Published on: 14/04/2026
Jesus said, ‘Very truly I tell you, 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.’, John 12:24.
The resurrection is the start of something; it’s the start of God’s new creation. New life, not lambs, bunnies and daffodils, but something fundamentally different. Not more of the same life, but something altogether new. Life with a new heart, with new possibilities, a life of fruitful multiplication. This is the life that Jesus brings in with His kingdom, it’s the life that powers His church.
This life is a life that is eternal and beyond our comprehension and beyond our hope. It’s the active presence of God in the world and its business is Re-creation. God’s love and power abroad recreating lives, communities and societies. Its empowering and sustaining and it brings growth along with it.
We, the church, are the many seeds. When I was a child, we blew the seeds off a dandelion to ‘tell the time’. We didn’t know where they would go, and we were only half conscious of their relationship to the many yellow dandelions still around us on the field, but there was a joy in releasing them. Many of them grew subsequently but we had no part in that, ‘I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow… For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.’, 1 Corinthians 3:6,9.
So, the question is where are we releasing the seeds, where are we tuning into God’s scattering and God’s harvest, where are we joining in with the sowing and the harvesting of His superabundant new Re-creating life? Hearing the testimony of those getting baptised on Easter Sunday gave my whole church family a real buzz. Simple excitement goes a long way in spreading good news. Kind acts and telling simple stories of our own experience, of lives changed, our lives.
The church universal is supposed to grow as a sign and an agent of God’s kingdom. It grows through the powerful Re-creating life of God in partnership with human breath. The breath that carries our words and our stories and the breath that powers our deeds and actions. Like the breath that releases the seeds on the dandelion. At Pentecost that breath is multiplied and magnified infinitely by the power of the Holy Spirit to release the Word of God but it’s still our breath that carries those seeds.
Perhaps between the New Creation of Easter and the powerful multiplying breath of Pentecost, we can ask God what seeds we are to release, what words and actions are we to be involved in both as individuals and as a church community. Can we think together how can we be part of the multiplying fruitfulness brought about by Jesus precious death and glorious resurrection.
This week’s Blog post was written by John Marsh, Mission Development Adviser