St. John’s United Church

“GIVE UP AND GROW”

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)

When my children were young, I had the privilege of being a stay-at-home mom for about eight years, and I did all the things suburban Moms of that day and age did. I volunteered at the school, chauffeured the kids to and from activities, joined a women’s club and was active in the church. I also did the usual things around the house. I cleaned, shopped, did the laundry, and helped with yard work. One year, we received a catalogue in the mail from one of those gardening companies – McConnell’s, I think it was — and I got the bright idea that I would fill our yard with colourful flowers. Now you have to understand that I am not a person with a very green thumb. However, determined to impress my mother-in-law (who could turn stones into roses), I ordered scores of bulbs to be planted that Fall, sure that, come Spring, they would thrust through the soil in a dizzying array of colours and shapes. Now, they might have done just that if I had bothered to plant them. But, you know how it goes - I got busy with the kids’ soccer, I kept meaning to buy one of those hole-diggers for planting bulbs, I found any and every excuse to avoid getting my hands dirty in the garden. And before I knew it, winter had arrived. Snow covered the yard, and unopened packs of bulbs covered the garage shelves.
Oh, I did plant a few of the bulbs, and the pink tulips came up in the spring, but most of those bulbs just sat on the shelves in the garage for nearly a year. The next Fall, I decided I had to do something. Some of the bulbs were starting to rot; some showed signs of mice nibbling on them, some just seemed to be dried out and desiccated. The local Garden Centre told me that leaving the bulbs in the garage for a year had weakened their ability to flower, and, if I planted them now, I’d get fewer blooms and plants that wouldn’t last as long as normal. But I took my shovel out to the front garden, dug some holes, and threw in every bulb that looked like it still had anything to contribute to the yard. The next Spring, we had a feeble but visible display of blossoms.
Now, if I had planted those bulbs right away, if I had buried them deep down in the ground — for all intents and purposes dead to the world — those little bulbs would have gone to town - roots diving down deep, shoots poking their way up through the soil, stems heavy with blossoms. But I waited, keeping those bulbs safe on my garage shelf. Sitting there, they didn’t get thrown into the dirt, they didn’t lose the life they held within to provide food for the roots and shoots. Instead, the just sat there - not doing what they were meant to do, not flowering or growing, not doing much of anything.
Jesus tells a similar tale to his disciples. Now, I don’t know much about wheat, but I don’t imagine it’s all that different from my flower bulbs. A grain of wheat can be planted in the soil, in the dark, cold dirt. There it will die in the process of providing nutrition for the new wheat plant that sprouts from the seed. Or it can sit in a silo, taking up space, not growing, not providing nourishment as it was intended, except perhaps to the field mice that squeeze into the silo.
You and I both know Jesus isn’t just talking about grains of wheat or tulip bulbs. He’s talking in metaphors to convey a difficult and complex idea. What he says applies in one way to himself, and in another way to us. You see, Jesus is faced with the reality that at last his hour has come.
Somehow, it seems that the appearance of the Greeks is a sign that the time has come. And from the beginning of the Gospel of John, we have known what it means for Jesus to say that his time has come. Last week, we heard Jesus talk about being lifted up and glorified, alluding to his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension - all part of one great action of God in this Gospel. Jesus is about to give up his life to nourish the birth of a new relationship between God and humanity. Like a seed buried in the earth, his death will provide what is necessary for humankind to reach up toward God, to break through the dirt of sin and to reconnect with our Maker in a way that has not been possible since the fall of Adam. Jesus knows that this is his purpose. “It is for this reason that I have come to this hour,” he says. Just as a seed holds within it a new plant, so Jesus holds within himself the power needed for our new life. He can yield his life to God’s will, doing what is necessary to make eternal life possible for us; or, he can back away, refusing to fully yield his life to God, content to preach and to heal, but unwilling to endure the suffering of the cross.
And yet, what good is Saviour who won’t submit to God’s will? Not much better than a tulip bulb sitting on a garage shelf. The Jesus of John’s gospel knows this, and recognizes that this is the hour for which he has prepared. And so, he goes forward, knowing the outcome is assured and that death is inevitable. He walks on toward the cross, ready to die so that the harvest — souls like you and like me — can be raised up once more for the Lord. Like Jack and the beanstalk, this seed, once planted, creates a way for us to return once more to God.
But there is more. As much as Jesus is talking about himself, he also speaks to those who would seek him out and who would choose to follow in his way. “Whoever serves me must follow me,” Jesus says, “and where I am, there will my servant be, also.” Jesus asks us to become, like him — a grain of wheat in the earth, a bulb in the soil — because the work for which Jesus came to do goes on, and the need is great.

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)
One of the things I did while I was a stay-at-home Mom all those years ago, was accompany my children on school field trips. Some were fun, some were “educational”, and some were both. One of my favourites was the first grade trip to the Milky Way Farm in Niagra-on-the-Lake. It was a working dairy farm, and the Matthews raised their own corn to feed their animals. Sitting with the students in the barn, Farmer Matthews explained why farmers feed corn to cows. He held up one single kernel of corn. And then he looked around for a likely stooge and found me. “Here you go, Ma’am,” he said, handing me an ear of corn. “Why don’t you take this ear of corn and sit down over there and count how many kernels there are on an ear of corn?” I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to count the kernels on an ear of corn. Well, I tried counting the number in one row, planning to multiply by the number of rows, but they kept breaking up and disappearing mid-ear. I tried counting round and round, but every time I got up into the hundreds I lost track. It seemed first grade was the right place for me that day. But the point was still made. One kernel of corn, planted in a furrow in the field, could yield hundreds of kernels per ear, and many ears per plant. But, unless the little grain of corn dies — dies to being a little grain of corn — roots will never go down into the soil nor the plant appear above the ground to produce more corn. Unless the little grain dies, it will never be more than one small grain. For you see, in dying it provides nutrition for the root and the sprout to grow in those beginning, fragile days of new life. The same is true of all seeds.
Jesus is like that single kernel. From the sacrifice of that one being — fully God and fully human — came a harvest beyond measure. And yet, the work continues. While you and I are not called to offer our lives on a cross, Jesus tells us that to follow him we must be where he is. Like him, we must yield our will to God’s will, submit our lives to God’s plan, and like Jesus, become seeds scattered across this earth by the master Sower. If we do that, if we allow ourselves to be planted by God, we will discover that we, too, can yield a great harvest.
And that bring me back to those tulip bulbs in the garage. The bulbs that were not planted, that did not die in the rich garden soil, were still bulbs. But sitting on that garden shelf, they were essentially useless. Only when they were planted in the ground, only when they began to lose their life as roots and shoots drew upon them for energy, only, then, could the beautiful flowers grow and bloom. You and I are like those bulbs, like the seeds of which Jesus speaks. Only when we do what we were created for, only when we allow God to plant us, only, then, can we really blossom.
It reminds me of the theme in the movie, “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” starring Richard Dreyfus. It’s a wonderful film about the difficulties a man experiences as he struggles with adapting to the life he has instead of the one he wanted. Holland dreams of being a composer, but a baby comes along and expenses, too. So he accepts a job teaching music. But in his spare time, he composes music. Throughout the story, his teaching responsibilities force him to make choices between the students and his dream symphony. And while it looks like the students keep winning over the symphony, still his life was a composer’s life, as the independent composer slowly dies to the teacher who composes. The “much fruit” he bore became clear in the finale, after many long years of touching young lives with his gifts. His “opus” was not the music printed on a sheet of paper, but rather a brilliant symphony composed of the individual lives that he had encouraged and nurtured through his teaching career. Is this not what Jesus was getting at? “When a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it surrenders to new life and bears much fruit.”
If we are willing to give up the life we have and place it in
God’s hands, then God will be free to work with us and within us. And we will be enabled to grow into what only God knows we are capable of becoming. But if we refuse to give it up and hold tenaciously onto life as we presently know it then, just like the grain of wheat, we will remain locked within the present limitations of our life and thereby prevented from ever becoming anything more. God offers us everything, but forces on us nothing.

So let’s give up and grow. And as we do, we will discover the paradox of the gospel. For, as we give up our life to God, we will find abundant life. And, as we submit our will to the Lord’s, we will become instruments of God’s grace that can help others discover or rediscover their connection to God. Let yourself become seed in God’s hand, a bulb in the Lord’s garden. And you, too will discover that “In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree.” And to God be the glory, now and forever. Amen.

Acknowledgements: Bronwyn Yocum; Lyle Predmore; Dan Ivins; Nathan Nettleton

A meditation preached by the Rev. Myra Garvin at St. John’s United Church, Brockville
Sunday April 2, 2006 – Lent 5B