sermons

Something New

If It Dies, It Bears Much Fruit

Lydia Shiu

Apr 19, 2026

I’m still feeling vertigo after Good Friday and Easter. It’s a weird season in the church liturgical calendar, where one day we’re grieving death in a dark sanctuary and then two days later, glory Jesus is risen and we’re supposed to have some triumphant celebratory spirit. It’s disorienting. 

But maybe that’s why Lent is so long. Some 40 days of fasting, alms giving. I think I’m uncomfortable with it because I like avoiding the discomfort of sitting with death, and so when the news of resurrection comes, it feels fake. Whoopdeedooda. 

Of course, why would I feel the heights of euphoria of resurrection when I’ve been numbing myself of the feelings of sadness and grief of death, right?

So today, for our post-easter story, I want to take us to thinking about death some more. Yaaaaay!

Our Scripture reading today comes from 

John 12:24 

Let me read for us. Jesus says this to talk about his upcoming death.

I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Let me pray for us. 

Risen Lord, Your life, death and resurrection shows us a new way. You showed us God in a whole new way. Help us to see clearly. Even through the doubt. Even through suspicion. Even through apathy or cynicism. Help us to see the throughline of love, especially in the midst of death and darkness. Reveal to us your love that breaks through it all, our distractions and egos. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

I thank God for the spring sunshine beaming down on me these days. I don’t know much about plants and stuff, so I don’t know the names, but those yellow flowers on bushes, and the pink ones on the tall trees, and the beautiful yellow and white ones that look like umbrellas kind of open. So pretty. This is a product of knowing English as a second language and being raised with parents who don’t speak English. I don’t know plant names and I don’t know kitchen utensils in English. I just learned that the big spoon for soups are called ladles a few years ago. 

So, how many of you guys are gardening these days? Planting stuff? Cool. How many of you had dirt underneath your fingernails this past week? Nice Nice. Oh man I don’t know much about gardening but I love going to Home Depot in the spring. I know some of you go to fancier places like a nursery, like where the precious plants live? 

One spring, I caught the green thumb bug. I was like, I want to try it. Eat from the land you know? I work with the Kids Ministry team, so I hang out with Dan, our elementary school pastor, who actually grows his own stuff, with chickens and all. Oh I look up to Dan and people like him. So I bought some seeds one spring. The problem was, I brought the seeds home and I had no place to plant them. I mean I have a yard but it’s covered with stuff already. So I started to pull up some weeds and clear the sticks and rock on a little patch of my yard. But as I started doing that, I realized the weeds, there’s more than just weeds down there. They were like thick wood vines that are so interconnected, that when I started pulling on one, there was no end and I found myself pulling and pulling till I sat on my bottom with a huge tree in my hand. 

But I was determined to plant my seeds so I can eat kale in 8-10 weeks. I pulled and pulled on the weeds and the vines to clear the dirt so much that from that one go, I pulled a muscle. Next day, my hands were sore. I didn’t have the right tools. 

Why is it so hard to make something new? 

I didn’t know before I started that I’d find roots bigger than my face underground. I didn’t know before I started that I needed huge scissors. I didn’t know before I started that I had to touch worms with my bare hands. 

• What are you trying to grow anew right now, in your life?
• Is it a new relationship?
• A much needed new job?
• A new hobby that apparently is supposed to give you life but you feel like you just suck at it? 
• What did you not know before you started?
• What barriers and challenges are you pushing through right now?
• What’s getting in your way of actually accomplishing a new thing you are trying at? 

Good. That’s right. If it’s hard, you are on the right path. Because

“unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

What needs to die? What needs to break open? To birth something new in your life right now?

.You know after the resurrection of Jesus, who Jesus was and is, how Jesus was talked about expanded in all kinds of ways. He came to be called so many of these titles thereafter,

• Messiah
• Son of God
• Lord
• Words of God
• Wisdom (Sophia) of God
• Lamb of God
• True Light
• Light of the World
• Good Shepherd
• True Vine
  Most of these names came, not from Jesus, but from the community. From their experience of the resurrected Lord. The community had more and more to say. 

Marcus Borg, a professor of religion at Oregon State says, that the community confessed, 

“We have found in this person the light of the world who has shown us the way out of darkness”

“We have found in this person the spiritual food that feeds us in the midst of our journey even now.” 

And so they came up with names and titles and adjectives about Jesus saying, 

“This one who was among us as Jesus of Nazareth is also the Word of God, the Son of God, and the Wisdom of God.” 

But why? Why did they see him as such? How did Jesus make such an impact on these certain people? And I mean these certain people, because certainly it wasn’t everyone. There were plenty of people who saw what happened in the crowd and didn’t become followers of Jesus. 

Why was Jesus such a bright light, enlightening them in such a provocative and powerful way? 

I think it’s like this. 

You know when you’re sleeping on a plane, maybe on a redeye or going overseas. Everyone has their window shades down. You’re in the middle aisle and you don’t have full control of the window shade. Only the window seat person has the power to bring light or to keep you in the darkness. But the moment, when you hear the window seat person next to you pull up that shade, and you pull off the eye mask and squint, and you try to get a glimpse of the sky, but it’s at first, nothing but white bright light and that’s all you see. 

You see, your placement, where you are located matters. If you were in a brightly lit room with lights on and you open up a shade, it only makes a little difference. You are not as impacted. 

You see, you can’t understand the transition from Good Friday to Easter, from death to resurrection if you don’t know the darkest depth of despair and death. It’s not impressive to you. It doesn’t impact you. 

That’s why Jesus says in Matthew 9:12-13

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

And

In Luke 7:47 Jesus says, 

“47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

So if you’re righteous, and you are sacrificing so much, good for you, if you are healthy and fine, if you don’t get sin in your life that you’ve worked through or wrestling with, you’re not going to be desperately in love with Jesus. 

But if you are sick, you are steeped in sin and you are down in the muck and mire. And you are struggling, and you are trying to find something new but knee deep in just smelly smelly compost and weeds and rocks and thistles, there, right there, is where Jesus is. To you, in the midst of your dark world, Jesus is True Light, the Light of the World.

I’m not saying stay there, or excusing the systemic injustice which is sin, and just saying,

‘oh just suffer on this earth for the Lord and you will see heaven after you die,”

no that is a twisted misused version of the gospel to keep the oppressed people sedated with the watered down gospel. No. In your suffering, in your pain, in your struggle for waiting and waiting for a job that won’t come, in your stress of trying to figure out how to pay rent or feed your family, in your anger and grief of sexual abuse that’s reeked havoc in your life. In your loneliness and rejection from supposedly loved ones, in your heartbreak of being cheated on or blamed for everything broken in your relationship, in your struggle with addiction, in your fight with yourself for all the blows the worlds put on you and the blows you put on yourself, 

In the death of Jesus, he identified with you, as one who is suffering. If you don’t know that identification, then the meaning of resurrection and new life means nothing to you. 

You know what’s one of the most powerful ingredients you need for you to grow a new plant? Manure. You know, poop. The thing that is processed and rejected from the body because it’s unnecessary and you get rid of it, but then you really should be putting that in the soil to grow new life. And the funniest thing about poop is that it smells really bad. Something new can come out of something so bad. 

That smell, it’s putrefaction, the final stage of decomposition, where bacteria and fungi break down tissues, causing soft tissues to liquefy, releasing strong odors and causing swelling through gas production. Putrefaction.

Before Jesus raised Lazarus from death, and this is one verse I really like in the King James Version. 

John 11:39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh…”

And it is a holy beautiful work when someone helps make it less stinketh, 

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.

as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might anoint Jesus’ body, 

“39 Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.[e] 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen.”

John 19:39-40

And just as Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night, my good pastor friend and mentor Fred Harrell always calls him Nic at Night, he brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds, wrapping Jesus body with the spices and strips of linen. 

What is stirring up a stink in your life? ..

I’m really sorry that you’re going through it. That really stinks. 

And is there anyone who is bringing you spices, myrrh, aloes, and linen at all? Anyone who is tending to you in the midst of the decay and decomposing? 

Again, I’m not trying to explain away injustice or wrong, or sin, and just glaze over it. It sucks. And if it needs to die, let it die. So that a new thing can arise from it. 

I was sitting there at the Good Friday service, with a beautiful program in my hand, inviting me to sorrow & surrender. I had sorrow, just underneath the surface, but I couldn’t surrender because if I did, I wouldn’t have enough tissues on me to wipe up all the tears. It’ll take too long. And it’s an hour long service. 

I sat there and read the card with reservation. It said: 

SORROW & SURRENDER STATION

“Father, into your hands I entrust my life.” — Luke 23:46

Visit the table alongside the stage. Jesus didn’t and doesn’t turn away from what’s terrible. He enters it. He holds it. Even in the shadow of death. You may come to this station in defiance, in sadness, or in deep need — because of the times we are living in, or because of the time you are living through. Write down what weighs on you, what aches, what you long to entrust to Jesus. If you have no words — take a branch or a twig to the cross as a symbol of all you need held by Jesus.

I so appreciated the inclusion in naming one of the emotions that I was holding, defiance. I had sorrow, but I didn’t surrender because I am frustrated with this world and with God. I was sitting there thinking I know Easter celebration comes in a few days, but God, look at this world. What did you actually accomplish on the cross? Victory over death? That’s a lie. Where? People are dying, for no good reason, children, innocent children are dying with bombs and starvation. People with good faith ask, Where is thy sting? But I’m here saying, it stings, a lot, and where is this victory? Everytime I open up the news, a new sting, a new stink. It is nauseating and turns my stomach. 

I had no words, except some curse words. I wrote them down and covered it with a pretty little branch and intertwined it into the cross. I was still angry but kind of felt nice, but still quite numb in my body from all the withholding and not surrendering I was doing. 

And then towards the end of the service, from my seat, I heard a wailing. A deep deep cry and wailing from the foot washing station. And how good it felt to hear someone else’s unfiltered voice of sorrow that I am too contained to release. How good it must be to let go of it all. To surrender. If that was you, my heart breaks with you, and thank you for your resounding sorrow that made me feel like I wasn’t alone in my messy grief. At that moment, I finally kind of got the “Good” part of Good Friday. 

I’m a slow processor. A slow reader, who reads a chapter of a book and has to marinate on it for weeks before moving onto the next chapter for really emotionally challenging books. I’m a late bloomer, or immature, still growing and learning. It’s after Easter but I’m still stuck at one of the stations of the cross because I can’t move on. That’s alright. I’m like Mulan. And that’s not racist. I mean I kind of heard that the Asian Disney princess story was written by white writers, but I still liked the movie, like I don’t know, sometimes stereotypes hit home (sometimes not), but “bring honor to us all” I relate. But also the blossom thing. 

Mulan’s sweet father saying,

“My, what beautiful blossoms we have this year. But look, this one’s late. But I’ll bet that when it blooms, it will be the most beautiful of all.”

Take your time to bloom. Take your time to root your seed. 

For the seed to soak in the water, in the dark cold dirt, for a while. 

Did you know that tulips, my GOD they are pretty but you can’t just plant the bulb in the spring when you get jealous of your neighbors’ blooms in April. 

You have to plant them according to The Plant Hardiness Zone Map. 

Massachusetts is Zone 6  coldest in winter being (-10°F to 0°F)

Best planting time: Mid-October to early November

You have to plant it in the middle of winter, in the cold and you won’t see a thing till like at least five months later.

What does it look like for you, to be buried in the cold dirt for five – six months? What does it feel like? Are you okay? You hanging in there? 

God is in the deep with us. The God revealed in Jesus is the seed that fell and died and produced many fruit. That’s how Jesus talked about his death. And look at all you pretty delicious fruits, thousands of years later, dripping in sweet nectar? Jesus is the true vine because he knows what it’s like to have to crawl up and tangle up slowly. Hang in there. God is with us in the dirt. In the death. If you’re in it now, may you taste the fruit soon I pray. And for that fruit to fall and decay and give of themselves for something new again and again together. Amen.