Dead Grains of Wheat make Bread.
John 12:20-26
20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Beth-sa'ida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew went with Philip and they told Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honor him.
This is a verse that has perplexed many and given rise to all kinds of interpretations.
It's one of those hard parables of Jesus.
On the surface it sounds like the Guyanna Kool-Aid Gospel.
I sat in front of a tabernacle in a small "Lourdes" chapel in a church as is my custom at one of the Masses I went to yesterday. The tabernacle houses the "hosts" - the body of Christ, the bread for the world. He had to die to give it to us. It's his body broken for us, that we take and eat. It is a necessity of life for the eternal.
So this saying is more than parable- it was prophesy. Jesus would die. Like a grain of wheat fallen to the ground that would die, Jesus would die, so that the grain would instead become a shaft of wheat, the substance of bread, for the life of the world. He is, among other things, the bread of life-literally.
On the side of the tabernacle which is inlaid with marble designs is the design of a shaft of wheat bursting forth. I meditate on this image. God so loved the world that he gave us his only son so that whosoever believes on him, shall not perish but have eternal everlasting life. Jesus is the food we need, spiritual, material and actual real food we need for the eternal. Without him, without his atoning sacrifice, and the broken flesh offered for the world, we are dead meat. That simple.
Some have interpreted the last part of the verse to mean that we must die to anything that is not God's will for our lives. Like Michelangelo, the sculpture who carves away everything that is
"Not David" to reveal the truest image of what was meant to be underneath, we have to cut off and away everything that is "Not Jesus" in our lives so that His image in which we are created originally can again manifest.
What else could it mean? Anything that gets in the way of following Jesus has to go. Anything that we hang on to that we think we need for us alone (me, me, me) that does not serve Jesus has to go-because that defines an "us" that isn't what we were actually created to be-because we were actually created to love and adore God/Jesus and serve him with gladness.
This is a great verse for Lent, because Lent is a great time to purge, chip and carve away everything "Not God." Because if you are not serving God in what you are doing- who are you really serving, and where is that going to get you?
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