Good
Friday Evening
April
6, 2007
John
19:1-15
At
the end of a plant’s life, it forms the seed. This seed may be hardly
distinguishable from a speck of dirt or a stone. Yet, although it is inert for
a time, when it is buried in the earth, it reveals its inherent life. The seed
swells and breaks apart. Its husk falls away, and from the heart of the seed,
one shoot dives downward, rooting itself in the earth; a second sprout shoots
upward toward light and air and warmth. In doing so, the form of the
seed is transformed. The fact that it is alive makes it take on a different
form.
 |
| Roerich |
The
corpse of Christ Jesus was like a seed in its husk. It was lowered into the
earth. The husk of its material covering fell away like ash. The underlying
true body of the human form, imbued with superabundant life, swelled like a
seed. Partly anchored in the earth, partly rising heavenward, the life in Him
became a new kind of life, an undying human life. He became at once the Old and
the New: He restored the old original form of the human being as an image and
likeness of the Creator – for all mankind had been corrupted by Adam and Eve’s
succumbing to Lucifer’s temptation, and we all subsequently fell into a bodily
form which is imbued with matter. This corrupted body has been passed down to
us through the generations.
During
Holy Week, before His death, Christ Jesus tried to explain what He was about to
do. After he had raised Lazarus from the dead, some Greeks came and asked to
see Him. In their spring rites, bury an effigy of their god, Adonis, a god of
life, death, and rebirth. They would celebrate his rebirth as spring’s new
vegetative growth.
And
Jesus told them [the Greeks]: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be
revealed in His spirit form. Yes, I tell you: Unless a grain of wheat falls
into the earth, it remains as it is. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Whoever loves his own soul will lose it; but whoever hates that in his own soul
which belongs to the transient world will save it for true deathless life.
Whoever would serve me must follow me on my path. Where I am, there also must
be he who would serve me; and my Father will honor him who serves me. John 12:
23-26 (Madsen rendering)
In
restoring the original image, Christ also became our new ancestor. For, like
the single wheat seed that swells and grows and ultimately forms multiple seeds
for new life, so too is Christ’s immortal human form, a body not weighed down
by material substance, capable of producing multiple copies. For each of us,
there is a copy of His immortal human form that He is waiting to give us. To
the extent that we join ourselves to Him, choose to take Him in, join our lives
to His Life, we ultimately receive a non-material bodily form which is a living
copy of His immortal form, suffused with the timeless life of Him who carries
and orders the life of the world.
The
path of Christ is the path of descent, of grounding and rooting in
the earth;
and at the same time an ascending one, of rising and growing toward the light
and warmth of the Father. It is a path through death into the realm
behind it, into the realm of abundant and overflowing Life. It is a realm where
the original command, “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 9:7) is given a new
meaning. For it is through His dying that He, and we, attain Life. And that
life multiplies itself as ongoing life for the earth, and as immortal life for
human beings. We pray that His body, and His enlivening blood be for us the
abundant overflowing life that strengthens the forces that form us. An immortal
spirit body is the gift that He, in his love for us, is literally dying to give
us.
 |
| Sombart |
In
the words of Angelus Silesius:
The
Godhead is my sap; what in me greens and flowers
It
is His healing Spirit who all the growth empowers.[1]
