A seed, falling

John 12:24

ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐὰν μὴ ὁ κόκκος τοῦ σίτου πεσὼν εἰς τὴν γῆν ἀποθάνῃ, αὐτὸς μόνος μένει· ἐὰν δὲ ἀποθάνῃ, πολὺν καρπὸν φέρει.

Very truly I tell you, 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. (NIV)

This is another of those simple but always-mistranslated verses (as I shall explain); but there is more to see here than just that.

Starting with the mistranslation, this verse does not say “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies…”.

Instead it says “unless the grain of wheat, falling to the ground, should die…”

What is the difference? In the NIV and most English versions I have looked at, the implied “choice” is between “fall to the ground and die” and “don’t fall to the ground and die”. So if the seed chooses “not”, where is it? Stuck on the plant, up in the air and away from the soil.

The Greek is clear, however: Jesus is talking about the seed which is already falling to, or into, the ground. The choice is “die” versus “don’t die”. And as Jesus says, if it chooses “don’t die” then it remains alone – not on the plant but in the ground.

If you are tempted to say, “so what?” then you may be missing the force of what Jesus is saying. He is speaking of Himself in the first instance, of course – but also of us. He has come on assignment to the place God sent Him. If He chooses now not to embrace what His assignment demands, then He will just remain; and remain alone, despite all the people who surround Him. If He dies He will bear much fruit; He will reproduce and there will be many more men and women living up to the same life that Jesus modelled and which God intended to be “normal” for humankind.

The same applies to us: how many of us reach the place God has sent us, for a purpose; and then refuse to allow anything to change in us? We refuse to allow what would actually turn us from a dry seed to a fruitful plant.

On this occasion, I honestly can’t tell whether this is misdirection for effect (a strategy you can see over and over again in the words of Jesus, preventing the enemy – and those around Him – from catching what is going on); or simply the effect that the word “death” has on us, as people.

Because that is what we focus on: the dying. And so we have sermons on dying to self, dying to ambition, dying in accidents or through illness (because God intends to work out His purpose through us by removing us completely?) and who knows what else.

Now yes, I am aware of how the story continues: Jesus dies, for real, on the cross. But I think He is challenging our understanding of death here. (This is the potential “misdirection for effect” piece.)

Does a seed actually die – in our human sense of “game over, gone and never returning” – in order to germinate? We now know that dormant seeds are actually alive, a life which is measurable because they are respiring (taking in oxygen, emitting CO²) – very, very slowly. So what happens when they germinate? The embryo that the seed has been keeping alive through that slow respiration now comes fully alive, pushes out a radical and either pushes or pulls its way to the surface. What was an apparently static seed is now a fast-moving plant.

So does the seed die? Well yes, the hard coat of the seed splits and is lost, and the food store is consumed in powering the new plant until it can commence photosynthesis, so if you go looking for the seed as it was, you can only find bits of its remains.

But you don’t need to know 21st century biology to find nothing to mourn in the death of a seed. Do you think farmers followed the sower across their fields, weeping for the loss of their precious seed? “O my lost seeds, how I miss you; if only I had held onto you”?

Are you crazy? The farmer already sees a mighty harvest in his head, he isn’t mourning, he is celebrating (on the inside; yes, yes, I know farmers) – even before the first green shoots appear.

“Death” in a seed is actually about all the constraints coming off. Instead of shallow little breaths on a cycle of months, the former seed is now snorting in air and powering its way up towards the Sun, photosynthesis and fruitfulness.

So how did Jesus see His approaching death? Extremely seriously. “Father, if it is possible for this cup to pass me by…”

But if Jesus, before His death, walked on water and healed the sick; Jesus after His death walks through walls and locked doors and receives all authority in Heaven and upon the Earth (and in the full sense of ἐξουσία, that includes all resource as well). Just think what He was already able to do with the measure of authority He had before He died; and you will realise this was a very, very bad day at the office for the ruler of this world. (ὁ τοῦ κόσμου ἄρχων, which is how Jesus refers to Satan several times in John’s Gospel)

Jesus died, once for all. And – to state the obvious – our authority in the earth ends when we die. So when we suffer physical death, that brings our part of the assignment to an end. But in life, as those who come to Jesus, to share in His death and in His resurrection life, and hear Him say “Go!…”, we are like seeds being carried into the ground, where God intends that we should be fruitful.

But: if we insist on maintaining our familiar selves, and refuse to embrace the change that becoming a fruitful plant demands, then we will remain alone. And eventually rot. It is God’s intention that the constraining protection of the seed be removed, so that we can be let loose and become who we really are.

Yes, that is a kind of dying; but who wouldn’t want that?