From taking tours of caves as a child, I have a fascination and fear of being underground for long periods. Sure, I have been buried under sand on the beach but that is not the same. I recall in my youth the national cameras waiting on the rescue of Baby Jessica, who fell in her Aunt’s backyard at the age of 18 months for a grueling 56-hour recovery from 22 feet underground. In September 2023, American Mark Dickey was rescued from a cave in Turkey 3,400 feet underground by a team of more than 170 individuals working together. In 2014, more than 700 specialists rescued German spelunker Johann Westhauser, who was trapped for 12 days in one of Europe’s deepest cave systems. The movie Deep Down Dark is about the 33 men buried 2,000 feet deep in a collapsed mine in Chile in 2010. They were there for 69 days while the world was transfixed, waiting and watching for their eventual miraculous rescue. At that time there was weeping. Acceptance of death. There was terror when the sound of the rescue drill stopped, wondering if they would survive. One miner said, “The silence just destroyed us. Without a positive sign, your faith collapses. Because faith isn’t blind.” Some men grew closer to God during this time, and others felt tempted to simply give up, to lie down and die. A regular mining job would involve sweat, injuries, death traps, and rock crumbles. Yet these miners experienced 69 days that would change their lives forever: full-body funguses, starvation, disorienting darkness, and rock-crashing sounds that kept them awake and paranoid. Some of the men not only thought the mountain was alive but angry. The men were buried in the earth. At some point, all of us will face an experience that is so deep, down, and dark that it will feel like a burial. That some part of us has died. And then comes the invitation to growth, to Easter, to resurrection.
The Apostle Paul talks about baptism as burial. The early church practiced baptismal immersion in water because it was such a powerful picture of death and resurrection. A going under, a dying, a letting go. The old self drowned, and a new birth.
Sooner or later, we long for simpler lives. We realize that life is unfair. That life has cheated us. Our dreams are unfulfilled. The world is so complex and there’s so much bad news everywhere. Even our previous ideas of God and the church may need to die.
So it’s a strange thing to say in church but perhaps our call is get down and dirty. Getting our hands in the earth may help.
Which leads to a fertile image in our gospel. Rich in spiritual nutrients. Jesus gives this parable of being glorified and talks of seeds going underground to bring new life. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth—the dirt— and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Catholic author Richard Rohr describes spirituality as “Falling Upward” in his book and podcast that goes by that title: “Falling Upward”that those who have fallen, failed and gone down are the ones who understand “up”. Brene Brown talks about the core of courage and trust is accepting vulnerability. Buddhist philosophy talks about nonattachment that becoming unnecessarily attached to people, places, and things can create dissatisfaction and prevent peace, and breaking free from attachment provides liberation.
Reflecting on this Gospel parable in 16th century Spain, Teresa of Avila wrote: “You must have already heard about God’s marvels manifested in the way silk originates. The silkworms come from seeds about the size of little grains of pepper. When the warm weather comes and the leaves begin to appear on the mulberry tree, the seeds start to live, for they are dead until then. The worms nourish themselves on the mulberry leaves until having grown to full size, they settle on some twigs. There with their little mouths, they go about spinning the silk and making some very thick little cocoons in which they enclose themselves. The silkworm, which is fat and ugly, then dies, and a little white butterfly, which is very pretty, comes forth from the cocoon. Once this silkworm is grown, it begins to spin the silk and build the house wherein it will die.” Theresa writes: “I would like to point out that this house is Christ since he is our dwelling place and we can build to place ourselves in it. Let’s be quick to weave this little cocoon by taking away our self-love and self-will, our attachment to any earthly thing, and by performing deeds of penance, prayer, mortification, and obedience. Let this silkworm die, as it does in completing what it was created to do. And you will see how we see God, as well as ourselves, placed inside God’s grandeur, as is this little silkworm within its cocoon.”
Jesus is the seed buried in the earth. Whose self-giving becomes the pattern for our lives — whose death transforms us — whose resurrection is our very springtime.
I have read this Gospel lesson for today at many funerals and with many at their dying moments. I recall one church member, Bill, and the discussion we had on his death bed: “I am a scientist and I have a hard time with this notion of life after death, Pastor. I want some more evidence or understanding to believe this notion of resurrection.” As we read this Gospel passage together and Jesus’ analogy of the mystery and power in creation to radiate life from the smallest sources of seeds and barrenness gave him the hope in believing.
“Why did Jesus have to die?” is the question we wrestle with in the next few weeks leading up to Easter. And often the answers that get put forward are more distressing than having an unanswered question in the first place. But there’s a wonderful and surprising answer in today’s reading offered by Jesus who says, in effect; “Well, because that’s how you get more life. It’s just like the way a seed ‘dies’ to give life to a new plant that bears lots of fruit and seeds of its own.”
But there is more good news. We are the seed, the grain of wheat that dies. So love the dirt, treasure the earth, savor your mortality. For from it, comes the promise of spring. There are some seeds just under the surface. The dying seed bears much fruit; Christ becomes the bread of life. You can know it today in the wheat grains of the bread and crushed grapes of the wine. Deep down dark. Surely it leads to spring. The Easter mystery will soon wash over us like gentle rain.
