From the Pastor's Desk: GOD'S FIELD
Last week my newly married daughter asked me to advise her about planting a garden. In the spring she will begin to plant for the first time. Seeds will be purchased and placed into the ground. Strings and stakes will be arranged to identify where each row of planted seeds were put. Tomato plants will receive their own spot in the garden, but not near the potatoes are embedded. Fresh flowers will grace the edges. Lettuce will be enjoyed. Each plant is of a different kind, yet beautiful in its own way. Each plant comes forth in its own time. There are many seeds, but how amazing it is that the seeds come forth and bear such different fruit. Jesus, talking about His impending death, said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12:24)
Jesus is the
Way, Truth, Life
In our garage we have a little box of seeds. The seeds do little good unless they are planted. Seeds in packets must be put into the ground before they can come up. Jesus speaks about death using words from the garden. Jesus compares burial to a farmer planting seed. Jesus speaks about death differently. As Jesus puts it, we aren’t buried but planted. We see the end. Jesus sees hope. We see what is, but He, like a farmer, sees what is coming.
There seems to be a difference between burying and planting. We bury trash or the skunk on the road. We bury those things that are to be discarded and decay. And yet we treasure and take care of things we plant. With carefulness each seed is handled and put in the ground in the hope of what will someday be. The ground is tilled and watered. So too our dead. We do not bury our dead but plant them in hope. As the Holy Scriptures say, “The body is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” (1 Corinthians 15:43) It is true that we die and return to the ground, but like seeds that are planted, we will come out of the ground again.
Plants are of the same substance from the seeds they came from, but far different, far more glorious. So too our bodies will be the same bodies, yet we will be much better. As a plant comes from the seed, so will we be gloriously changed. Our bodies will no longer be subject to death, but new and restored.
All of this is thanks to the One who came to this earth. Like any seed, however, His will was not to live, but to die. As we will see this Lent, this Good Seed, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, was cast upon by rocky hearts that would not receive Him and surrounded by thorny men who crucified and killed Him. Yet His desire was fulfilled as He was buried and planted into the tomb. As a seed comes from the ground, so Christ came forth from the tomb alive.
When people die it is really the Lord who, like a farmer, is reaching into His sack and casting the seed onto the ground. Considering these things, our cemeteries aren’t as much burial grounds as they are fields. Seeds of all different sorts have there been planted. Each is beautifully marked in its own row. We plant our dead in hope, and the cemetery is God’s field that will sprout forth on the day of the Lord’s return.
Sometimes during a year with hail and drought we wonder if the seeds in our garden will ever come forth at all. In this life of sin we wonder if the promise of the resurrection are really true. Yet as we wait for our crops, so we plant earthly bodies facing up. They do not face the ground but the skies. Seeds up, they look to the heavens to the One who promised that He would return.
There are times that I visit cemeteries in Lancaster County that are next to a farmer’s field. In this way it reminds us of the two fields of which there is little difference. We do not bury our seeds as much as we plant them in hope, and we do not bury our dead as much as we plant them in hope. We will rise with real bodies, the same, but different, the same, but better. Corn on one side, our loved ones are on the other, both planted in the promise of the glorious harvest that will be accomplished by Christ.
At Mount Calvary we do not have a cemetery, but we do have our Memorial Garden. Like a family garden close to the house, so we keep our loved ones close to us. We pass by them as we come into church. We remember their lives of faith. We have their names etched in memory. We have buried them in the garden, in hope. Though recently it seems that we have made a lot of trips to our Garden, we know that “those who sow in tears, will reap with shouts of joy.” As Psalm 126-5-6 says, “He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”
Martin Luther once wrote, “We must learn a new way of speaking about death and the grave. When we die, we are not dead; instead, we are seeds planted for the coming summer. The cemetery is not a mound for the dead but a field full of little seeds, which are called God’s seeds. They will one day blossom again and become more beautiful than anyone can imagine.”
As we prepare to celebrate the feasts of Lent and Easter, and as we see Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, may we always live in this hope that through Jesus, we and our loved ones who have died in the faith…are God’s precious seeds.
Pastor Seifferlein
