the opening is:

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Lent 5B, March 29 & 30, 2009 PLC
John 12:20-33 – “If it dies, it bears much fruit”


I once wrote a poem – stay with me here, because it was a bad poem –
Jesus is not a tulip bulb, and he is not a flower,
But cosmic king and Savior come in the bitter hour.

This poem was in response to a sermon that used the tulip bulb as an image of what happened at the cross and tomb. The bulb looks dead, but – wow – something happens and beauty comes out. I love tulips as much as the next person – but that’s not what happened at Easter. The bulb analogy is false. The tulip bulb is natural – the plump bulb has stored the energy for the future growth, and gives it back – then regains plumpness through the season, and will grow again. There is no surprise here – a tulip bulb will always grow a tulip, a daffodil more daffodils.

Now seeds – one can look at a seed and not see the final result. It you are a gardener at all – you know that seeds can hold surprises. Who has planted seeds from your pumpkin or squash the second year, just to see what odd fruit you’ll have? Anyone here work in plant breeding? Since most of our seeds and plants are hybridized, we might truly be surprised by the result when we breed backwards. That squash seed may not produce what you think.

In the time of Jesus, what happened inside a seed was truly mysterious – it was a gift of the good God that the seed came up each year, that the multiplication of seed into harvest was a sign of the God’s blessing. What happened to the original seed was unclear – how that little thing had the power to break open and push up and flower and bear – it was in God’s hands.

Jesus is not a tulip bulb. He is a seed – a different process all together. It’s a more dramatic process. A mysterious process. It’s not about conserving and saving and then some growth – it’s about giving it all up – trusting that losing all – shape, direction, boundaries - will gain all.

In our story Jesus is in Jerusalem at Passover. It’s a wild scene – there are people there from all over the world. There are always rumblings of revolution, of revolt, in an occupied city like Jerusalem, and that year was no different. Jesus had been active – and in John’s Gospel this is only a few weeks after the greatest miracle of all – the raising of Lazarus.

Jesus has signaled that the world would never be the same. Water has been turned into wine. The blind man sees. The lame man walks. The dead have been given back life.

“Can we see Jesus?” ask the Greek travelers. They have found the disciple with the Greek name – Philip – from the Greek city, and press him for an audience with the great healer, teacher, miracle worker. “We wish to see Jesus,” they say. Philip checks in with his fellow disciple from Bethsaida and together they check in with Jesus.

And his answer is not direct at all. In fact Jesus doesn’t answer the question if those Greeks can be admitted to the circle. Jesus sees in that question – the opening of another chapter in God’s story – another step closer to the climax of God’s plan – it’s very near now. The hour has come for Glorification. The world itself is watching – it’s time.

What is the world watching for – this – a grain will fall to the ground.

He uses a very visual metaphor – unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies – there is no harvest. Unless something dies, there is no fruit. He means himself – this is the Father’s plan for him – it is clear now – he must die, so that many can live. Going the way of the cross may seem like humiliation to the world – but to in the mysterious plan of God – it is true exaltation.

It is being lifted up – to be the emblem of God’s mercy and love, to the sign of to the whole world –
not just to Jews, but to Greeks as well,
not just to believers, but to those who scoff,
not just to people of his own time, but to those of all time and place
– that God has acted in love and mercy to save.

Can we see Jesus? Look at the Cross. Can we see Jesus? Look for the seed that falls to the ground, and dies. For there is the glorification, the exaltation, the victory.

The victory is the seed dying so that fruit may grow. Out of something small and insignificant – a messy unjust execution of a minor rebellious leader of a long ago pacifist movement – fruit will come. In that seed, by that seed, fruit will come.

The challenge to us is to understand we are the fruit of that dying seed – the future of the glorification of our Savior. Those who cling to their life may keep it for a while, but they will lose it eventually. Those who hold it loosely, who ‘hate’ it, will keep it for eternal life.

This victory of the cross is about meaning of life - Somehow, Jesus is saying, it's in the spending of our lives that we find them. And it's in our excessive guarding and holding of those lives that we lose them. No investment, no return. No risk, no gain.

Then, ultimately, may it not be the truth of this teaching that our fading can become the avenue of God's coming? Isn't that what worship is all about -- our stepping aside so that God can step forward? Isn’t that what Christian life is all about – our stepping aside so that God can step forward – in us?

So how do we see fruitfulness in our time, in our lives?

We can ask if those words are written on our hearts, as Jeremiah says. Do we understand and ask – what has to die for love to grow? What has to be given up, for sake of the fruit of the spirit?

St Francis offered a prayer of opposites: (A video?)
Pray with me:
A PRAYER ATTRIBUTED TO ST. FRANCIS
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. (213)

We can ask if we are helping those who are drawn, like magnets to the cross of Christ in our midst – are we offering the peace, hope, love and joy that the despairing world needs?