John 6:56-69
This week, for a change of scenery as I continue to be unable to drive with my injured foot, I asked Ben to drop me off at a new local coffee shop that just opened in Lynchburg. Don’t worry, it wasn’t the coffee shop where said injury occurred! Although this weekend, just yesterday actually, was the official Grand Opening of this trendy new coffeehouse, the college students have already found it. When I walked into the large open space, the groupings of couches and chairs were all filled with study groups and each of the long wooden tables had at least one student sitting with a coffee and a laptop. I took a seat on the opposite end of one of those tables from a young woman in a college softball t-shirt. I could tell from a first glance that the book in front of her was a Bible, leather-bound with gold-edged pages. She sat alone with her Bible and a journal that she would make a note in every few minutes, and she never turned the page of the good book once. As she said to the friend who shortly joined her with their coffee order, she was diving deep, dwelling in the Word meticulously and with curiosity. Although periodically interrupted by classmates and friends, she stayed there with her Bible in front of her, taking notes and spending ample time on each page. She was still there when I left, several hours later.
Her diligence has stuck with me, a young woman steeping herself in the details of Scripture in a way most of us rarely do. For the past five weeks, we’ve had that opportunity, to steep ourselves in the words of Jesus through the lens of the Gospel of John. This season is a rare moment in which we are able to join in with the disciples and the crowds in hearing almost an entire sermon from Jesus. So often, we receive short passages, samples, small bites of Jesus’s prolific teachings and sermons. For a few weeks, every three years, our lectionary offers us a month-long feast of our Savior’s own words. It can feel repetitive at times. I can say with some confidence that we will all be equally ready for my next sermon to be about something other than bread. But it is also a great gift, and I hope we can dwell just a day longer in this Word together.
So far in our journey with Jesus, he has taught and healed many, and fed five thousand people with a handful of loaves and fishes. Some of the strangers he fed followed him across the sea to seek his power, some for the right reasons and some for power’s own sake. Jesus has done his best to teach these people, both the nefarious and the sincere, and to tell them who he is and what he will do for them. He is questioned and challenged by nosey neighbors and religious scholars and still he teaches his controversial message: I am the bread of life. I have come down from heaven to feed the world. Abide in me.
This teaching becomes more unsettling to his listeners with every word, until finally today his own students and followers can no longer stand to hear it. “This teaching is difficult,” they tell one another, “Who can accept it?” For that is what Jesus is asking of them. He knows full well how strange, how uncomfortable, how challenging his words will be to the ears of all who hear it. He knows also that some among the crowds are not there for pious reasons- that some ears are stopped up and some hearts are hardened against him by evil and greed and hunger for power. Jesus knows that there are those among even his own students, many of whom he chose and called by name, who will turn their back on him. And still he calls them to hear him and understand, to know the Father through the Son and to abide in God’s love through communion with him.
This teaching is difficult, who can accept it? This question is not rhetorical. The words that Jesus speaks are saturated in metaphor and scriptural reference and cultural context, but his message is one of embodied love, of ministry that feeds and touches and heals and speaks up in public as well as in private. His teachings are difficult. His teachings demand that we give over our hearts, our minds, our wealth and our security and our status, all of ourselves and every detail of our lives, to the care and trust of God. What is shocking about this question is that it comes from the lips of those who have already given up more than most of us ever will. The first students of Jesus left behind families, and livelihoods, homelands and cultures and some even left behind tremendous wealth and positions of privilege to follow him through the wilderness. Some of them packed up spouses and children and traveled miles and miles through the desert to find Jesus because they had heard a rumor he might be something special, and their hearts could not quiet until they had found him. Jesus’s first followers gave up everything they had to come near to him and listen at his feet. But when their teacher invites them to something deeper, to something physical and incarnational and eternal, they say he’s gone a bridge too far. Who can accept this difficult teaching? They’re really asking. Do we have an answer?
When many have left him, Jesus turns to the small number who remain. Do you also wish to go away? He knows their hearts, he knows their confusion and their doubt. Jesus even knows which one of them will sell his life, and which will deny him, and which will run and hide. Still he asks, do you wish to leave me too? The ways of the world beckon, the easy road, one that does not end in violence and persecution, is still available to them if they leave him now. He’s really asking. Simon Peter gives him an answer, in the form of another question.
“To whom can we go?” Again, this is not a rhetorical question. To whom can we go? To whom but you, Jesus, who have the words of eternal life. To whom can we go, but the Holy One of God? They’re really asking. This is a confession of faith, and also a startling admission of doubt. To whom could they go? If there were another, perhaps they would go away from this difficult teaching. If a louder, or flashier, or more impressive healer or prophet were rumored in the next town, perhaps they might abandon the cause which has changed in a moment from a movement of crowds to a small circle of friends. If the teaching is so difficult as to scare off those who had been fed and healed so miraculously, what keeps the 12 listening to the lesson?
Faith, and doubt, and experience, and friendship, and love all combine to shape the confession: “We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Who can accept it? Do you also wish to go away? To whom can we go? The bread of life, the Son of God, the Messiah, Immanuel, Holy One of God. To whom can we go?
The disciples who remained with Jesus after many had turned back knew him best, they witnessed his teachings and acts of power firsthand, and still they did not fully understand him. They still faced doubt and unbelief and they questioned his actions and his words until the very end. But they understood a fundamental truth that we often allow ourselves to forget. There is no other way, no other bread of life. To whom can we go? To politicians? To patriotism? To fortune or fame or self-serving prophets? To whom can we go? Jesus has the words of eternal life. Jesus is the Christ, the Holy One of God. This is a difficult teaching, there is no denying. Can we accept it?
Mother A Writes 