At the beginning of Lent, we recommit ourselves to partaking in the means of grace, especially the sacrament of communion. In communion, we participate in a mystery, but it’s important that we understand that a mystery isn’t something unknown; instead, a mystery is actually best understood as something revealed, unveiled, something made clear. Lent urges us to refocus on knowing and appreciating what God unveils in communion—for us and all believers. As we partake, we encounter the overwhelming reality of Christ’s presence with and within us, nurturing our souls and strengthening our faith—which we remember isn’t simply intellectual ascent to some set of doctrines or even a kind of assured trust, but rather our very real, lived relationship with God. So on this fifth Sunday of Lent, as we should every Sunday of the year, in fact any day at any time, let’s approach the communion table with reverence and anticipation, embracing the mystery of God’s grace given and poured out for us through, with, and in Jesus.
Let us pray. May only God’s Word be spoken and may only God’s be heard; in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Well, today we get a good example of how the Bible isn’t a science textbook. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,” Jesus says to us today, “it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
My first thought when I read this from Jesus was to think that obviously he’s speaking as someone who doesn’t understand biology, but that also sounds extremely pompous of me, what with Jesus being God himself. We can talk what we want about the man Jesus and what he knew as a 1st-century Israelite, but it’s true that even as such he as an educated man, not ignorant of the ways of the world, if in fact his knowledge of things was limited by his humanity; however, this Jesus in our gospel today is the Jesus of John’s gospel—the Jesus who throughout the gospel knows everything in an almost superhuman way that would seem to defy our confession that he is truly human. That is to say, Jesus in John’s gospel simply seems to know almost too much to be human like the rest of us, so to say that Jesus in today’s gospel is ignorant of the ways of nature is…pretentious, on my part, to say the least. So there’s got to be something else going on. Jesus knows what he’s doing here.
So what is he doing?
I decided to do some digging.
Did educated folks during the 1st-century AD believe that seeds somehow died before they sprouted and grew into plants? That was my question. As I said, that’s not what we know to be true today after doing biology with modern methods, but there are many things we know today that are quite different in light of modern understanding. People used to think that our bodies were made of four “humors”—blood; phlegm; yellow bile called choler, and black bile, melancholy—and that an imbalance in one would throw off our whole system. That’s the whole notion behind bloodletting. Draining excess blood would relieve the stress on the other three humors and bring a sick person’s body back into balance. The “science” behind bloodletting has actually only recently in the scope of human history been proven unsound. George Washington, who died on March 4, 1797, is now believed to have been a casualty of bloodletting medicinal science. It’s not to say that it was bad science, per se; it wasn’t accurate. At any rate, all that to say, as it turns out, the ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t think that seeds died before sprouting into plants. They, in fact, understood that seeds contained something living within them—what we call today the “germ,” that would sprout and grow into a plant.
So that question left me wondering again. What was Jesus talking about?
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,” Jesus says, “it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Jesus was an educated man, a well-read man. In St. Matthew’s gospel, we see he’s intimately acquainted with the Book of Daniel, a Jewish novel, and one that wasn’t read by just anyone. He was a scholar, and he talked to scholars. He was a rabbi. Add to that the Jesus in today’s gospel is the Jesus of John’s gospel, and the audience of John’s gospel were largely Greek Jews who’d accepted that Jesus was the Messiah—not yet what we’d call gentile Christians, but our last religious foremothers and forefathers of Judaism who were shut out of the temple for believing and confessing Jesus to be God come down from heaven as a human being, like me and you. These were people whose lives were lived in and around heathens—that is, followers of polytheistic religions, or religions with many different gods.
And that’s when it clicked for me. Jesus was talking to people who intimately knew the story of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades.
You remember the story of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades. It’s the story the ancient Greeks used to explain where the cycle of the seasons—winter, spring, summer, and fall—comes from. There’s Demeter, goddess responsible for cereal grains, who’s most often shown holding wheat or corn. And then there’s her daughter, Persephone, who gets kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld. Demeter is heartbroken and starts causing chaos by making all the crops wither and die. She becomes so upset that she refuses to let anything grow until she gets her daughter back. The other gods realize they need to do something, so they go to the underworld to negotiate with Hades. After some talking, they strike a deal: Persephone can return to the surface, but she must spend part of the year in the underworld with Hades. The reason? While Persephone was in the underworld, she ate a few seeds from a pomegranate. And in Greek mythology, eating food from the underworld ties you to that place. So because she ate those seeds, in that place, Persephone has to go back to the underworld for a few months every year.
That’s is how the Greeks explained the cycle of the seasons. When Persephone is with Hades, Demeter is so sad that she makes everything go dormant, like winter. But when Persephone comes back to her mom, Demeter is happy again, and everything starts to grow and bloom, like spring and summer. It’s a cycle that happens, over and over again, every year.
A fun story, you think, but what’s this got to do with Jesus? Well, it’s safe to say that Jesus knew this story, Jesus listeners—especially in John’s gospel—knew this story, and they understood that he was talking about the cycle of death and rebirth associated with seeds going in the ground, sprouting, producing fruit, and then rotting and becoming part of the earth again—all for new seeds to sprout and keep that cycle going, that cycle of death and rebirth, that cycle of life.
And what’s interesting here is that Jesus is speaking of seeds, specifically. Remember, Persephone ate seeds in the underworld, and through eating there, in that place, she became tied to Hades, tied to the place where he is. That eating linked her forever in a pattern of death and rebirth that at its very heart, at its very core, at its very kernel, you might say, is eating. And we all know that for us Christians, eating and drinking are at the very heart, at the very core, at the kernel of our life together with each other and, perhaps more importantly, with God. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death” St. Paul tells the Corinthians, and we hear them each week when we share communion with each other, with all the Christians down through the ages, and with God. So fundamentally identifiable is eating and drinking together as Christians at communion that the first Christians were ostracized for it—for fear that we were cannibals, professing to eat flesh and drink blood. Participating in communion, participating in this particular means of grace, participating in the mystery of faith is the hallmark confessional act of a Christian.
How so?
Well, it’s tied up in that proclamation that we make, the mystery of faith—“Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” This is the cycle of death and rebirth, that cycle of life that we believe to be fundamentally true about our lives in Christ. All of us who have been baptized into Jesus Jesus were baptized into his death. And so likewise we’ve been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as he was raised from the dead, so we too walk in newness of life. We know our old self was crucified with him so that our body of sin might be destroyed, and so we’re no longer enslaved to sin. We’ve died with Jesus, and we believe that we also live with him. We know that Jesus, being raised from the dead, will never die again; and so, we also consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus, who lives his life to God.
Communion is our nourishment for this newness of life. Baptism is our rebirth into newness of life with Christ, and communion is the nourishment we need in order to live our lives to God, as Jesus, with whom we’ve been united through baptism into this rebirth to glory, lives his life to God. How is communion this nourishment? It nourishes the seed of trust within us, waters it and gives it everything it needs to sprout, take root, grow, and produce fruit. Communion is the promise of God, the Word of God, made real for us so that we can hold it in our hands, taste it on our tongue, and feel it in our bellies—and most of all, believe it in our hearts.
What is that promise?
“This is my body, given for you”
“This is my blood, given for you.”
This is for you…the body of Christ, the blood of Christ for you.
My body I give for you. My blood I give for you. My life I give for you.
This Jesus tells us, and, as we know, “faith,” our relationship with God, “comes from hearing, and hearing the Word of God.” Communion isn’t simply mere eating and drinking, but it’s nourishment for our lives, for our relationship with God, for our relationship with one another. It’s nourishment to believe that despite whatever might seem against, all things work together for God for those who love God.
Christ has died, but Christ is raised, and just as he was raised from the darkness of a deep, dark tomb by the glory of God the Father, he promises us who eat in this place, this place where Christ’s body is present, so too we’re united with him where he is. Communion is this promise for us…that nothing in all creation will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, who gives us own body and blood for us, in this place, right now, to eat and drink, and join with him, one another, and everyone who’s ever believed and confessed Jesus is Lord in the cycle of death and rebirth, in the cycle of life.
That’s not science.
That’s the good news of God in Christ Jesus, here and now.
That’s the love of God—for you.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 