5^th Sun Lent B, March 21, 2021; Jer 31:31-34; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33

I remember seeing one of those science programs with time-lapse photography. It showed a seed partially in the earth. Then suddenly, thanks to the speeded-up photography, something breaks forth out of the seeds shell. Something, almost like a tentacle.

First, that tentacle finds and digs into the soil, taking root. Then, the shell of the seed lifts off the ground and as the shell falls away the plant itself begins to shoot upward eventually forming a bud and then a flower that opens in all its glory.
If you want to see something as amazing as that just go online because there are tons of amazing videos.

Now, as amazing, beautiful, and seemingly miraculous as that time-lapse image is of a seed giving way to a flower, we may never have even thought about it. We may have taken what happens with seeds and plants totally for granted something for farmers and gardeners to worry about.

And even though Jesus uses that image in today’s Gospel, a Gospel we have heard many, many, times, we may never have really thought about what it means, to us. We may have taken Jesus’ statement totally for granted.

We know that, first of all, Jesus’ image of the seed, having to die so that it can bear much fruit, is a reference to the fact that Jesus, himself, will have to die so that our salvation will be possible. Jesus will offer himself in our place as a ransom for our sinfulness.

And, in not so typical fashion, for how St. John’s Gospel usually portrays Jesus, Jesus, speaking from his humanity, for our humanity, says, “I am troubled now”. It won’t be long before Jesus will be arrested, betrayed, mocked, beaten, abandoned, and even denied by his apostles, made to carry his cross, and be nailed to that cross, like a common criminal, and then left to die while his mother looked on.

Suddenly, that image of a grain of wheat, a seed dying, is not so amazing or beautiful.

But then, we hear Jesus say, “What should I say then? Father save me from this hour?” No, this is what I came to do. Like the grain of wheat, the seed, this needed to take place so that Jesus could rise again, save us from our sins, open the gate to heaven, draw us to Jesus on the cross, and teach us what suffering and sacrifice are all about.

You see, there is a second part to the image of the wheat, the seed, dying. If we want to grow, and flourish, and blossom, and bear fruit, we need to die to those things that try to smother us and keep us from the rich spiritual soil and keep us from the light, and the life, that God is offering us.

Lent is almost over, now, but God never stops calling out to us to let the potential within us break forth from the shell of sin to blossom and bear fruit.

It may not happen as quickly as in those time-lapse images. Real-life is a little slower than that. So, we need to be a little patient with ourselves, and with others, but we cannot think that we still have all the time in the world. The time for making the first step toward God, or even back to God, is now.