I Am A Seed

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately.

Last Thursday my grandpa, Elmore Blain, passed away.
Very early this morning, Ashley’s grandma, Karla Lesslie, passed away.

I want to share a thought that has encouraged me.

It might come out a bit like a written sermon, but hey, I’m a pastor. I can’t help it.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth, and talks to them about death and resurrection. Especially resurrection. They are arguing over whether or not there will be a resurrection at all, and if so, what kind of bodies the people will have, where those bodies will come from, what they will look like, how will they work, etc.

Paul says this;

“But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?' How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives it’s own body.”

- I Corinthians 15:35-38

We have four Norway Maple trees in our yard. Every year I rake up millions of seeds - the helicopter wing kind. They are small seeds, about the size of a pea. They grow into these huge, beautiful, shady, amazing trees.

Paul says the resurrection body is no more similar to our earthly bodies than a seed is to a tree. The seed is just the beginning. The seed is the starting point. The tree is like the seed in some ways. An apple seed doesn’t grow into an orange tree. A maple seed doesn’t grow into a birch. In that way the seed and the tree are the same. But the tree is so much bigger and brighter and more alive than the seed ever was, even when it was still alive and growing on the branch.

The seed is complex, beautiful, and amazing. I wonder at how something so tiny can grow into something so enormous. But it was not made to be a seed. A seed is only a small representation of what is to come. A seed is supposed to be a tree, or wheat, or a flower, or a potato. It’s not supposed to stay a seed.

The catch is that in order for the seed to become what it is supposed to be, it has to die. It has to give up its life, and be put into the ground. Think about a tree that is 100 years old, and someone being sad that the seed had to die before the tree could grow. That sadness, if it is exists at all, is so small that it starts to not be a sadness at all.

When people we love die, it hurts. I watched my grandpa take his last breath, with three other grown men, and my mom, all of us crying like babies, and my grandma clutching his arm, weeping. Ashley sat up many sleepless nights by her grandma’s side, the doctors saying, “It should be today.” every day for a week. Death hurts. We mourn. It isn’t easy.

But we weren’t made for this world. Our true life is still waiting for us. If we live forever here on this earth, we can never become who we were deeply, truly, eternally made to be. A seed isn’t supposed to stay a seed. It’s supposed to become a tree.

Later in that same passage, Paul says,
“When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?'"

And so Death is no longer a defeat. Death is no longer the final disaster. Death becomes a necessary transition into true life. Through faith in Christ, Death has been defeated. Through a beautiful irony, death in Christ means the beginning of true life. Bigger, brighter, stronger, more beautiful.

We should not mourn for the body that dies, and is planted in the ground. We should be filled with joy and hope that the life of one who has their hope in Christ has not ended, but only just begun.

I will end with lyrics from the song “I Am A Seed,” by David Crowder Band.

“Oh I've been pushed down into the ground
Oh how I have been trampled down
Lord I put my trust in thee
You won't turn your back on me

Oh I am a seed
Oh I am a seed
I've been pushed down into the ground
But I will rise up a tree”