Good Friday – April 18, 2025

The Invitation to Surrender

Mackenzie Smith & Christopher Ingram

Scripture Reading: John 12:24–26 (The Parable of the Grain of Wheat)

I still remember the first time I heard the parable of the Great Banquet, the focus of our devotion yesterday. I was at Camp Cheerio, in college, sitting under the stars during evening worship, when someone read it out loud. I had heard so many of Jesus’ stories by then, but this one stopped me. The part where God sends out the invitation again and again—not to the respectable or the ready, but to the forgotten, the poor, the ones who had never been told the table was for them—it just stunned me. It still does.

I think I need that parable to be able to hear what Jesus says today in this parable from John 12.

Jesus says a grain of wheat must fall, that it must give itself to the ground, or it remains alone. If it falls, if it surrenders to its purpose, it will bear much fruit. Somehow, that’s what Jesus chooses.

Jesus’ invitation to the table is also an invitation to walk the way that leads to the cross. He doesn’t stop with welcome, bread, and blessing. He walks all the way into betrayal. The table and the cross are inextricably linked in God’s story. They are two sides of the same invitation—to receive what we did not earn and to surrender ourselves to the love that still offers it freely.

He walks away from the applause into betrayal and lets the crowds scatter. He gives himself over to suffering, and with it, injustice, abandonment, and death. None of it is an accident. Jesus surrenders fully to the love that will cost him everything, and without resisting, he plants himself.

This is what he meant by blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake (Matt 5:10). He did not say that because pain is holy, but because love is. Good Friday is what it looks like to trust God all the way down.

The seed is not buried in despair. It is planted in hope—a hope that something new might rise from the broken ground. In the song “Wood and Nails,” The Porter’s Gate sings, “These wooden tombs, we’ll break them soon and fashion them into flower beds.”

We trust that’s true. But today, we come to the cross. There, powerless before the spectacle of God’s love and humanity’s depravity, we hear the Spirit whisper: What in you is ready to fall? What will you surrender so love can rise up?

Jesus did this for us and showed us the way to take up our own crosses.

And now the silence is heavier than I could ever imagine.

Prayer: Christ of the open table and broken bread, you welcome me with overwhelming love and unconditional grace. You did what I could not have strength to do, without you walking with me. Teach me how to wait in this stillness. Teach me how to grieve. Teach me how to trust you in the dark. Amen.

“Wood and Nails.” Words and music by Isaac Wardell, Josh Garrels, and Madison Cunningham. © 2017 Integrity Worship Music / PG Songs / Garrels Music / Deeper Well Publishing. Used by permission. All rights reserved.