Bearing Fruit

John 12:20-36

 

John the Gospel writer annoys me and the more I read him the more he does. He always has to explain the very thing he just wrote as if those reading it are too thick to get his meaning. And when I am feeling like this I get to thinking he may be right.

 

We are too thick to get what he is writing.

 

The Fathers of the church and scholars through the ages have taken much of what has been written and interpreted it in such a way that the life of Jesus is seen primarily as God’s response to original sin. Apparently we are all inherently bad and need a sacrificial lamb without spot to cast our sins upon for redemption. 

 

“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”

 

This is how this verse is often interpreted. Jesus dies so we can live. But we add bits that aren’t there. We add sin and the need for an angry God to be propitiated for our humanity. We add the ghastly event of Good Friday to this, not as a testimony to the commitment of Jesus as the fully conscious human being who stays with the demands of the Kingdom of God right until the end, but as a bloody sacrifice for sin.

 

John, perhaps, captures the natural process of evolution and reminds us that when something individual dies it is reborn somewhere within the species, it leaves behind something to empower, embolden and to add to others. This is the process God chose for creation and it is the process John refers to here.

 

Jesus is just like the significantly insignificant grain of wheat, on its own it contains the essence of daily living, but when it dies it gives birth to much more than it could ever achieve individually. The death of Jesus, as the fully alive sentient being, the culmination of all evolutionary creation to this point is the catalyst for change, for another way of being in the world and for wholeness.

 

This is what is born in the idea of much fruit. Jesus is not specific about what the fruit looks like – is it spiritual, is it social justice, is it found in mystics, activists, lay people or monks, is it found in one strain of religious thought and practice, is it confined to one particular set of dogma, orthodoxy or practice over against another? Jesus simply says it will bear much fruit and just like the grain of wheat cannot give fruit from a pineapple, the essence of the one who dies will be the signifying essence of the fruit. In other words it will be found in the form of other fully alive sentient beings who live for wholeness, justice and respect at the gentle and not so gentle prodding of eternal love.

 

Like gives birth to like . Not like in particular but like in essence and Jesus is bearing fruit throughout this world in all lives in tune with urge for wholeness embedded within all creation by the Source of all love.

A Single Grain, Much Fruit!

‘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 12:20-33)

It was here the storm destroyed the crop.

I grew up on a wheat farm. The year was organised around ploughing, sowing and harvesting. I watch the quality of the soil. The meticulous attention to the sowing of both the wheat and the clover and then the wait for the crop to begin to grow, the beseeching of the rain to come at the right time and the joy of the harvesting. The journey of the seed through death, germination and life was vital to the existence of the farmer, the vitality of the soil and the continuation of an ancient ritual.

Those listening to Jesus under stood this image. They knew about farming and harvesting. They had watched as the farmers  worked to produce a living. Yet they struggled to understand it in the context Jesus retold the story. John and his fellow Gospel writers understood it. Hindsight allows us to see what those involved in the story were unable to.

We know it’s about Jesus, the crucifixion, the tomb and the resurrection. We know it means that without Jesus death and burial and resurrection there would not be the possibility of new life. It is all about Jesus. Or is it?

The 12^th chapter of John is a bridge between what has become before (The Signs Jesus performed) and what is to come, his farewell and the speeches he gives to usher in the end. John is setting the scene here and uses the image of the seed as a suitable signpost for what is about to occur.

 Kenneth Carder suggests there is much more to this passage than what a simple literal reading will give us. Yes the death and resurrection of Jesus is primary to our faith, but that is not where it stops. Carder says: "As Jesus gives his life in faithful participation in God's creation of a new community, disciples give their life and become part of the 'much fruit' produced from the 'single grain' (12:24-26)."

 Jesus participates as the cornerstone in the birthing of a new way of living, of a new community God ushers into a world. This is to be a community of compassion in action, interested only in being life-giving, not in what it produces. A farmer can not dictate what the outcome of his efforts will be. One year he will be rewarded with a bountiful crop, other years when he has done exactly the same thing, the crop has withered and died.

I remembered watching as the fence was cut to allow the tractor and harvester into the paddock where a wonderful crop stood, only to watch the black storm clouds rumble in and the subsequent hailstorm decimate the crop. Not one head of wheat remained. 

 We often sit and look around us and wonder where the reward for all our work over the years is. We remember the days when the church, the youth group, the children’s work was vibrant and active. We remember the study groups, the women’s and men’s groups were great in number and full of energy and life. Where has that all gone? There is a sense of failure, of regret, of what if? 

Yet, perhaps we miss something. Something very important. Just like the religious Jews missed the new thing being done by God through Jesus, we miss the new thing being done by the Spirit. Carder hints at it when he says that ‘disciples give their life and become part of the ‘much fruit’ produced from the single grain’.

We give our life in the church, not to reproduce ourselves in the place where we are sown, but to produce much fruit that goes out into the world imbued with the faith, values and Spirit experienced through our example and engagement with them. People who have been here, in our sphere of influence, take what we have shown them into the world. And while they may not replicate our practice, our understanding, our commitment, they live out of the one seed.

Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest and writer, has said that the student, the disciple, only learns what he or she has been taught when those who teach them are no longer with them. That is the fruit we seek. A life lived out of the nurturing experienced with us in this place.

Many of us grew up in the church, in the family church. We have lived in one place for a long time. We have not moved around, shifted jobs and cultures, experienced the rapid change that our children and their children have. They no longer grew up in a small community of which the church was at the centre. They live in one place, work in another and socialise somewhere else. They are not committed to one small homogenous community. My mother and father lived within 50 miles of their birth homes and worshipped at the churches where they were baptised almost all their life. That is rare today and will be more so in the future.

Why are we surprised that they understand faith and their practise of faith is less church and community centred? Why is it hard to accept that their faith is more democratic, fluid and imbued with shades and shapes ours never was, and less place and space centred? Their faith and practice reflects their work and the world.

Carder suggests that we have given our lives and we have produced the fruit of the new creation Jesus came to give birth to, but that that fruit looks very different to how we wanted it to look and where we wanted it to be seen. We wanted it to be like us, here! 

So what are we challenged to do:

•  We are challenged not to be discouraged by what we see, but to be encouraged. The young people we nurtured and fed in this place have grown into people who have given life and hope to others. They have done good things for the right reasons. What would our world have looked like if the people we shared our faith had not had the opportunity to experience that? As Nouwen suggests, when we look at those we have seen come through this place, for example, we can be confident that they have indeed learnt a new way of living and lived that out, out there. Rejoice, do not despair. 

•  We are challenged to reimagine how our church and our faith looks like in this post-modern era. We are living in a time when people have the opportunity to use their capacity for critical thinking and decision making to reshape both faith and how faith is practiced. And that is thanks to those of us who have gone before and encouraged them to question and decide for themselves.

•  We are to rejoice in the Spirit who leads us into new places and new times, even though those places may be foreign and just a little bit unsettling. We rejoice for it was the same Spirit who brought us through our faith journey to this place. Now we are being asked to open the way for the future to be as alive and vibrant as the past.

•  We are, as those who listened to Jesus and his dying seed story, on the cusp of a new faith, a new church, a new creation built on the seeds we planted in those who have shared this place, our homes, our schools, our workplaces with us over the years.

 The future is exciting and we are not told to ignore the past, but to build on what we have sown and watch something completely new arise. The Spirit helped Peter and the disciples did. There is no reason we can’t do the same.