Jeremy L. Berg

We’ve been discussing John 12 on Sunday evenings the past few weeks. A lot of exciting, life-giving things are happening, chief among them are Jesus raising Lazarus from death to life, and then Jesus being hailed as King as he rides into Jerusalem. Good vibes. Happy times. Tell your friends. Join the party!

The crowd is growing as Jesus’ popularity is hitting a peak, and now some Greeks want to hear from the Jewish teacher. Why? Because people are drawn to new life – especially a miraculous life-from-death headline. Then someone has to ruin the mood by bringing up death and opening a jar of perfume that fills the room with the aroma of a funeral parlor.

Talk about a Debby Downer. That is, until we learn that down (as in Debby Downer) is the way up. Jesus just announced it is now the time for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. What flavor of glory? More miracles? More coronation parades? More dead people coming to life?

Not so fast.

Jesus turns the tables, figuratively speaking this time, by telling us that He’s come not to just raise dead people to life, but actually to teach living people how to die! That’s right. He’s not just about raising Lazarus from the gave. He’s about teaching Peter and John and Mary and Martha how to die little spiritual deaths each day in order to come more alive to the Kingdom of God. Here’s the shocking phrase we’ve been pondering as a church:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.”

John 12:24-25

There’s nothing sexy about gathering together on Sunday to talk about death. But what if spiritual death (e.g. “put to death the deeds of the carnal self”) is the doorway to greater life? What if we grow by shrinking? What if, echoing John the baptizer, Christ becomes greater in us as we become smaller?

On one of my morning Jesus Walks this summer at Gale Woods Farm I found myself walking behind a dump truck carrying thousands of pounds of manure. The flies swarmed and the stench could be smelled from a couple hundred yards away. “Get that gross stuff out of this beautiful farm so I can enjoy my walk,” I thought. Then it dawned on me that this smelly stuff was the very fertilizer to be plowed into the soil that made things grow on this farm.

The preoccupation of many today is to try to deny death and outrun suffering. The deep spiritual truth is that our life’s suffering and losses and pain and sorrow provides the richest soil for us to grow in our faith. We hate this truth, but that doesn’t make it less true. What’s equally (and sadly) true is that many Christians and churches are trying to attract the crowds with promises of new life, success, victory, and new life out of death. We put Lazaruses on the stage to talk about their remarkable breakthroughs, when we should be learning from humble, elderly saints who are finding joy even while deteriorating physically in a nursing home.

In John 12, Jesus is telling us that life is to be found in the dying and losing process, not on the other side of it or by avoiding it. If you want to bear much fruit spiritually, then you may first need to be broken open, split in two, pressed into hard soil, plowed over by persecution, humbled by the spade that throws loose dirt over the false, airbrushed version of your life. Those who try to cling to their self-made, carefully curated life will lose out on the opportunity to grow into spiritual maturity. However, those who are willing to lose and surrender things to Jesus — independence, control, material pursuits, deception, popularity and approval, safety and security, etc. — will find their life growing up into a bigger kind of Life.

How ironic and sad that so many people spend their entire life trying to find life by running away from death, when all along the Abundant Life that Jesus promises is found by going through death. Let all who have ears to hear, listen. This is good news: those who are suffering and feeling far from God’s blessings are in fact the kind of soil that God is most ready and able to work with. If you want to make an omelet, you have to crack a few eggs. If you want to grow a saint, you need to practice dying a bit each day.

“I die everyday.” -Paul

Grace and peace!