They Did Not Know That We Are Seeds

Sara Warfield

March 19, 2017

Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

At the center of our faith is a man who was mocked, stripped, flogged, and eventually tortured to his death. Jesus begged his Father to take the cup of suffering from him. He cried to God, “why have you forsaken me?” He died an enemy of the state after being unjustly condemned during a sham of a trial. Jesus, the word made flesh, God incarnate walking with us on this ground, breathing this air. Jesus suffered and was buried.

It is this story that carries us through this season of Lent, and it is powerful. It is powerful because we know that to be human means to experience suffering, and we know that Jesus knows what it means to suffer. We know that he cried out to his Father in the worst of his pain, just as so many of us have called for our mother or father when we have despaired. Our God is not a remote God who watches our pain and fear and loss dispassionately from above. Our God has suffered with us.

So at first it struck me as a little odd, if not a bit insulting, that Paul wrote to the Church in Rome that they should boast of their sufferings. Is this a contest? Is the person who suffers the most the most faithful? But just as I was about to step up on my soapbox to rail against how some Christians emphasize, if not glamorize, suffering, I remembered who exactly Paul was writing to.

His letter is addressed to a small group of Christ-followers living in the capital of a huge and powerful empire. They worshiped a God no one around them believed in. Indeed, the coins in their pockets declared that the Roman Emperor Nero was Deus et Dominus, God and Lord.

The authorities were getting suspicious, and more and more hostile. In ten years, the emperor’s formal persecution of the Christian community would begin. Some sources say that Nero had Paul beheaded in that time. The threats to this community’s safety were real and growing. So I don’t think that Paul was congratulating them. No, Paul was trying to make meaning of the suffering that they were already experiencing. They weren’t seeking it. They didn’t deserve it. But the suffering was there and real and difficult. So Paul challenged Christ’s followers in Rome: what would your faith have you do?

But we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.

Paul’s words of encouragement remind me of a saying that’s been popping up in the past few years as a rallying cry for the oppressed. It says, They tried to bury us, but they did not know that we are seeds.

So often suffering feels like being shoved deeply, inescapably into the darkness, surrounded on all sides, stuck, paralyzed. We don’t know what the Church in Rome had written to Paul before he sent that response, but I imagine it might have been something like, “We are so scared. They are closing in on us.”

We all know this feeling. When your mother died, and you had no idea how you would go on without her. When you lost everything, and not even your family would take you in for fear of your addiction. When ICE agents were circling your block in a van. When you were sleeping on the streets, your wallet shoved into your underwear so that no one would steal it while you slept. When your partner said he was leaving. The darkness becomes thick, the fear paralyzing. The temptation is to give up.

The seed often looks dried out, like there’s not another drop of life in it. Like it will remain lifeless forever. The grief is so heavy, almost impenetrable. But in the midst of that darkness. Paul tells us, “God’s love has been poured into our heart through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” This is good news. A strength that is not your own starts to stir within you.

You don’t have to do anything. The Spirit is already there, infusing you with what you need. And you feel a crack in the darkness, the hard shell of the seed giving way to a spark of new life within. It’s still dark, and you are still closed in on all sides, but a tiny sprout reaches out, pushes into the hard-packed dirt. It’s not easy. It requires endurance—the trust that the Spirit will continue to send you strength through God’s love. Sometimes it’s a fight against your own hopelessness. But that tiny ounce of trust in the Spirit propels you. Your little sprout continues to push through the darkness. Against all odds. It feels like it takes forever. It’s exhausting. Grief is exhausting. Change is exhausting.

Until the dirt around you starts to feel warmer. And tiny drops of light start to drip down towards you. Until, quite suddenly, you break through. Suddenly, you feel a breeze on your face. You’re a tiny sprout in the sun. As you slowly grow towards the light, you start to figure yourself out. This is a leaf. This is a stem. This is a tendril. You start to notice new, beautiful things about yourself. Strengths that you didn’t know you had before. Endurance produces character.

And before you know it, you’re in full blossom, radiant in color and dancing in the breeze. Hope blooming out of the hard dirt. Suddenly, you are the one we write stories about. You are the inspiration, the breath of God’s hope we can take in when something buries us. You who were buried only to be reborn with new strength. Illness tried to bury you…Addiction tried to bury you…Loss tried to bury you, but they did not know that you are a seed.

But maybe you feel like the lifeless seed right now, buried impossibly deep in the hard-packed dirt, surrounded by darkness. I know that this message might feel hard to hear. That’s okay. You don’t have to hear it. You don’t have to agree or try to do anything. Those of us who can will hold the hope of God’s love for you. We will trust on your behalf. We will have faith in your stead. That’s what this community, this Body of Christ, is for.

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Even as he says it, Jesus knows there is suffering to come. And yet he speaks of hope, which is our spring of water when we are buried. This is the story of the Lenten season. We intentionally practice suffering in small ways by giving something up. We reflect somberly on our mortality, how we will eventually be literally buried in the ground. But then, after 40 days and crying out with joy and light and singing, we proclaim together that:

They tried to bury Jesus, but they did not know that he was a seed.