(The Waiting Country is on a two-week break so instead of new writing here’s one of the Joy in the Journey pieces - no.25 - written during the days of the pandemic. If it’s new to you then that’s cool!)
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit...If anyone serves me, he must follow me." John 12:24-26
This statement of our Lord Jesus is both an explanation of his destiny and an invitation to his disciples to view their own lives through the same lens. His words are laden with the reality of the gospel - a truth embedded within creation that is worked-out in the ‘one for the many’ of his own perfect sacrifice.
That sacrifice is unrepeatable and, so, the way laid down for his disciples is not identical to his own. Its meaning is different, but the outcome has a recognisable affinity: their lives, laid down in his service, will become genuinely fruitful.
For some of his disciples, the planting of their lives in the ground meant, as for him, their deaths. For others, the meaning was broader but no less consequential: the laying aside of ambitions and comforts, the stripping bare of legitimate joys, the complete paradigm-shift in established ways of thinking - these would lead to deeper and greater life.
The embedding of that truth within God’s good creation is a powerful and ongoing reminder to us. We are taught it every year; the curriculum of the cross is witnessed fall by fall. And yet it is such a hard one to learn, to embrace, because it always comes at a price and has a cost we might not be willing to pay.
The death of dreams, the laying aside of plans and ambitions - holy ones - is very costly. In this present season, they may seem to have been wrenched from our hands and buried in the dirt, even as they live on in our hearts. The death of opportunities and freedoms, of a way of simply being that provided us with much-needed stability - few of us will have been prepared for that and fewer still seeking it.
Yet in the hands of a crucified and risen Saviour such futility and waste have a different aspect: “if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
But that reality has to be framed within two important caveats:
Firstly, nothing about this whole process is quick. We imagine it might be but it seldom is. Seeds fall into the ground in autumn, they are entombed through the long hard winter, only to finally emerge in newness when spring comes on the rays of the renewing sun.
The Canadian pastor and blogger, Daryl Dash, made this point very powerfully in a recent article. Recognising the almost pathological pressure to “continually spin every event as an opportunity,” he wisely notes that “Ministry comes in seasons, and winter is as essential…as spring. What if God is pruning his church right now? Could we miss what he’s trying to teach us by spinning everything as a plus? Perhaps we need to make room for lament.
His advice to those who are being driven to find the current ‘plus’? “Sometimes it’s best to let the land lay fallow and to pay attention to the season we’re in even as we look to the future.”
His words are true, in a thoroughgoing way, for the whole Christian life. We don’t lament planting seeds but we do lament our losses. And perhaps it’s also right to recognise that this holds true not just for individuals but also for churches and for mission agencies.
We do well to remember that between the planting into the ground of Good Friday and the new life of Easter Sunday, there was the hard, frozen ground of Holy Saturday to traverse.
Secondly, the falling into the ground that our Lord speaks of was voluntary. He chose to lay down his life, no one took it from him; he was encouraging his disciples to follow him, whatever the details might be in their lives, in a similar willingness.
That’s why his words stand as a call and invitation, not a callous imposition.
The Lord Jesus does not lay upon us a weight too heavy to bear and then refuse to help us carry it. Knowing our many weaknesses, but convinced of the righteousness of the paths he leads us in, we can confidently ask for grace and mercy.
Our application of these words must never be flippant or casual or blasé, to ourselves or others. Ike Miller is right to say that “Only a Joseph can declare with authority, ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good’”. But it is possible for our own response to become the open hand of humility and faith that, over time, grows into a glad and willing submission to the ways and the wisdom of God. Over time: fall-winter-spring.
The late American poet, Mary Oliver, traced this dying and rising in her poem, Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, where, observing that "the sweets of the year be doomed," she asks a question we might find truly pertinent:
“who would cry out
to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy but
what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?”
Saviour, Thy dying love
Thou gavest me;
Nor should I aught withhold,
My Lord, from Thee;
In love my soul would bow,
My heart fulfil its vow,
Some offering bring Thee now,
Something for Thee.
At the blest mercy-seat
Pleading for me,
My feeble faith looks up,
Jesus, to Thee;
Help me the cross to bear,
Thy wondrous love declare,
Some song to raise, or prayer -
Something for Thee.
Give me a faithful heart,
Likeness to Thee,
That each departing day
Henceforth may see
Some work of love begun,
Some deed of kindness done,
Some wanderer sought and won -
Something for Thee.
All that I am and have,
Thy gifts so free,
In joy, in grief, through life,
O Lord, for Thee!
And when Thy face I see,
My ransomed soul shall be,
Through all eternity,
Something for Thee.
(Sylvanus Dryden Phelps, 1816-95)
Thank you Richard, - very challenging. The cost of discipleship - the taking up of the cross daily. Alas, how few count the cost! And how few are willing to yield to its demands daily. Thanks again, Trevor
God bless you for thinking of us whilst you are away on holiday. Praying you are feeling better after the virus and you will have a blessed restful holiday.