It’s still
happening today, right now, in many places around the world. In fact, it’s been estimated that, in the
past 100 years, more people have given their lives for the Christian faith than in all previous
centuries combined. There’s an old saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
This would surely be consistent with Jesus’ image of the dying grain of wheat ultimately producing
fruit. That is, only by spending our life in the highest way can we actually gain higher life for
ourselves and for others.
It’s like in the movie Braveheart, when William Wallace is on the verge of being executed for treason
by the English. King Edward’s daughter-in-law, the Princess, who has fallen in love with Wallace,
bemoans the fact that he won’t recant. She tearfully says, “But you’ll die.” Wallace’s famous reply
(at least Mel Gibson’s version of it) is, “All men die. But not all men truly live.” He had lost himself in
the cause of justice and freedom, which was something much bigger than himself or his own life. To
him, fighting and dying for freedom was truly living.
Similarly, Jesus calls on all who follow Him to be willing to sacrifice themselves in love. In John 15
Jesus says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one
than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” He seems to be saying, “Love each other so
much that you’re willing to actually die for each other and for the gospel.” But when Jesus says,
“Those who love their life lose it,” I think he’s talking about something much more general and more
essential than martyrdom. He’s talking about the believer’s entire life stance toward God and toward
oneself. He’s talking about who reigns upon the throne of our hearts. He’s talking about dying to
self, so that God can accomplish in our hearts the good He wishes to accomplish.
And Jesus says, “Those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Of course Jesus
isn’t talking literally about hating this life. You know, walking around with a cynical sneer and
copping an attitude like some aging punk rocker, or like the disaffected teenager who says, “I hate
my life!” Rather, He’s saying that we need to keep our priorities straight, and keep them in our
thoughts and actions at all times—that the transitory things of this world must take a decided back
seat to the eternal matter of following Jesus and being the vehicle through whom He accomplishes
His loving purposes in His growing Kingdom on earth.
In fact, this is what real conversion is all about. When we become committed Christians, it’s not just
about going to church on Sundays, or doing the liturgy properly, or doing the occasional good
deed. It’s about being the seed of wheat that falls from the stalk of its own heart, dies, and is
reborn. And that death and rebirth is what makes us vessels of God’s love and grace. The way of
victory is the way of the Cross. It’s the way of surrender to God.
This surrender is at the heart of Lenten discipline. Lent is the time in which we engage in
introspection to see whether we’re living the kind of life God wants us to live. The problem is, none
of us has the power on our own to live the kind of life God wants us to live. It requires us to
surrender in such a way that God Himself, through the Holy Spirit, has room to be our strength and
our goodness. In effect, we need to get out of His way.
This may sound simple enough, but it sure isn’t easy. I don’t think it comes naturally to any of us to
surrender the sovereignty over ourselves to God, no matter how good and wise and loving we
perceive Him to be. It’s a frightening thing. We reflexively resist it.
But the reward for this surrender is actually gaining a new self. A self which, paradoxically, is even
more genuinely who God made us to be. I like what C. S. Lewis writes about this in Mere
Christianity. In fact this message is important enough that he concludes the book with these words.
Listen carefully. “Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when
you are looking for Christ…Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you
will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day; and death of
your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep
back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has
not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only
hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with
Him everything else thrown in.”
Do we wake up first thing in the morning and give God thanks for our life and our salvation in
Jesus? Do we place Him daily on the throne of our heart? Do we acknowledge regularly that not
only the things in this life, but our very lives themselves, are a continuing gift of love? In response to
His love, do we prayerfully seek the Lord’s power to do what God wants us to do each and every
day? This is what it means to die to self. Jesus did this very thing in the Garden of Gethsemane
when He prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may
your will be done." He drank of the cup. He was the grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died.
And on the third day, he rose again.
There are two weeks left in Lent. If we really want to experience fully the joy and triumph of Easter,
may we spend this time learning to die to ourselves and learning to live to God. “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.” Amen.
A Grain of Wheat
(John 12:20-33) Fifth Sunday of Lent
(John 12:20-33) Fifth Sunday of Lent
March 29, 2009
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton
