March 17, 2024
Lent 5 Year B
Epiphany, Winnipeg
John 12:20-33
Jesus wasn’t talking about Uncle Maynard’s funeral, but this is what happened when Uncle Maynard died.
It was about thirty-five years ago, and no one expected to be coming together in a little town called Armena, southeast of Edmonton, for my mom’s older brother’s funeral. He hadn’t had any long lingering illness, and I don’t think that there was some underlying issue that would suddenly make everything go wrong, or it was nothing that I at least knew of. It all happened pretty quickly, and when Val called to tell me the news I couldn’t believe it. It was the first close death I’d experienced in my adult life, and I really didn’t know how to process it at all. I was, of course, a smart seminary student who had done lots of funerals on internship, so I really did know all the things, right? Nope. Not at all. Not a clue.
For the next three days people gathered at the farm where mom and that brother and their other brother and sister had grown up, and we emoted all over the place. Every time someone showed up for the first time there would be a long line of hugs and lots of tears and words spoken and words that just couldn’t come out right. We laughed and talked about quirky things, and there was talk in quieter spaces about troubles there might have been along the way and about conflicts that didn’t quite get cleared up and things that didn’t always go well. Val and I stayed at my cousin’s place, and my cousin and I stayed up late late late into the next three nights, talking about what happened and about everything else along the way. We hadn’t done that for years, or maybe we’d never done it at all, but we finally did then.
The day of the funeral…I cried more than I ever had and maybe more than I have since. A lot of us did. So many hugs and tears and still more stories, and coffee in the church basement and sandwiches and squares and a quiet few minutes at the cemetery, where we were surrounded by our own little communion of saints, who belong to this big communion of saints here and everywhere, as we said goodbye to Uncle Maynard.
It was so sad, but there was so much life being lived in that place for all that time. So much, which meant so much feeling, so much memory, so much being brought together, so much honesty, so much sadness and hurt and joy, so much being human all rolled up into one. The living was abundant.
We heard this a few minutes ago: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
It wasn’t a blessing that my Uncle died. It didn’t all have a silver lining, and nobody really thought anything like “He’s gone to a better place,” because we all just wanted him right here in this place. But when we were called together because of a death, there was so much living going on. In a weird sort of way, there was so much living that wouldn’t have happened without the dying. The dying was not a good thing, but the dying was just one word. And there was so much more living.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Jesus is dropping hints here about his own death – he will be a dying grain of wheat - and his own burial, falling into the ground, alone, and rising again…then brought back to life and death is defeated. Death won’t be the only word in the story any more. And you can imagine someone in the day or two after Jesus’ death remembering what he said and wondering whether there is more, and the dying won’t be the end of the story. Maybe there will be a rising. Maybe there will be a lot of life growing up out of this…
In a way, that’s easy for us. It’s Good Friday and Easter, and the days and weeks after Easter, and a few thousand years after Easter today when this has all become so familiar to us. It’s good news that we’ll call out again in a few weeks with our loud and clear “Christ is Risen, He is Risen indeed.” It’s good news that we speak again and again on Sundays without even noticing sometimes…Listen for all the ways in the next half hour that we say or sing or hear something that says, but in a different way, “A grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, and bears much fruit.”
Think of all the ways that we’ve seen that it’s true. Maybe it’s your own grief when you found that life keeps going anyway, or maybe we can look around and see all the ways that death has not been able to stop people from coming together and keeping on, and loving and caring and struggling and laughing and crying and holding on and living. A grain of wheat dies, but it still bears much fruit.
It’s Good Friday and Easter all rolled into one. It’s our life, our lives, all rolled into one.
Jesus goes on though, as Jesus often does, with something that’s harder to sort out. “Whoever loves their life will lose it, and whoever hates their life in this world…will keep it for eternal life.” At Bible Study on Monday somebody said what we all might think when we hear this. They said, “It’s kind of situation with no positive outcomes.” You love your life, you lose it - That doesn’t sound great. You hate your life in this world you’ll keep it for eternal life? Eternal life is a good thing, but are we supposed to hate our life? Or is Jesus saying that if someone can’t stand their life now that’s OK, because they’ll get to go to heaven? None of that sounds right coming from the same one who said that you will have life and have it abundantly. How can the Jesus who said that “God so loved the world”, turn around later and say that someone who hates their life in the world that God loves will keep it?
In one way this is all about Jesus’ own living and dying, about how Jesus does not fight to keep his own life or avoid suffering. He’s willing to lose his life, and he knows he will, if that’s what being faithful to God costs. He’s willing to lose his life, and he knows he will, if that’s what it costs to value love and community and people more than power and success.
And it’s about our own living and dying. Whatever we have and love the most won’t last forever. That’s just the way it is. And if there’s not much to love about life in this world because it’s too painful or you’ve grieved too much too many times or the forces of greed and violence seem to be the ones who run the place, even that won’t last forever. Life will win. The grain of wheat will bear much fruit. But even that may or may not be good consolation.
There’s no way to wrap it all up into a neat package that will make everyone feel good. Maybe it’s just that life is good, and life is hard, and life isn’t all about hanging on and clinging to what we’ve got, because that’s never going to save us in the end. It won’t work. But it’s all part of that promise, that dying grain of wheat that produces a great harvest, like all that living that went on even when dying brought us together.
I don’t recall the exact words, but this past week in conversation someone said something like this about all of these words of Jesus today: “It’s just that life and death are never far apart.” Or maybe it was something like, “Life and death are always close companions.” And that’s just the way it is.
When Jesus says all this, we can just breathe a sigh of relief and say “Thank God we don’t have to pretend that it’s not that way.” We can spend so much energy and time and money trying to avoid dying and avoid losing what we love when we know we can’t. And that’s exhausting. Jesus sets us free from that with words about a dying grain of wheat, and with his own dying and rising. Our life, and our dying, and our living, is all looked after already.
This reading today began with some Greeks coming to two of Jesus’ disciples and asking to see Jesus. They’ve come to Jerusalem from far away, and they ask these disciples who themselves are Jews but who come from far away in their own land. These ones all come together, wanting to see Jesus.
It ends with Jesus saying that when he is lifted up on to a cross and then out of a grave, he will draw all people to himself. A grain of wheat that will die alone rises again to give a huge harvest and to draw all people together: Greeks and Jews and Palestinians, people from Nazareth and Jerusalem and Gaza, from Hamburg and Harare and Tokyo, from Haiti and Armena and Kapuskasing. A lonely seed makes a harvest where no one is alone.
What will look like failure on the cross turns out to be victory over death. And the seed who goes silent in the earth will gather up all people. And the living will be abundant.