Seed for Life

²²The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary for Canada today are used in the liturgy of the Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed. The words of Paul to the Corinthians “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor 15.20-23) are creed for Christians. The theme of relating death and life is the teaching of Jesus to Greek visitors to Jerusalem in the passage from the Gospel of John. Don Schwager introduces this Gospel as one written in Ephesus to a community of mostly Greek and Roman gentiles to whom John was presenting an answer to the question “Who is Jesus Christ?”. The text from Chapter 12 is set as Jesus uses a parable of seeds dying in the earth to bring life as grain in the future. The death we associate with Adam is our decisions to turn away from the direction which God has for us. Our encounter with Jesus is the gift from God to call us to the self death which restores our choice of the Will of God for our life direction. The dual nature of our self death is noted by Schwager as through one-time events like baptism and in daily repeating opportunities to choose Life and Love in our mercy, forgiveness, patience and compassion which focus our action to be in accord with the Will of God. The continual need to live in daily death to self is the habit which allows us to proclaim with Job the declaration cited at many funerals “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19.25-26).