March 21, 2021
Several years ago, my family and I walked around a boarded-up area of St. Louis that had become a flashpoint for clashes between police and protestors after the death of Michael Brown, a young unarmed black man shot by police in the suburb of Ferguson. We were there that day to show our support for local businesses and for a community that was undergoing intense trauma. After windows had been smashed and then boarded up, local artists had come in and painted the plywood, so that the whole neighborhood was like a pop-up art installation. It was both heartbreaking and beautiful. One of the signs I remember most vividly read, “They thought they had buried us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
I’ve seen this slogan many times since then, and it always makes me stop and take notice. I thought of it this week as we saw yet more heartrending examples of people who have been marginalized and mistreated once again being victimized in horrific ways. So many of our beloved siblings in the LGBTQ community were wounded by an official Vatican statement saying that the church cannot bless same-sex unions because such relationships are inherently sinful. Then came the unspeakable horror that unfolded in Atlanta on Tuesday, when eight people were killed in a shooting rampage. This attack at the end of a year that has already been traumatic for many Asian-Americans, who have seen racist violence and hate speech against members of their communities skyrocket. And we need to be clear that such anti-Asian bigotry is nothing new to this country but in fact goes back many generations and has been supported by discriminatory laws and government policies.
Our hearts are hurting right now. Ernie and I are wearing orange stoles, stoles we wear to honor victims of mass shootings, for the first time in over a year. Whatever our skin color, whatever our racial background, whatever our gender identity or sexual orientation, we are all of us children of God, and it is children of God whose dignity is being violated and whose lives are being cut short. This goes against everything we as a church believe in. It is our duty and our responsibility to speak up against xenophobia, racism, and all forms of bigotry and hate, as well as to listen to the voices of those who have been harmed and learn how we can be better allies and make our whole community stronger.
At times like this we may hear a certain sorrowful echo in the words of the Greeks who said to Philip, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.” I’d like to see Jesus right around now, too. I’d like to see a sign of hope and new life. And sometimes that’s not easy. Sometimes it just feels like we’re being buried, and it’s hard to imagine that there is new life anywhere on the horizon.
The wisdom of seeds and those who tend them can teach us something else. They teach us that too often we look in the wrong places for hope and solace. We look to people and things that are big and bright, loud and assertive. Seeds are none of those things. Seeds are small, noiseless, and seemingly insignificant. They can be crushed underfoot, tossed aside, ground down. And yet it is in these acts that their true power is released. Seeds work underground, sending out tendrils of new life in secret, often sprouting in unexpected and even inhospitable places. Seeds are the essence of resilience.
There is a story that early Christians liked to tell that has come down to us through artwork and poetry. It is not a story we find in the Bible, just to be clear. And it goes something like this.
When Adam, as in Adam and Eve, was nearing the end of his life, he sent his son Seth back to the Garden of Eden on an errand. Michael, the Archangel, met Seth at the gates now surrounding the garden, and gave him a single seed to carry back home. This seed was one that had fallen from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree under which Seth’s parents had disobeyed God. After Adam died and just before he was buried, Seth placed the seed in Adam’s mouth. From it grew a tree—a barren tree that produced neither leaves nor fruit.
Eventually the tree was cut down and used to build a bridge. The bridge was later dismantled, but through a series of miraculous events the wood that came from the bridge that came from the tree that came from the seed that came from the Garden of Eden, ended up being the very wood that was used, many generations later, to build the Cross upon which Jesus was crucified.
There are a number of legends about what happened to the wood of the Cross after Jesus was taken down from it, far too many to tell here. My favorite end to this story is one suggested by medieval iconography which sometimes depicts the wood of the Cross becoming a tree again—this time, the Tree of Life that is located in the center of the heavenly Jerusalem. As depicted in the Book of Revelation, this tree sits “on either side of the river” of life; “and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus compares himself to a seed. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,” he says, “it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Notice that according to this metaphor, Jesus is not just any seed, but a grain of wheat. Earlier in this Gospel Jesus told his followers that he was the bread of life. Now he is explaining that in order for that bread to become available to the world, to truly become bread to nourish the whole world, he will first have to die.
What a remarkable image! Nearly everything we know about the life of faith for followers of Jesus is contained in it: the grain of wheat falls to the earth and is transformed into the Bread of Life, the bread from heaven, the bread that brings us together around the table and sustains us on our journey. There would be no Resurrection, no Eucharist, no church even, if Jesus had not willingly offered himself up as a grain of wheat, a seed falling to the earth in order to bear much fruit.
If we truly wish to see Jesus, we can. We can see him in a community that continues to gather for worship, to reach out to others in need, and to care for one another, even in the midst of a year of unprecedented anxiety, uncertainty, and darkness. We can see Jesus wherever we see people being resilient, rising from the ashes of hate and prejudice, of violence and dehumanization. We can see Jesus in the tiny seeds of faith and love that people plant in our hearts with every act of kindness, generosity, and solidarity. We can even see Jesus in boarded-up shop windows given new life and meaning with vibrant, colorful, hope-filled works of art.
We have lived through some very dark and difficult times and they are not over yet, but we are beginning to see our way through them. Resurrection is coming. The healing of the nations is coming. Keep hope alive. Keep faith alive. Keep love alive. As it says in the prophet Isaiah, “For as rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I have purposed, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Amen.
I was reminded of this tradition by http://artandfaithmatters.blogspot.com/2015/03/seeds-art-lectionary.html
