The harvester is near. His blade is on your skin.

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—’Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

- John 12:20-36

For several years now, I have been especially struck by this metaphor: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Here is a real-life example of death and resurrection. A seed planted must change into something completely different.

I think most of us are seeds that don’t want to be planted. We want to stay just as we are—safe and whole—without understanding that there’s a deeper safety and a larger wholeness on the other side of death. And I don’t just mean our physical death—I mean all the little deaths we don’t want to face. The end of a job or a relationship. A move to a new place. Real, permanent change. Anything that demands that we can no longer continue to be who we have been, or continue to do what we have been doing.

We don’t get to hold the new gift before we let the old one go. We have to let go first.

Our song today is “Love” by Sixpence None the Richer. The link is to a live performance on MTV, but the quality isn’t very good, so I’ve also included a link to the lyrics.

Who will love a little sparrow?

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

- Jeremiah 31:27-34

Jeremiah spoke hopefully of a new era—of a time when God would not seem distant and removed, but present right in the hearts of each one of us. As Christians, we see Jesus as the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s hope: God became a human and lived among us, demonstrating a love so deep and internal that we can never run away from it.

Yet we still have trouble understanding how the God who created the universe could also be the God whose light shines in our hearts—the God of galaxies and the God of quarks—the God of grand concepts and the God of vulnerable feelings—macrocosmic and microcosmic at the same time. We get stuck in childish notions that imagine God merely as a powerful old man, or merely as a vague energy field, or merely as a harsh judge, or merely as an embracing parent. God is all of these things and infinitely more. We are who we are because of who God is—not the other way around.

We cannot know God completely, and yet, God wants to be known. And God will keep finding new ways to be known in each of us. Are we listening?

Brace yourself: it’s going to be a big week. Jesus has arrived in Bethany and is getting ready to launch a demonstration tomorrow: a demonstration of the power of humility, of rightful indignation at injustice, and of courage in the face of certain death. What will happen when that death finally comes?

On this last day before Holy Week begins, let’s go back to Ash Wednesday for a moment, where our whole Lenten journey began. God’s eye is on the sparrow, Jesus has told us. Really? Every sparrow? The mystery of death is deep and wide, and Jesus is about to plumb those depths.

Some say we're born into the grave

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”

- Ezekiel 37:1-14

This is one of the great stories of the Bible. One year at a church Halloween party, I heard someone tell it to a group of kids, sitting in darkness, complete with sound effects (a bunch of drumsticks in a box rattling around). And, of course, we all know the old spiritual about “dem dry bones”—not to mention the bleak, hard-rockin’, excellent Alice in Chains song.

But what is the main point of this story? To what does Ezekiel’s vision point? Well, the story isn’t actually about physical death, for one thing—it’s about spiritual death. It’s about a whole people feeling cut off and hopeless. And there’s a promise here that all is not lost—God will restore their hope. But when?

The Gospel reading paired with this one is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this story isn’t about physical death, either—at least, not exclusively. There are a million little resurrections happening in our lives every day, from a healed injury to a rekindled friendship to a new perspective. Sometimes these resurrections may seem to take too long—but they do come. Even when everything seems hopeless, hope is on the way.

And so the story goes ...

Again he said to them, "I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come."

Then the Jews said, "Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, 'Where I am going, you cannot come'?"

He said to them, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he."

They said to him, "Who are you?"

Jesus said to them, "Why do I speak to you at all? I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him."

They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father. So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him."

As he was saying these things, many believed in him. Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

- John 8:21-32

It sounds to me like Jesus is saying, “As hard as I’ve tried, I can tell you’re just not going to get it.” He sounds desperate, resigned, and exasperated. He tells them, “You will die in your sin.” What does that mean? Is it as hopeless as it sounds?

The longer we live, the more likely we are to encounter people who seem to have no hope at all. Here’s a song that sketches just such a person: a young woman who is angry, hurt, and broken. “And so the story goes/ That’s the way she chose to live her life.” We are told, “Her salvation came too late/ And on that day she died/ And no one even cried.” The song is “Veil of Deception,” by the Filipino-American metal band Death Angel.

But the road to resurrection leads through total hopelessness. I thank Jesus for going ahead of us into the hopelessness of death and returning to show us it is actually the way to eternal life. All those who have gone before us, no matter the circumstances of their lives, are held in God’s loving embrace. They have access to infinite wisdom: the truth has set them free.

Conversations with kids about death

We’ve been talking a lot about death in my family. Christy lost a beloved great-uncle last Friday; happily, she and Sarah got to pay him a visit a few days before he died. And one of our cats, Epitome, is getting very old and creaky, and we’re waiting for word from the vet on whether her kidneys are failing. Sarah is aware that our kitty will probably die in the next few months, if not sooner.

After all this, I found myself being asked last night, “What’s Ash Wednesday?” If the “sex talk” is the one that scares parents the most, the “death talk” may come in a close second. Yet kids don’t carry the same baggage we do about death. Sarah knows that we will all die someday, and we've talked about it many times since she was about two. So by now, I wasn't scared at all ... just a little overwhelmed.


I explained to Sarah that Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and that at this service, a priest or deacon marks your forehead with ashes in the shape of a cross and says, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"Dust?" Sarah laughed about that. I tried to explain a little about the idea of returning to the earth, but mostly, I just let the liturgical language speak for itself. Better yet, Sarah will get to experience it first-hand tomorrow night.

I love to tell the Godly Play story of Abraham and Sarah. Kids eat this story up—they love that it takes place in a giant sandbox, and they love the language about how “people don’t go into the desert unless they absolutely have to.” They love the language describing prayer: "Abraham came so close to God, and God came so close to him, that Abraham knew what God wanted him to do." And: "Abraham went up on a hill and prayed again, and God was there too. God wasn't just here or there ... God was everywhere!"

At one point late in the story, I tell the story of Sarah dying, and later, of Abraham dying. I dig a little pit in the sand with my finger to indicate the burial of a body. While I’m doing this, I quietly cover the figure of the dead person with my hand and remove it; most kids don’t notice where it went because they’re focusing on my finger digging in the sand.

I always ask the kids after a Godly Play story, “What was your favorite part?” The vast majority of kids talk about the deaths. Kids love to hear death spoken of gently, respectfully, reverently. And they love to hear, “By this time, Sarah was very old and full of years. She died, and Abraham buried her in a cave near the Oaks of Mamre.”

Kids make sense of the world by playing. For them, death is just one more thing about life that needs to have sense made of it. Liturgy is how adults play, to make sense of the most important things in life and beyond life.

Consider bringing your kids to an Ash Wednesday service tomorrow night. Don’t worry about whether they sit quietly the whole time. Bring crayons and paper. You may not think they’re “getting anything out of it." But it is by bringing our children to church that, over time, they learn to speak the language of Christianity and make sense of the relationship they already have with God, who loves them and speaks to them in the silence of their hearts every day.