Mama Spider Jesus--March 18, 2024
"Jesus answered them, 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit'." [John 12:23-24]
Jesus offers his life like a seed in the earth: knowing that the act of planting will break the seed open, but will make more life possible as it sprouts from what has been broken open. And Jesus has come, ultimately, to bring us all to life--even at the cost of his own body's brokenness.
In fact, when I hear these words of Jesus, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, I picture not only a seed, but also Charlotte the spider from E.B. White's beloved classic, Charlotte's Web. As you quite probably know from when you read that story once upon a time (or have now read to children or grandchildren), the spider Charlotte has using her energy trying to preserve the life of Wilbur the pig on the farm where she lives by leaving messages in her webs so that the farmer would think Wilbur was special and worthy of saving rather than eating. And at the end of the story, she spends her last bit of strength for a final web that will both guarantee Wilbur's safety and protect her own eggs as well. She dies, exhausted, having done both, and knowing that her choice to give her life up has not only rescued Wilbur but gives life to her spiderlings who will ride the breeze on strands of silk as they are carried off to other places to live and thrive. Her sacrifice is not a defeat--it is her greatest triumph. She has saved the lives of her friend and her children. Her love has outlasted every attempt to threatened those she held dear.
That's how Jesus describes his own choice at the cross--not as a defeat by the Powers of the Empire or the Respectable Religious Leaders, but as his victorious gift of his own self that brings the world to life. Jesus is the Charlotte to the world's Wilbur, spending his strength all the way to the end that our lives might be saved. Or, perhaps we are the spiderlings whose lives are held safe because Jesus has given himself to bring us into being.
While we're on the subject of arachnid-inspired theology, I'm reminded of another piece of wisdom by the late Walter Wangerin, Jr., whose short essay, "Modern Hexameron: De Aranea," which is all about one particular species of spider. This mother spider, he says, does a curious thing when there is no food around and her children are at risk of starving--she sinks her fangs into her own body, dissolving her own tissue with the acid so that her young can be fed with her own life as one great final act of provision for them. She offers up her life so that they can live, in the most literal way possible. And of course, the theologian cannot help but hear echoes in that maternal gift of Jesus' own words to his beloved community: "This is my body, broken for you," as the bread is torn and shared. "This is my blood, given for you for the forgiveness of sins." Jesus is our Mama Spider, Wangerin says. It's the same move as Charlotte, and the same gift as the seed that breaks open in the ground in order to bring a new generation of life. This, Jesus himself says, is what happens at the cross. Jesus has not come to pacify an angry deity who needs to be appeased, at least not the way Jesus talks here in John 12. Rather, Jesus' cross is the very place of both his and God's glorification--this is how the world comes to see the depth of God's love and the power of God's triumph, outlasting every threat to God's beloved ones and enduring through all of it in order to bring us to life.
Today, we face the world, for all of its terror and violence, with the confidence that the living God knows the cost of loving us and has spent everything, in the human life of Jesus, in order to bring us and the world to life. Our lives are a gift Jesus was willing to pay for with his own life, like a mother spider offering her body to her young to feed them, like Charlotte spinning one last web that we might kept safe, like a seed broken open in the ground to let a sprout rise up. This is how you are loved, dear one. Know it and own it as you head out into a world full of mean today.
Lord Jesus, it is not enough to say thank you, but it is all we have in the moment. Thank you for this life. Thank you for your love that gives itself away.
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