Sermon 4/5/2015
John 20:1-18
Easter: Buried Seeds
This year I’ve been very carefully cultivating some
seedlings so that if it every finally gets warm enough, I can transfer my
little plants outside and have a garden that is ready to grow and produce good
fruit. I’ve started seedlings many times before, but unlike my grandfather, who
was such a natural with gardening, I’ve never seemed to have much of a green
thumb. In elementary school, when the teacher would have us “plant” a bean in a
Dixie cup with a wet paper towel, I was always that one kid with the dud seed
that just didn’t do anything. As an adult, I’ve had a little bit better luck,
but it seems that too often I start things too late, or animals eat all my
promising plants, or I do something wrong in the transition from inside to
outside. This year, though, I feel pretty good about my start: my plants are
coming along nicely.
I’ve always hated the process of thinning plants –
pulling out perfectly acceptable plants to make room for the strongest to grow.
But I’ve done it this year, and the result is some really strong, stable
tomato, pepper, and eggplants that will be ready to go in the ground in a few
weeks. This year, though, a few days after putting some of my seedlings into
bigger pots, I went to move my bag of potting soil from one room to another,
and I noticed that inside the bag of soil, I must have dropped one of the tiny
tomato seedlings that I had thinned out to make room for other plants. And
inside the bag of soil, it was growing, stretching toward what little sunlight
it could find from deep down in the bag, to the nearest window that let in a
bit of light. Well, since it was so enduring, so persistent, so determined to
grow, of course, I had to take it out and give it its own little pot and let it
grow. Now, I can’t tell which one it was anymore – it looks just as strong as
all the rest of the plants.
Seeds, plants, things that are meant to grow – they’re
persistent. They can learn to grow in some of the most inhospitable locations.
I love seeing images of plants that have broken through pavement, or scale
buildings, or grow in places where it seems like they couldn’t possibly thrive.
Yet thrive they do. Once planted, seeds want to grow. I’ve been trying ever
since I bought my house three years ago to redirect the energy of some plants in
the yard. But despite pulling things out or covering things with weed mat and
wood chips and other plants, they have a way of creeping around the barriers I
put in their path.
I had all this in mind when I encountered a modern-day
proverb this past week. “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were
seeds.” The saying became popular in Mexico this past fall following the
abduction and murder of 40+ young men from rural communities who were training
to be teachers and who participated in a protest to fight for better
opportunities. It is believed that they were abducted by the police and handed
over to a crime gang who murdered the young men. In the wake of this horrific
act, people were stirred to action to seek justice, this saying became sort of
a rallying cry. It’s actually adapted from the words of a 1950s Greek poet, who
wrote, “what didn’t you do to bury me / but you forgot that I was a seed.” (1) “They
tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” Life persists, pervades,
won’t be stamped out, will grow where planted, where buried, will defeat ardent
attempts to stop it. “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
The community around these murdered young men were insisting that just because
these young men were gone didn’t mean their cause would be silenced. Just the
opposite. Many more voices were lifted up. I’m reminded of the words of
Theodore Parker, the 19th century transcendentalist minister and
abolitionist, whose words were made famous by Abraham Lincoln and then Martin Luther
King, Jr., “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward
justice.” “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” Persistence.
Pervasiveness. Perseverance. Injustice, defeat, and death are not the final
words, because life and love will find a path, a place, a way to grow.
I find that this theme is everywhere in the scripture,
and most especially in the teachings of Jesus. The value of persistence. The
pervasive nature of the good news about God’s kingdom being right here, right
now. The unrelenting, unstoppable nature of God’s love, God’s forgiveness,
God’s seeking us, God’s desire to build a relationship with us. The unstoppable
force of love. In the parables of Jesus, we see again and again that
persistence is rewarded, and that God is persistent in seeking us. God seeks us
like a lost coin, a lost sheep, a lost child, stopping at nothing to find us.
God wants us to seek after God like a person who won’t stop knocking on a door
until it is answered, like a mother who will never stop seeking justice for her
son. God’s love is relentless, impacting everything it touches like a little
yeast can make a whole batch of bread rise, like a mustard seed can turn into a
bush a million times the size of the seed from which it grew. It’s like Jesus
says to the authorities on the day we call Palm Sunday when the crowds are
praising him, “if the people kept silent, then the stones would cry out.” It is
unstoppable, the work of God, the dream of God, the hope of God, the love of
God.
Over my years in ministry I have presided over so many
graveside services, and words that once felt strange to my tongue in the
funeral liturgy have become some of my favorite. We say, based on the words of
the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, “Then the saying that is written will be
fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your
victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ But thanks be to God who gives us the
victory through Jesus Christ.” I’m not sure I always understood those words,
and I’m not certain that in the midst of grieving, people always catch the
impact of them, the punch of them, the taunt
of them. But Paul is laughing at death. Because he knows that death has no
real enduring power over life. Death thinks it has buried us. Ended us. But it
forgot that we are seeds. I’ve learned this as I think about the loved ones I
have lost to death, but who are still so alive to me, to my family. Death was
not able to cancel out the power of their lives. Of their love, or ours, or God’s.
Even death has no power to stop the work of God, the love of God, our life in
and through and because of and with God.
With all this in mind, we finally come to John’s gospel
and the Easter story we know. Jesus had been crucified, put to death. Everything
suggested that it was all over. The disciples had basically abandoned him, and
were locked in a room, scared and hiding. The authorities had won. Finally, the
scheming of the religious leaders had worked, and Jesus was dead. No more
Jesus, stirring up the crowds. No more Jesus, suggesting our lives might need
changing, turning upside down. No more Jesus, suggesting that those in places
of power might need to be humbled, that in God’s world, first was last, and
those who wanted to follow most closely needed to serve and love most
completely. Still, a few women, those who had stayed even through the
crucifixion, were careful to attend to him even in death. And so Mary, on the
first day of the week, went to the tomb early that morning. But when she arrived,
she found that the stone entrance had been rolled away. She immediately goes
and gets Peter and another, unnamed disciple. The two of them race to the tomb,
go inside, and see that Jesus is gone, only his linen tomb cloth remaining. But
they say nothing, understanding nothing, and go home. Mary stays, though,
weeping. She sees two messengers of God, who ask why she is crying. She
explains that she doesn’t know where Jesus has gone. And then she turns and
sees Jesus himself. Somehow, through her grief and tears, she doesn’t recognize
him, not until he says her name. And then, in joy, she says to him, “Teacher,”
at last realizing the truth: Jesus is alive, risen, resurrected. He sends her
to tell the disciples, and so she goes, and announces the joyous news, “I have
seen the Lord.”
And I hear Jesus saying, “What didn’t you do to bury me,
but you forgot that I was a seed.” Of
course, the crucifixion wasn’t the end. That’s what Jesus had been teaching
us all along. God will not be stopped. God’s will isn’t thwarted. God’s vision
for us isn’t mistaken and wrong. God
finds a way, despite the strongest efforts of death to stop life. Where, O
death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? It is nothing, and
Christ and life are everything. Persistent. Pervasive. Persevering. Injustice,
defeat, and death are not the final words, because life and love will find a
path, a place, a way to grow. Instead we just leave buried our doubts and
fears. We leave buried our prejudices and hostilities. We leave buried our
insistence on our own way, our grudges, our anger. But what God draws forth
from us is new life. Resurrected life. Real life. And nothing will stand in
God’s way.
Friends, on this Easter morning, don’t be fooled where it
seems that death has won and hope has been buried. Christ is alive, and we are
God’s seeds, and nothing will keep God’s dream, God’s hope, God’s love, from
taking root, and bearing fruit. Thanks be to God! Amen.
(1) http://jhfearless.com/2014/11/they-tried-to-bury-us-they-didnt-know-we-were-seeds/
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