The Number 4 Bus…or Unless a Seed revisited
From the perspective of the bus, the starting point was the bus station. So each of my morning journeys was really a journey to the start punctuated by various stops.
It’s a little like this for my Facebook and website blog posts. I’ve arrived at the start; the start being Jesus’ very short parable about the seed falling into the ground and dying. Short but it packs a punch.
‘The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone. But if it dies it produces much fruit.’ John 12 v23-25
The crowds had just greeted Jesus as he made his way on a donkey into Jerusalem ‘Hosannah! The Son of David! The king of Israel!’ was shouted from the onlookers as they cut down the palm branches and their coats for the donkey to walkover. Palm Sunday. Glory, the coup d’état to remove the Romans, coronation…all seemed possible…Israel, at last, redeemed, the Messiah the Son of David is here!
Jesus agrees ‘The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified’ but the route to true glory was, he knew, via crucifixion and death. But he understood that death as the necessary prelude to glory.
Seeds are alive
Seeds are alive. A small part of the seed is alive. Most of it is a food store, but just a few cells are respiring slowly. That’s why Jesus said a seed ‘has to die’. Imagine an apple ‘pip’ or seed falling into the ground. As it germinates and grows a small root and shoot and the first leaves, it uses up its food store…the seed has died. What is growing now is not the seed. The seed has done its job and has died. The same life but in a different form is growing. Eventually, a tree is formed, branches, blossom in the summer and fruit…hundreds maybe of apples. Inside of which are 6 seeds. Just like the original. Containing the same life. The original seed has reproduced its own life in countless other seeds inside the fruit. That is Christianity.
Into the grave went the Messiah. The one seed. ‘Messiah’ means the Anointed One. In the OT Kings, Priests, and Prophets were anointed by the Spirit of God. Jesus was all three. The Son of David, the true High Priest, and a Prophet speaking the word of God.
Each believer in Christ is one of those new seeds. The whole plant is the resurrected Christ but ‘in Him’ are all the believers. We are ‘in Christ’ and Christ is in us. In fact, the NT goes further than this. Consider each of the apple seeds. Their life IS the life of the original seed. There is no life independent of the original seed or the rest of the tree. Their life is produced and sustained entirely as a result of the one seed going into the ground and dying.