By Way of Death

John 12: 20-36

A retired colleague, Rev. Mark LaRocca-Pitts, began a local chapter of an international movement called The Death Café. It’s a chance for people to gather together and talk about death while eating cake. (Seriously, the conversations happen while eating cake.) The reason for its existence is to help people talk about death and destigmatize a subject that many people are uncomfortable even mentioning. For folks who do not like thinking about or talking about death, Holy Week readings can be tough. The shadow of the cross looms over every reading, even before we get to Good Friday.

Today’s scripture lives heavily in this shadow as Jesus predicts His own death, saying the hour has come. He uses the agricultural metaphor of a grain of wheat falling into the soil and dying so that it can bear much fruit. Something has to die in order for life to bloom forth. In this example that Jesus gives, the grain doesn’t necessarily literally die but is buried in darkness to germinate and grow into a new stalk that produces many more grains. Not only does Jesus foreshadow His impending death here, He also introduces the great irony of salvation. As New Testament scholar Diane Chen puts it, “Life does not end with death but emerges by way of death.”

Death can be scary for all of us. Like I said, many of us may feel uncomfortable just talking about it. It can be hard to see that anything good can come from death. Even if we believe the good news that, because of Christ’s resurrection, we too will have victory over death, it is still hard to face at times. Yet death is both literal and metaphorical when we consider Jesus’ metaphor and Dr. Chen’s observation. We enter into new life when we physically die, and we also have things that need to die metaphorically to make room for new life.

As we go through Holy Week, we recognize that death—both literal and metaphorical—is painful and difficult even to acknowledge. We often rush through Holy Week, trying to ignore the reality of death that accompanies it. We race from the celebratory palms to the praises of the empty tomb without considering the reality of death that made the new life possible. We cannot avoid death, Jesus’ or our own. During this Holy Week, let us sit in our discomfort with death and contemplate that the new life we have been offered comes at a high price.

Rev. Dana Ezell