Grains of Wheat

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it produces much grain (John 12:24).

Jesus is talking about death.

Specifically, He is talking about His death. He is the grain of wheat. He is the Seed that dies and bears much fruit. Like a seed, Jesus will be planted in the ground after He is crucified and killed. He will grow up out of the earth like a plant on the third day.

This is why Paul calls Jesus the first fruits of the resurrection. All those people who are in Jesus will also get planted in the ground like seeds when they die. Because we have been connected to Jesus in our baptism, the things Jesus has and has done belong to us. Because we are baptized into Jesus, when He was crucified, it is like we were crucified. It is the same for His resurrection. We are in Him, and He gives us what He has. His death and His resurrection are ours. We will come back to life when He raises us up on the Last Day. That resurrection will be the full crop of which Jesus was the first-fruits.

This promise of resurrection into a glorious body like the one Jesus has is one of the main reasons Christians bury their dead the way that they do.

We act according to the things we believe. Conversely, the things we believe shape the way we act. It's why Christians have, generally speaking, rejected the practice of cremation throughout history. The pagans burned their dead. If you were a pagan who believed your soul went to an underworld, and you wouldn't need your body anymore, cremation kind of makes sense. But if you believe that God will raise up that same body that went into the grave one day when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead, if you believe you will enter into eternity in a newly-made creation free from sin and death in a now-glorified body that will last forever, as Christians believe, cremation makes less sense.

Your body is important. It is who you are. It is to be cared for, even in death. Your soul will be reunited with it one day.

Christian burial is symbolic of burying the seed, out of which new life will grow, in the ground. It is a confession of what we believe will happen. Our burial practices are a confession that we believe God's promise of eternal life in Christ.

At the grave, the pastor usually prays to God that He would keep the remains of the Christian until the resurrection. This doesn't mean that God can't or won't raise a Christian who was cremated, lost at sea, or eaten by a bear or something. We believe in a God who created the universe by speaking it into existence in six days. Our hope is His promise in Christ that He forgives our sins and will raise us from the dead to live forever with Him.

Why should it be so hard to believe that God could reassemble the atoms of our bodies long after they have been destroyed, or have decayed into dust?

In John 12, Jesus is preparing His disciples for His death on the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world. They don't yet understand all of this, but they soon will. And, they will go from hiding in fear of the Sanhedrin to openly defying all of those who would threaten them with death for proclaiming the Gospel. Why? They saw the resurrected Jesus. They knew He was God in human flesh. They knew that, even if they were killed Jesus would make them alive again.

They had nothing to fear.

Neither do we. ###