This blog is based on a sermon by Pastor Teresa Howell-Smith on October 19, 2025
I once learned a profound lesson in true impact at a high school swim meet.
It was senior night – a time when we honor student athletes for their achievements and celebrate their next steps. We often focus on the fastest swimmers, the scholarships and the promise of collegiate success, but one senior’s swimming was for exhibition purposes only. They were so slow that they weren’t officially timed, yet they still ended up leaving behind the greatest legacy.
Her teammates didn’t speak of her speed – they spoke of her soul. They recounted how she was the first to take a teammate out for a birthday Starbucks drink. They shared that she never failed to check in on a swimmer who failed to surpass their personal best time – cheering them on and reminding them what is truly important. Her impact wasn’t jotted down in a record book, it was written on the hearts of her teammates. Her greatness was her gift – someone who celebrated others, and she was a beautiful living example of pouring oneself out.
Her story brings to mind a pivotal moment in the gospel of John. Just after Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, a group of Greeks approached Phillip with a simple request: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
They weren’t expecting a theological treatise – they simply wanted to see the man who had recently raised Lazarus from the dead. Who wouldn’t want to see that?
But Jesus’ response was a paradox – a teaching about his coming death. He doesn’t meet the Greeks, instead he says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls onto the Earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Jesus is using a farming metaphor we can all understand – a kernel of wheat, sitting safe and alone in a silo remains exactly that: one kernel. It is reserved and it is alone. Yet if that kernel is planted, it falls into the ground and is destroyed, but it becomes the catalyst for new life and transforms into a stalk that yields dozens of new kernels. The single seed must die, but much fruit can live.
This is the meaning of Jesus’ glorification – the hour in which he is glorified is the hour of his death. He was that single seed, and only by being lifted up could he draw more people to Him, including the Greeks who were considered outsiders. His act of ultimate self-giving was the only way for life to truly begin.
Jesus makes this application explicit. He says: “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” He’s not telling us to hate our lives, but he uses this hyperbole to make the simple point that we are called to prefer the things of God. But sometimes we find ourselves asking: What are those “things of God?”
When we look back to the Matthew 25:35 passage, it really talks about “being the church.” The passage reads:
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”
He’s talking about shifting all expectations. It can seem cloudy when we ask ourselves what it means to be the church or what it means to see God. But “being the church” can mean many things. Being the church means to love one another. It means supporting justice and engaging in faith and kindness. It means embracing diversity. And sometimes it means just letting things go – ending grudges even when you didn’t start the fight and ending the cycle of negativity.
Sometimes we need friends to help push us along. I remember when I was a young adult and I was ready to quit everything after a relationship fell apart. I was stuck. But God gives us friends, and I got a message out of the blue. A friend said, “I heard things are not so good, but don’t let me hear that you’re trying to quit. Get up and get yourself together, sis. You have purpose.”
Sometimes we need that clear voice reminding us to simply let it go. We think of Elsa in the animated Disney film Frozen, who became a worldwide phenomenon because she articulated a deep truth. She was hiding her true self, expending enormous energy to keep up appearances and resist change. She had to let go of her fear and anxiety to finally lean into who she was created to be.
The Greeks asked if they could see Jesus. I think this passage is also asking us to look at how we as the reader see Jesus. In a passage from Matthew 25, we see Jesus as being a servant. Following Jesus isn’t a comfortable trip to a miraculous hillside. In his final walk, his path to honor, he chooses a path of servanthood.
We think about the lowliest places in the ancient world. It wasn’t the marketplace or the temple, it was a place where the dirtiest work was done. When Jesus prepared to celebrate the passover with his disciples, he did not command a servant to wash their feet. He, the master, took on the towel and the basin. He knelt down, he went to the lowest place – the place of the utmost humility – and he served.
Jesus didn’t wait for the disciples to become worthy. He didn’t wait for them to become their personal best. He served them exactly where they were – embodying the spirit of the exhibition swimmer whose greatest impact was her ability to celebrate and check in on her struggling teammates. Her greatness was her humility and her service. This means that if we want to bear much fruit, if our lives are to grow beyond the lowly kernel, that we must be willing to kneel down and serve in the low places where it's messy and unglamorous. And sometimes it goes unnoticed – this is the life that Jesus honors. It's not a life that desperately clings to its own comfort and status. It's a life that's willing to fall into the earth and let go of its own pride and transform into something that nourishes others.
There are so many people in this world who feel like they’re unseen and unworthy. So let us take our cross and bear it as a living commitment to give our life to a life of service, knowing that in the very act of death, we are truly alive and standing exactly where Jesus promised his servants would be.
We are serving with Him. I believe that we are called to take courage and trade the temporary safety of the silo for the transformative potential of the soil.
We are called to be servants, not just to simply sit in the silo.
Hallelujah and amen.