To die like a grain of wheat
AWeek away from the Semana Santa, the week made holy by the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are primed more intensely for the event of calvary and its significance for humankind. John (12:20-33) leads our meditation on the thoughts and experience of Jesus relating to his passion and death on the cross.
The hour of Jesus
IT was a paradoxical setting: the chief priests and Pharisees were increasingly convinced that Jesus should die (11:50.57), while some Gentile proselytes to Judaism wanted “to see” Jesus. In John’s gospel “to see” is to perceive with the eyes of faith, to come to believe. At the beginning, the first disciples themselves curious about Jesus were invited to “Come and see” (1:39). Later, Jesus would say that “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (12:32), as He in our last Sunday’s gospel pointedly made the connection that everyone seeing Him lifted up on the cross and believing in Him will have eternal life (3:14). The Greeks would still have “to see” Jesus hanging on the cross, before they could be said to have “seen” Jesus and have come to believe in Him. The fullness of faith hinges on the hour of Jesus lifted up on the cross and raised in exaltation.
Although John omitted from his gospel the episode in Gethsemane, our present text has all the elements found in the synoptic accounts: the acknowledgment that the hour has come, the agony, the cry to the Father, the acceptance of the passion, and the consoling affirmation from heaven. Twenty six times “the hour” of Jesus is referred to in the gospel according to John. It is not chronological time, but the divinely designated process of Jesus’ return in glory to his heavenly Father. It is what the entire Paschal Mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus consists of. It is the coming of our salvation; it is what Jesus came for. And Jesus would not be driven away from Calvary if that would be where the hour leads.
A grain of wheat that dies
WHATEVER Jesus does would be for the glory of the Father. So, the hour is the glorification of the name of God, as it glorifies the Son of Man. Reminiscent of the voice confirming Jesus after the baptism at the Jordan and likewise on the mountain of his transfiguration, the voice from heaven reached down to him, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” In effect, Jesus in his suffering and death receives divine approval and the guarantee that in everything it was the Father’s will he was doing. The people misunderstood the voice; they were on a different wavelength. They were not focused on God’s things.
To drive home the irony of Jesus’ death and his glory intertwined inseparably, Jesus gave the parable of the grain of wheat. The gravity of what is being explained is introduced by the formula: “Amen, amen, I say to you.” The grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, to produce much fruit and greater life. This is foremost in commentary to the passion and death of Jesus, which includes already the certainty of his triumph in bringing everlasting life to the world. Jesus’ metaphor of the grain dying and giving life unavoidably becomes an invitation and a challenge of faith and love to the reader or listener.
Alálaong bagá, the true follower of Jesus does exactly that—follow Jesus in dying like a grain of wheat. It is to believe and live accordingly in the paradox of Jesus’ “lifted up” in ignominy and in glory, where to die is to become more, while not to die is to be condemned to being nothing. To love God above all and to love others as oneself, we have to learn to “hate” our life in this world and be ready to give it up for what is really greater, so that we all can be lifted up to the life that is truly eternal.