Excerpted from 2024 Lenten Guide: Terror and Amazement, a Lenten Guide for Lectionary Year B from the North Carolina Council of Churches.
John 12:20-33
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew, then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
In order to have eternal life, one must die. That sounds like a flat-out contradiction, doesn’t it? Like saying, if you want to get out of debt, you need to start spending more money. It just doesn’t make sense.
Jesus uses a pretty good example, especially for the mainly agrarian society where he lived: a grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die before it can bear fruit. If a grain of wheat had a choice in the matter, I wonder if it would choose to give up its own life so that new life could arise. That is the dilemma and the choice that we face.
We are told we must die in order to truly live. You could say we must “die to sin.” But this phrase is used so often it’s lost its punch. Maybe a better way to put it is, we must die to self. Give up putting first our own interests, our own concerns, our own lives.
And while this is true, it leaves out the most crucial element of the whole equation: God. We die to self because God says it is necessary, not because we dreamt it up on our own. And when God asks us to do something, as terrifying as it might be, God is faithful. God can be trusted when we are surrounded by the unknown. If we can suspend our fears just long enough to say “yes” to God and to the future God has in mind for us, even though it is unknown and frightening, we are assured we will bear fruit.
God is for us, none can be against us, not even death, not anything at all (re: Romans 8:31ff). Though it might be terrifying, let us choose death, and so live as God intends for us to live into the amazing unknown. Amen.
