May 20, 2002

THE GREAT RECYCLER

Jesus, anticipating his coming death, said,

"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." (John 12:24)

We don't think of a seed as dying; we concentrate on the new life sprouting from the ground and reaching for the sky. But in a real sense the seed represents the end of the existence of one individual plant and the beginning of another new one.

Agriculture has been based on the science of recycling as long as humans have known how to grow plants for food. Even the most primitive farmer realized that he had to preserve the seeds from one crop to start the next.

Also, in the most ancient times, it was discovered that the soil tends to become depleted, less fertile, after repeated plantings. The way to overcome this was to put dead plant and animal matter back into the soil (we call this fertilizing). In this mysterious way former living things became recycled into other living things.

Early hunters observed the same process at work. They killed animals so that they and their families could live. They noticed that after they were done eating, scavengers fed on what they left behind. Even the scraps the scavengers ignored seemed to disappear within a day or two, indicating that bugs and worms completed the job. Nothing was lost; 100% was recycled.

As civilizations developed, the more inquisitive thinkers put these observations together and saw that there was a clear pattern. Life and death were part of a rhythm in nature that guaranteed that God's creation of living plants and animals was preserved by continually renewing itself. Death is not a true loss to creation, but is a way of channeling God's life force into new directions all the time. So God is The Great Recycler. His creation clearly demonstrates this. It seems to be part of his nature as the Author of life.

Now, here is the most startling implication of this: If God is so frugal about his physical creation, we wouldn't expect him to be wasteful about his spiritual creation. Having breathed life into animals and plants, he must have some way of preserving its spiritual dimension.

This would be especially true of humans, who according to the Bible, were created in his image. Would God design such an ingenious reflection of himself and then allow it to be snuffed out in seventy-five years or so, just because the physical body was ready to be recycled?

No, The Great Recycler has planned better than that. Jesus came to reassure us that God has designed a wonderful way of gathering up every bit of spirit into an eternal recycling process. In his teaching about the grain of wheat, Jesus was not just referring to God's promise of physical resurrection. Throughout his ministry he consistently emphasized the primacy of the spiritual over the physical, and he certainly had that in mind in this teaching as well.

Soon after, when he was on the cross, Jesus said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." Three days later he rose again, proving that his trust was well placed.

I hope that, when I die, one of my last thoughts will be, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." The Great Recycler is the only one I will trust to guarantee that my precious spirit will not be trashed.

–Pastor George Van Alstine