Will He Remain Alone?

A Reflection from Easter Sunday Preaching—April 5, 2026

A meditation on resurrection, multiplication,
and the life of Christ revealed in His people

There is something in us that will never grow unless something burns.

There is a tree in the mountains, a lodgepole pine, that drops its cones each year. Inside those cones are seeds, full of life and potential, yet completely sealed.

The resin hardens around them. Protects them. Preserves them.

And in doing so, it imprisons them.

The very substance of the tree acts as a seal, holding the life inside. And so cones can rest there a long, long time—collecting in the needles, settling into the composting layers—with all that life still locked away. Everything needed for life is already inside the seed. But it cannot release itself.

Without something more, the seed does not live.

It dies . . . preserved.

And then comes the fire.

Heat presses in. Flames rise. Everything that seems destructive begins to strip away what was holding life captive.

The resin burns.

And when the fire passes, the seed lies in ash—the perfect environment for life.

And it breaks open.

What looked like destruction becomes multiplication.

One seed becomes a forest.

The Moment Everything Was About to Expand

In John 12, just after raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus stands at a turning point. You would think such a miracle would settle everything. But, instead, the chief priests decide from that day forward that Jesus must die. They are not looking for more of God. They are afraid of what He might cost them.

How tragic it is that our competition for our place and our nation can make us reject the very One weeping over our place and our nation.

But while the rulers are raging and plotting, the crowd is stirring. The nations begin to reach for Him.

Greeks come and say, “We want to see Jesus.”

The door is open.

And yet, instead of stepping forward, Jesus says something unexpected:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone.”

This was His answer.

Not immediate visibility—but future multiplication.

He was not concerned with obscurity. He was not troubled by delay. He was not shaken by hiddenness. He was not even ultimately concerned about death.

He was concerned about remaining alone.

“I could show them one life,” He is saying. “One man. One moment.”

“But instead—I will become a field.”

The Greeks would see Him. But not as one.

They would see Him in many.

He did not come to be a shooting star—one bright wonder admired from a distance and then gone. He came for a harvest. He came for a forest. He came for a people who would carry His life so fully that those far away—yes, even as far as Greece, even as far as America—would look and say, “Where is Jesus?” and find the answer in the Body that bears His life.

We often reduce Easter to this:

“Jesus is alive again.”

But that was never the goal.

He did not rise merely to live again.

He rose to multiply.

He returned—not singular—but expressed through many.

“They will see Me . . . in you.”

Hidden Life Is Still Life

This time of year in Texas, the bluebonnets faithfully return.

Radiant. Predictable. Beautiful.

On the way to church this morning, my four-year-old daughter, Ella, heard her mom point out the bluebonnets along the roadside. Then she heard me say that, to me, the prettiest flowers were the beautiful people in the pickup around me, dressed in their Easter colors.

That was all she needed.

Ella began assigning each of us a flower. She was an Indian paintbrush. Tina was a bluebonnet. Connie, with her blue and white, became the sky with clouds. Her mother was a rose. On she went, turning the whole cab into a wildflower bouquet.

She saw beauty in every direction—and so did her dad. I heard it, and I saw it.

As Texans, we all know that flutter of excitement upon seeing those beautiful fields. We love them. We wait for them. We hope for a good year.

But sometimes, something rarer happens.

Out around El Paso—country that doesn’t naturally strike you as lush, but dust and sand and rock and hard sky—if the rains come just right and the season turns just so, Mexican poppies suddenly burst forth. Golden fields spread across places that had looked barren for years.

Fields of color where there was once only dust.

There is something about glory erupting where we had grown accustomed to barrenness that moves us more deeply than beauty appearing where we expected it all along.

What looked empty was full of hidden life.

Waiting.

Some of you are in that place.

Hidden. Buried. Unseen.

Are there dreams in you that seem dormant? Are there promises you have almost stopped expecting? You may feel like Mary must have sounded to the disciples upon returning from the tomb that Easter morning: impossible, irrational, too good to be true.

But hiddenness is not the end.

Burial is not the end.

Even fire is not the end.

It is preparation.

The moment before everything breaks open.

Why This Movement Could Not Be Stopped

Gamaliel recognized something early.

He had seen movements rise before. He had seen charismatic leaders gather crowds, and he had seen those movements end the moment the leader was taken. Kill the man, and the thing dies with him. That was the pattern.

“We’ve seen this before. Kill the leader, and it ends.”

But this one didn’t end.

“We killed Him . . . so why is it growing?”

Because death could not contain Him.

Because the seed did not remain alone.

They killed Stephen—and even in the ash of that martyrdom, his face shone like that of an angel. He prayed that God would not hold their sin against them.

They could not stop what was on his face.

Because it was not Stephen’s.

It was Jesus.

And when Saul set out to destroy the church, he encountered a blinding light on the road to Damascus and heard these words:

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

He had been laying hands on believers. He had not touched Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh.

He was persecuting the “forest,” and Jesus said: “That is Me.”

Because Christ had multiplied. The grain had gone into the ground. And now it had risen and spread its life into a multitude—so fully that to strike them was to strike Him.

The Answer to the Greeks

Paul would later write to Corinth. To Thessalonica.

To churches in Greece.

The Greeks did see Jesus.

But not as one man.

As a people.

The empty tomb is a sign.

But the living Body is the proof.

We are meant to be that proof—not merely a community that talks about Jesus, but a people whose love, whose forgiveness, whose faithfulness across kitchen tables and hospital rooms and ordinary Tuesdays makes the watching world say, “By this we know. We see Him. We want to be part of this.”

Will they see Him in your face?

Will they see Him in your love?

Will they see Him in your home?

He does not have to stay alone.

He can enter our hearts. He can enter our impossibilities. He did not want to remain outside of us, watching while we built our own small lives and occasionally asked for a blessing. He wants to dwell in us. He wants fields, not a single flower. He wants a forest, not one lone tree.

All we can ever be is a reflection of Him—He is the sun; we are the mirrors. But when a thousand fragments of reflected glory come together, the world begins to see the mosaic of the risen Lord in the unveiled faces of his people.

So let us come to Him.

Let us follow Him.

Let us believe.

Let Him bring us out of our graves.

And then let us spread that news from sea to sea.

He rose.

And He did not rise to stay alone.