We could spend our sermon time talking with you about John's Christology and how our text indicates Jesus' understanding of his impending death, but after a brief period, I would begin to see in some of your eyes that glazed look that would tell me you had gone off to a faraway place. It's true; this text is about Christology, but a Christology that comes with our names on it too. Says Jesus, "Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also" (v. 26). Read this to mean: "What I am saying about myself applies to you also, even you living in the infancy of a new millennium." 

Here's what Jesus says: "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (v. 24).  One doesn't have to be a farmer to understand this. Always, and every day, we are planting seeds. Parents, teachers, advertisers, ministers, funeral directors, writers -- you name the people -- all are planters of seeds. 

Congregational families are the matrix that births persons interested in the pastoral ministry. Congregations cry out for capable leadership and it may be that some young person being shaped in one of our families right now would make a fine pastoral minister. This doesn't happen automatically. Is there someone you know right now in our congregational family to whom you could say, "Would you consider a career in pastoral ministry?"  I have just planted a seed. Obviously there is no way of knowing whether it will produce fruit or not, but one thing is certain: no seed, no fruit. 

Planted seeds are also buried seeds. Hence Jesus talks about a grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying. The seed is no good unless it does go into the ground and die. There is an intriguing line attributed to a writer named W. St. Hill Bourne: "The sower went forth sowing, The seed in secret slept."

Then too buried seeds lead to waiting planters. It's hard to wait while the seed "in secret" sleeps. All we can do is tend the seed, making sure it has the necessary moisture and nutrients. Every now and again we can fertilize, too. But primarily we wait. When it comes to people, we often speak of "waiting them out." There's a wonderful line from an old Ed Asner, Jean Stapleton movie titled The Gathering. Asner plays an aging business man who learns he is going to die and Stapleton plays his estranged wife. An eleventh hour rapprochement takes place. At one point the character played by Asner is reflecting on what his estranged wife has been doing all through the separation years and he remarks: "She has been sitting up in that house waiting for me to grow up." 

For nine months a mom and dad wait for an embryo to grow into a person; for the next year or so they wait for the child to speak and walk; then they wait for the child to master the skills necessary to begin a program of formal education that might last up through graduate school; during the years of adolescence they simply "wait out" the youngster; and then they wait for the young adult to get up and running economically, so they can recall the credit card. 

Then in time, the planted seed that became the buried seed becomes the fruitful seed. "... it bears much fruit," (v. 24) says Jesus. The child becomes a contributing adult; the visionary idea becomes a full-fledged program; the trainee becomes trained; the tune becomes a symphony. And so the process goes. 

But there is a further twist to this. Jesus, as we implied when we began, sees himself as the planted and buried seed that will eventually bear much fruit. He models what we can call the ministry of fading. In a culture of shakers and movers, fading may seem to some a form of wimping out. But there is more to it than at first we might realize.  At the very least, fading is a form of courtesy. We have all been in groups where one person tends to do all the talking; it's as though that person has no ears and only a mouth. As we like to put it, it's hard to get a word in edgeways. If the person's loquaciousness goes on long enough, others begin to simmer, and still others will drop out of the group. Interestingly, when the preacher in Ecclesiastes is going through his litany of opposites and how each has intrinsic value, he mentions silence before speech. Everything in its season, he says, "A time to keep silence, and a time to speak ..." (3:7a). Minimally, the ministry of fading has to do with good manners and allowing others their mike time. 

The ministry of fading also means that our ebbing can occasion another's flowing. If one part of the ocean didn't recede, another part couldn't flow.  A simple example of this can be seen in a recently popular television ad featuring a father and daughter at a time of transition. It is clear in the ad that the father is turning the reins of a business over to his daughter. They have worked together for some time, but Dad finally vacates his office. There is a poignant moment when the daughter is standing in her new office, looking at an earlier photograph of dad and daughter; then, as she looks out the open doorway, her father is graciously making his way out of the building. 

Another common example of ebbing so that another can flow is the instructor pilot. After what the instructor takes to be a sufficient number of training hours, she gets out of the passenger's seat and signals her student that she can commence with her first solo flight. Fading instructor, flowering student. Good parents are about this maneuver in an age-appropriate manner all the time. At least those who don't want emotionally and spiritually crippled children are. 

The ministry of fading can also be seen as a form of intentional depletion in the service of others. We need to save, but we can reach a point where our saving means others are losing. If four people are carrying a heavy couch and one decides to hold back and not exert himself as he could, that means the other three are being asked to carry a heavier burden. When one teacher coasts, it means that other teachers have to work harder. When a church committee of five in effect has two working members, that means three have asked two to do the work of five. 

But the issue here is not just fairness, but also meaning. Jesus puts it like this: "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (v. 25). Somehow, Jesus is saying, it's in the spending of our lives that we find them. And it's in our excessive guarding and holding of those lives that we lose them. No investment, no return. No overture, no symphony. No risk, no gain.  Then, ultimately, may it not be the truth of this teaching that our fading can become the avenue of God's coming? Isn't that what worship is all about -- our stepping aside so that God can step forward? 

Back in the early 1970s, a concert was given on the Boston Common by the late organ virtuoso, Virgil Fox. At that point Fox was into capes, and he cut quite a figure. He was a bit flamboyant, but one suspects he did that for a very good reason. The capes and color and pizazz certainly got people's attention, but once he got that attention, Fox ushered them into a musical kingdom where they were treated to the musical gold of someone like Bach. And when Fox did that, there came a moment when Fox faded, and Bach came into view. 

Ultimately all that matters in this congregation -- or any congregation -- is that we fade and God comes into view.