Seedpods Die

Seedpods die.  I imagine this seems a ridiculous thing to be concerned about, outside of horticulture.  Of course seedpods die--if by "of course" one means in the ordinary sense of a part of a plant becoming lifeless tissue as it conveys (successfully, it would be hoped) seeds to where they might germinate.  Simultaneously, of course, we would consider that the most ideal scenario surrounding a seedpod is one in which both the reproducing plant and the germinating seed would remain alive throughout--the seedpod, in its withering, would not in itself constitute a living being, let alone a living being lost.

But is this the language of Jesus?  Assume, at the start, that Jesus takes Genesis as his repeated source of "in the beginning."  The breath of life is a pivotal metaphor of Genesis, and--aerobic metabolism aside--neither the plants nor the fishes possess such breath of life as to be doomed by the flood.  And then there is Jesus' agriculturally insupportable contention that the successful seed falls to the ground and dies.  Neither plants nor seeds possess, in the teachings of Jesus, either life or the failing of life as anything other than in metaphors that beg their very contexts along with their implications.  The teachings of Jesus--in spite of centuries of patronizing cant about how they are earthy and simple--are teachings that ask the listener to manipulate mentally the described elements as if they were but overflowing vessels of effulgent truths.

It is no real surprise that Jesus, toying with notions of plants and seeds as living and not-living, would challenge still further our facility with metaphor.  Is it really a stretch to think of seedpods as entities in themselves?  After all, does not Jesus bridge the distance between the True Vine and the fruit of his desire with the metaphorical "branches" which are distinct living entities--his followers?  Insofar as we are enlivened and empowered by motivations--insofar as we are in our experience-lives indistinguishable from the lively seedpods I described in previous posts--then so much are we vessels of the effulgence of Jesus' teachings.

The pairs of disciples sent forth were seedpods ripe for bursting.  For some stretch they hurried and shouldered along roads to momentarily selected households, and then they burst forth.  So also might be termed the commission(s) imparted by the risen Jesus--commissions to baptize the world with the bursting-forth of Jesus teachings.