a seed, a tear
We are people who love stories.
We create stories to make meaning from life to bond with others, to pass time on the long road of life. All lives, like all stories are generative. They touch us and transform us in ways big and small. We gather to eulogize people because some part of their story intersected with our’s enough to change the people that we have become.
Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life…
Some historians say there’s only ever been two revolutions that there's only been two great revolutions.
Just two events that really changed human history forever.
The first was when someone started to farm. Human beings were exclusively nomadic hunter-gatherers before that. All the way up until someone buried something edible, a seed. What a waste! You could have eaten that. Then they noticed something mysterious began to happen in the dirt. A plant sprung up in the exact place where they dropped the seed. A long time ago, someone deliberately wasted something useful, and it produced it a whole lot more by dying than it did by living.
The second great revolution was when Jesus let his own creation kill him. He was on a three-year run that produced fanfare enough that they welcomed him into the city as king just a week ago. Then all of a sudden, he stopped short, executed unjustly in his youth. What a waste! You could have used that. But of course, the ground where they laid his body sprang up with life, more life than anyone could have imagined, life and life to the full. Life not just for him, but for anyone willing to come and to receive it.
Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds…
Every death in life is a seed. It plants itself within our hearts and flourishes when we honor, grieve, and gather to tell the story of a life and live into resurrection reality. Ernest Becker says, “resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing. It means injustice is brought to an end, it means a day is coming when no one ever goes hungry again, when no child is ever trafficked again, when no victim is ever abused again, when no one, no one ever weeps over a casket again.” It means love gets the final word, and that resonates with me.
The Way of Jesus is shocking because of its claim that in the end, nothing matters except love. Love & our resurrection reality don't change the pain in our tears. They shouldn't. But they should shape our perspective.
Tears come when we learn to live more and more out of our deepest longings, our needs, our troubles. These must all resurface and be given their rightful place for in tears. We find our real human life in all its depths. Tears of the water upon the soil within which the seed of a life and its death are planted. The tragedy of any death is made just & whole by our grief, encapsulated in the tears that fall to the ground to allow something new & beautiful to flourish.
I don't know for sure how long the pain must last and how many days we must grieve. I don't know for sure how many stories of someone's life it takes to honor them and be impacted by the person they were and are in us.
What I do know for sure is this that I have gazed into Jesus' tomb and found it empty. As I gaze in with that original cast of characters I can almost hear Jesus's voice,
Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds...