Last Sunday, I have signed up as a segajok (new member) at the Saemoonan Church. I will go through five weeks of training to be officially registered, and now in my second week, I find myself filled with joy each time I come to church and listen to the sermon. What strikes me most is how personally the message speak to me.
John 12:24-26
24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
John consistently testifies that the death of Jesus Christ was neither a killing nor an execution, but a voluntary act of giving himself up. In the passage, Jesus explains the meaning of his death through the metaphor of a grain of wheat: unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds. This shows that Jesus willingly gave up his life—choosing death in order that many lives may come forth.
If the identity and selfhood of a grain of wheat lay in preserving itself, then it ought to preserve itself. But the true identity, selfhood, and essence of a grain of wheat lie in the life that the Creator has placed within it. Every grain, when it falls to the earth, decays on its own, lets go of its form, and breaks its shell. When a grain decays, it is not denying itself; rather, it is becoming most fully what it is meant to be—laying down its original life in order to bring forth a life that surpasses it.
Yet human beings hide tightly within their own shells and try to prove that they are alive under the name of “identity.” Denying ourselves feels as though our very lives are being denied, so we strive to protect and preserve ourselves. The ego remains very much alive. People refuse to lose, seeking to expose faults rather than cover them in grace. Immersed in a self-centered, materialistic culture, many have forgotten what the Christ they follow truly desires. As a result, we remain just a single seed.
As God, Jesus possessed the identity of divinity, yet he did not cling to it, but willingly set it aside. For his very being is life itself, and that life is the light of all people. In order for that identity to be fully revealed, he allowed himself to be given over, to die in the ground. And as a result, he was exalted above all rule and authority and power and dominion, with all things placed under his feet.
Decay is the way to blooming; losing is the way to winning; dying is the way to life. Rather than striving to win, we are called to yield; rather than fiercely protecting ourselves, to let go; rather than asserting ourselves, to lay ourselves down. This is the way of Jesus, the grain of wheat who died for us in order to give us life.
Today’s sermon was about sacrifice and saving lives. I could connect this sermon with the sermon I heard in Ivory Coast on love, where the pastor said that love is about saving lives and sacrifice. I think sacrifice must be understood carefully in a religious context, because we have seen how it can become something frightening when taken to extremes. For me, the word still feels unfamiliar—I don’t think I’ve ever truly sacrificed anything. I understand trade-offs, like studying instead of having fun to get good grades, and I understand acts of selflessness, putting others before myself. But sacrifice seems to go deeper than that. What is sacrifice?
Sacrifice has always felt like a heavy word to me, but the sermon reframed it in simple, everyday terms. As the pastor explained, it is not about literally giving up one’s life (although maybe it is, but my knowledge was too limited to understand that part), but about a figurative surrender of the self—yielding when you could take control, choosing silence when you could speak, and covering the faults of others rather than exposing them. Seen this way, I begin to understand why sacrifice is inseparable from love: at its core, it is choosing to act from love rather than from pride, ego, or self-interest.
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