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Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
The mystery of love is communicated in these lines.
Reading this passage the other day, the line that interrupted me was "It remains alone." We know the passage so well we tend to jump to the end, how if we lose our life we'll find and keep it. But what if we refuse to lose our life? The consequence of that choice is named: "It remains alone."
So when I say this passage communicates the mystery of love, this is what I mean. There is a suffering, losing, and dying aspect of love. We say that love is "sacrificial." And that "sacrifice" is yourself, the losing and giving of your life. As the theologian Arthur McGill has described:
Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did—who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did—mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence.
This is what I believe Jesus means by "but if it dies, it bears much fruit." If I were to float a speculative mysto-physical idea here, we all are tending toward entropic disorder. We're always moving toward death. I can struggle against that drift, arrogating to myself power and pleasure to either delay or enjoy the ride. Or I can, via my Spirit and the Holy Spirit, direct the flow of my energy to give life to others. But this spiritual-energy transfer takes intention, and we call that intention "love." We call it "living for others," but it would be more properly described as "dying for others." Paul describes this in Corinthians 4:12 when he says about his ministry in relation to the church, "So death is at work in us but life is at work in you." Paul is the dying grain of wheat who is bearing much fruit. His life is being poured into others.
Now, what if we refuse to take this path? As Brené Brown has described in her famous TEDx talk (now viewed over 67 million times), relational connection and wholehearted living requires "excruciating vulnerability." For the reasons I've described above. Again, that is the mystery of love. There is a giving away in love, but that gift bears "much fruit" in connection and belonging. You lose your life to find it.
And what if we refuse to die? What if we refuse to love? Jesus names the consequence:
For the seed that refuses to die, the life that refuses to love, it remains alone.
