What can we learn from the wheat grain?

5th Sunday of Lent          17.3.2024

(John 12:20-33)

The Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert has for many years practised and taught medicine in Gaza and the West Bank, among Palestinians who at the hands of Israel have suffered the theft of their land, bombing raids, arbitrary imprisonment and torture, and now face starvation. In a recent interview, the doctor remarked how he was impressed by the impressive dignity and patience with which Palestinians endured suffering. Palestinians themselves call this quality of steadfastness, endurance and nonviolent resistance sumud. More than a passive virtue, sumud takes active form when people willingly help each other in the most distressing situations.

We might suspect that sumud is actually enhanced and strengthened by injustice and suffering such as Palestinians have endured since 1947. We know how, in difficult and even catastrophic situations our own human qualities can grow stronger. Think of floods, bushfires, and our parents’ or grandparents’ wartime experiences. There are parallels too, at the bodily level: athletes need to undergo arduous training to strengthen muscles and develop their sporting skills.

Jesus seems to refer to this same principle when in today’s reading from John’s gospel he speaks of the wheat grain which has to be destroyed to make the future harvest possible. This idea is central to all four gospels, although expressed in slightly different ways. They tell us that “those who wish to save their life will destroy it”; “those who seek to gain their life will lose it”, and “the one who finds their life will lose it”. To emphasise its importance, the gospels repeat this principle in reverse, saying that only by losing or destroying our life can we save it.

These are not self contradicting statements. The “life” that is destroyed and the life that is saved must refer to different levels of our being. Two millennia after Jesus, psychologists would say that it is our ego that must be put aside, to reveal and develop something much deeper within us. There is in us a shadow self – the ego – and a deeper Self. A mature person learns to put aside their feelings, their comfort, and their less urgent preferences for more important things, like helping or loving someone else. The instinct to help others can be seen in many animals species, but reaches sublime heights in human love.

In the same gospel passage, Jesus said: “when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all to myself”. He knew he would soon be crucified: that terrible torture by which the Roman empire killed anyone who opposed it. Being “lifted up” was similar to the crude expression “strung up”, by which not long ago we described hanging, our own empire’s method of killing offenders.

Jesus was predicting that for promoting God’s rule of love and peace he would be killed by the empire of human greed and power. His powerful act of self-giving love would, through the ages, draw countless people to see that our Creator loves us infinitely and forgives us. When Jesus said: “…I will draw all people to myself” was he telling us that all of us – even those who cause others to suffer – will eventually be “saved”, brought to fulfilment by the love of Christ, who is not separate from the One who sent him?

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