In today’s Gospel, Philip tells Andrew about the Greeks asking “to see” Jesus and He responds to them saying: “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).
That’s His response to those who want to see and believe in Him; to you, and to me. In Jesus’s answer, we can find a secret to life. One of those secrets that can trouble our soul, so we often turn away from it or close our eyes to it.
It’s the pattern of loss and renewal, dying and rising, letting go and getting back, leaving and returning that runs throughout our lives and our world.
Dying is about more than our physical death. Yes, it is that but it’s also more than that. We die a thousand deaths throughout our lifetime. The loss of a loved one, a relationship, health, opportunities, a dream; all deaths we didn’t want or ask for. Other times we choose our losses and deaths. We give up parts of ourselves for another. We change our beliefs and values so that we can be more authentically ourselves. And sometimes there are things we need to let go of, things we cling to that deny us the fullness of life we want.
What do we need in order to let go of today?
What might we need to leave behind?
What needs to die so that something new can arise?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that today’s gospel is set in the context of the Passover festival.
Remember that the Passover is the celebration of the Israelites’ liberation from bondage in Egypt. It’s about freedom and new life. It’s about letting go, leaving behind, and moving into a new life.
It’s the letting go that allows us to be more authentically present to ourselves and to another person. It makes room for new life and new ways of being present. It gives God something with which to work.
Why then would we continue to live as an isolated, self-enclosed, single grain of wheat?
We all have probably had, at least one time in our life, something that we look back on and think: “I never want to go through that again. But I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.” Maybe it has been at this time of the covid pandemic with all its challenges.
But as difficult or painful as that personal experience was it bore much fruit. Hopefully, we were changed and our lives were renewed. It was one of those times when we were the grain of wheat that fell into the earth and died. Those are the times when we knew we had seen Jesus, when we experience the holy, when we were absolutely convinced that God was present and working in our life.
If we want to see Jesus, then we must look death in the face. It is, as Jesus describes, soul troubling and it shakes us to the core.
There is always a temptation to want to skip over death and get to resurrection. So, it is no coincidence that this week the Church points us towards Holy Week and reminds us that death is the gateway to new life. Death comes first. Resurrection is always hidden within death. There can be, however, no resurrection without a death.
To the extent we avoid death we avoid life. The degree to which we are afraid to die is the degree to which we are afraid to fully live. Every time we avoid and turn away from death whatever it may be, we proclaim it the ultimate victor.
The unspoken fear and avoidance of death underlie all our “what if” questions.” What if I fail, lose, fall down? What if I get hurt? What if I don’t get what I want? What if I lose that one I most need and love? Every “what if” question separates and isolates us from life, God, one another, and ourselves. It keeps us from bearing fruit. We are just a single grain of wheat. We might survive but we aren’t really alive.
Jesus did not ask to be saved from death. He knew that in God’s world strength is found in weakness, victory looks like defeat, and life is born of death. This is what allowed Him to ride triumphantly into Jerusalem, a city that will condemn and kill Him. And that is what allows us to ride triumphantly through life. Triumph doesn’t mean that we get our way or that we avoid death. It means death is a gateway, not a prison and the beginning, not the end.
Regardless of who or what in our life has died, God in Christ has already cleared the way forward. We have a path to follow. That path is the death of Jesus. Jesus’ death, however, is of no benefit to us if we are not willing to submit to the many deaths we experience in our lives.
Ultimately, death, in whatever way it comes to us, means that we entrust all that we are and all that we have to God. We let ourselves be lifted up; lifted up in Christ’s crucifixion, lifted up in His resurrection, lifted up in His ascension into heaven. He is drawing all of us to himself, so that where he is, we too may be.
At Easter, we have the empty tomb, the dawn of a new day, and the renewal of life, where the single grain has become the Bread of Life.
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.
