Is Gardening about Burying Seeds?

5 Lent B March 21, 2021

Jer. 31:31-34 Ps. 51:11-16
Heb. 5:1-10 John 12:20-33

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When you begin your garden, are you in the habit of saying.  Time for a funeral; time for a seed memorial event in my garden.  I am going to lay to rest in burial, these fine seeds and hope that they die from their seedy state and sprouts some roots and stems out their seed casing until that seed is no longer recognizable as a seed.  But I am hoping for the resurrection of that seed into some marvelous plants with leaves and blossoms and fruit.  And the leaves, blossoms and fruit will not look like that seed at all.  The seed will have died to become something more glorious.

This is the metaphor of the cycle of a plant life which Jesus used to speak about his own life in our appointed Gospel.  The speaking of Jesus in John's Gospel is surely the oracle of the Risen Christ in the community of the Gospel of John.  This community was teaching new members the significance of the life of Jesus and what he had become as the Risen Christ in the church family which was living five to six decades after Jesus.

Let us compare the seed of the life of Jesus of Nazareth with the life of the Risen Christ in the Johannine church six to seven decades later.  Quite a difference between the actual physical life of Jesus and the glorious fruit of what the Risen Christ had become in the many, many lives of those who knew the presence of God's Holy Spirit.

The one seed of the physical life of Jesus of Nazareth had become the known personal image of God in the lives of many thousands, and now 2000 years later, the fruit of the personal image of God as the Risen Christ has been known by countless number of people.  This is what one could call the entering of Jesus into his glory.  This is what one could say is the glorification of the name of God.

Can see and appreciate how the Gospel story encapsulates the process of the seed of the life of Jesus of Nazareth attaining continuing glory in being the Risen Christ inwardly present in the lives of countless people.  The Greek at the feast represents the glory of the Risen Christ coming to the Gentile peoples.

The entire result of the success of the Risen Christ in the church was the heavenly voice crying:  I have glorified and will glorify the name of God.

Let us have faith to believe in the great cycle of life today.  The cycle of life includes phases of existence and each phase of existence includes within it all of the other phases.

When we think about a seed or a baby, we think young, and in appearance it is young, but in its lineage it represents the complete indeterminate connection with the fullness of the past from which it came.  And the seed and the baby is but a bridge in being connected to an endless indeterminate future.

So today, as we believe in the validity of the cycle of life, let us also believe in the validity of spiritual cycle of life that has become known in Jesus Christ.  Jesus, being in the appearance of merely a person, lost that appearance in his death.  But what did he become in his afterlife?  What is he becoming in his afterlife within you and me and many others who are claiming the image of God on their lives?

Believe in the cycle of the life of Jesus Christ.  And believe that his spiritual life cycle is interwoven with ours.  And we will know many states of appearances in this cycle and some may not be pleasant, like loss and death, but let us continue to believe in the cycle, just as we are hopeful gardeners who bury seeds in the garden bed graves in order that they might surpass their seedy state and become the glorious fruit of the future.

Let us get into the rhythm of the spiritual cycle of the life of Christ today.  The cycle happens whether we want it to or not; so why not become intentional participants in this spiritual cycle of continuous transformation?  Amen.