If
I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I should plant a tree today..
So
Martin Luther King summed up the faith and hope, the determined
investment in the future that is represented by each seed consigned
to the earth.
When
we look at a single seed it is so ridiculously tiny and fragile –
it doesn't look as if it could amount to anything.
I
dropped an open bag of poppy seeds in my kitchen last year –
and despite my best efforts to retrieve them so many individual seeds
were quite simply lost, among the dog hair and house dust on the floor. Lost – and yet
within themselves, each and every one of those seeds was replete with
potential.
We
recognise this potential whenever we place a seed in the ground.
We
trust that, though most of us probably don’t understand exactly how
it works, given a bit of care and reasonable conditions, that seed
will germinate and grow to provide new life where there was none
before.
And
we are able to believe this because we’ve seen it happen for us,
year after year…but nonetheless, each planting is, truly, an act of
faith.
Jesus talks about a grain of wheat falling to the ground to die - and we know that, if we dug up a seed a few weeks into the germination process, there would be little of the familiar shape left. It can only reach its potential by ceasing to exist in that original form. That's the sort of truth it's quite hard to deal with, when we use it as an analogy for our own experience of loss.
Most
of us are here because we have had to face the reality of of saying
Goodbye to a beloved body, put aside by the person we love. Perhaps
we have seen it laid in the earth – and we certainly don’t need
anything else to remind us of just how perishable, how fragile
that precious shell the body can be. We are living with the
consequences of that fragility, day after day after weary day.
So actually a clever analogy with gardening frankly doesn't help! We know
the science but translating it to another context is a different
matter. It can be so hard to visualise any sort of bodily
resurrection. Even if we’re sure that we’ll see our loved ones
again, it’s very difficult for us, this side of the divide, to
imagine quite how that will turn out. I'm not expecting to find
myself wearing a white robe and a crown, or playing the harp –
because I think that sort of picture language is just that. A picture
– someone's best guess, but a long way short of reality. And that's
fine...I get what they’re aiming for – and on a good day I’m
quite content to imagine that those whom I miss are living a glorious
resurrection life that involves endless joy, praise and the nearer
presence of God.
Alleluia!
But
there are bad days too, days when any number of images of saints in
glory are no compensation for the absence of one particular flawed
but beloved human being.
Days
when the fact that I can’t explain how things actually work seems
to make it almost impossible to believe in any of it.
I’m
afraid I don’t have any sure-fire answers for days like that,
because, of course faith is never the same as
knowledge, and we can’t use the same objective reasoning to confirm
our hopes for eternity.
It
just doesn’t work that way.
It’s
one of those times when we can only lean on our faith- if we have it
- or the instinct that confirms for us that something, someone we
have loved so much cannot simply vanish as if they had never been.
I
believe that…
I
believe it from my own experience of the death of my parents and some
much loved others…I believe it from my current experience of
adjusting to the loss of Bishop Michael.
I
believe it because I have Jesus’s own promise that it is so…but I
cannot, in all honesty, tell you exactly how it will come to pass in
God’s economy, in which nothing and no-one is ever wasted.
So,
though I do want to think about seeds I’m not actually going to
explore Paul’s words any more for now.
Who
can really understand the Resurrection?
In
God's good time we will all experience it – but for now...let's
think about other seeds, seeds that are here in plenty today.
Those
are the seeds of faith and hope that lie in each one of you, the
seeds that have enabled you to carry on even when grief is sharpest,
on the days when your feelings of loss are almost too much to endure.
Sometimes,
I know, those seeds seem so fragile you doubt that they will actually
grow at all…but each day you manage to get up and engage with life
and remember to have breakfast you are saying
“It
IS worth it…Death, darkness, disappointment shall have no dominion
over me”
Writing in a famous passage in his letter to the Corinthians, St Paul reminds us that
we carry within us seeds that can bloom and flower in our
relationships, the seeds that make us fully human....and that these seeds are, in fact, all that we really need to cling to when the chips are down.
“These
three remain - faith, hope and love”
When
we are grieving the loss of someone dear to us, it’s tempting to
say "I’ll
give up on love – because that way lies only hurt and desolation…”
That's
sad – but sometimes understandable. We feel vulnerable and unwilling to risk further wounds. But
even if we no longer feel ourselves able to give or receive love, we
are still surrounded by it – and it comes in many different forms. The
love of our families and friends is a huge comfort – but it’s not
something that we are all blessed to enjoy – and that can make life
feel specially bleak. The
love of a community, a church, a social group, feels rather different
– sometimes a little impersonal…but it’s still worth having,
still love. And
even if we feel cut off from all those everyday experiences of human
love – even then, we are still shaped and held by
love…endless love, love stronger than anything in the whole of
creation.
We
may not be able to say that we understand what happens next, but we
can continue to nurture the seeds of faith, and trust that all shall
be well, that the God whose who nature is love did not create
anything to be destroyed or wasted. Whether
we mourn a beloved parent or partner – or a myriad other losses,
disappointments, wounds we have been dealt through life...we can try
to believe in the coming of spring.
We
can hold onto those split-second reminders of God's greater reality,
the moments when an unexpected kindness, a child’s smile, the sound of birdsong, the sight of a tree in full blossom, turns the
world bright again for us, just for a moment…
We
can cherish those seeds of hope and keep them warm and close to our
hearts, the place where they most need to grow.
Their
growth may take a long time, for after all we’re not planting for
the short term, something to spring up and die back in a season, but
looking for something to sustain us each day.
So,
no quick fixes, but I promise that as we journey on in faith, the
glimpses of hope, the hints of love will slowly grow and come to
fruition until we can each own for ourselves the promise
'Love
is not changed by death and nothing is lost, and all in the end is
harvest'
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