For a long time now I’ve had it in the back of my mind to
preach a sermon called ‘1001 reasons not to go to Church’. But I’ve been
reluctant to do it, not because I can’t think of that many reasons but because
I can imagine people getting up while I’m preaching and saying, “that’s a good
one, I hadn’t thought of that before… I’ll see you later.”… and walking out the
door. Maybe I don’t want to do it because I can think of a lot of reasons to
walk away from the church and put Jesus on the back burner, it would be a lot
easier, but the words of Simon Peter, from the passage we had read today, keep
coming to mind “Lord, to whom should we go? You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Leading into Easter we are working our way through peoples
encounters with Jesus in John’s gospel and hopefully in the gospel narrative
encountering Jesus ourselves today. That is always my prayer as we look at the
scriptures and open them up that we may meet with Jesus by the spirit. Last
week we noticed a change in John’s gospel, that while he had received public
acclaim and acceptance as he had started his ministry, now we see that he was
coming into conflict with the religious authorities and powers of his day. In the passage we had read to us today we’ve
come to a point in our journey where peoples encounters with Jesus and his teaching
have led many even his disciples to turn their back and no longer follow they
found it too hard.
Ok let’s put the passage in its context. A couple of weeks
ago Margaret Liow looked at the feeding of the five thousand: an amazing
miraculous sign of God’s ability to provide food and sustenance for his people.
It tells us that at the end of this the people wanted to take Jesus and make
him their king and Jesus has to go away to a mountain by himself and pray, it
was not God’s plan, Jesus had come to bring the kingdom of God as the synoptic
gospels focus on, not to reboot an earthly kingdom.
After this Jesus sends his disciples across the lake and we
have the narrative of him walking on the water, the next day, John tells us,
when they got to the other side of the lake, the crowds come and seek out Jesus
and we have a discourse where Jesus challenges the crowd about why they are
following him and begins to tell them the reality behind the miraculous
feeding. That Jesus is the bread of life and it is only by feasting on his
flesh and drinking his blood that people may find true sustenance that will
bring life, abundant and eternal life. RVG Tasker says “he had not come
primarily to satisfy peoples material needs but the deep seated, if not always
recognised, need for forgiveness without which they could not enjoy eternal
life.”
And it’s into the middle of this discourse that we stepped
with our reading today. Where Jesus turns and answers the question that his
listeners had started arguing about… How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
For us looking back from beyond the cross and with this section of John’s
gospel so associated with communion, something that many of us find valuable
and meaningful it’s hard to understand why what Jesus says here was so hard for
people to swallow.
It’s not because they thought of the overtones of
cannibalism, Jesus makes it perfectly clear that it is the spirit that gives
life the flesh counts for nothing. Nor was it that they found Jesus teaching
hard to understand, it wasn’t a misunderstanding, Leon Morris comments “ No
doubt they found the discourse mysterious but it was not the parts they didn’t
understand that were objecting to it was what they understood.” And it is
helpful for us today to look at the things they would have found hard and
wrestle with them as well. Because they are the same thing we find hard and the
people around us find hard to understand when it comes to encountering Jesus.
The first thing is what we had already mentioned; people
were coming to follow Jesus because in the words of Paul Metzger they were
looking for a continuous supply of happy meals. “They were looking for more
food rather than Jesus: They were not seeking him as an end in himself but as a
means to an end.” Of course for Jesus Jewish audience, the miraculous provision
of food had deep significance. They looked back to the wilderness and the way
God provided manna through Moses, the key issue for the people in Jesus day was
roman occupation, and there was a longing and expectation that God would send a
deliverer and Israel would again become an independent nation. Even at the
beginning of the book of Acts as Jesus is saying his final farewells before the
ascension it is the question that somebody asks… “now will you restore Israel”. So there was the expectation that with the
provision of bread that here was the new Moses, here was the possibility of
that liberation, a utopia on earth. And Jesus tells them that is not the case
he points them to a greater truth that while their forebears had eaten the
manna in the wilderness that they had died, but he was offering them sustenance
that meant that even though they died they would have eternal life, and he
would raise them up on that last day. Like with our modern day nutritionists a
diet of happy meals will simply lead to death, but a diet of Jesus will lead to
life.
It easy to follow Jesus when it is about what we can get out
of it…When it about my needs, or my wants… Anthropologists talk about rice bowl
Christians, when missionaries comes to a culture in undeveloped areas, they
bring with them the technology and wealth of the west, which the people there
equate with the Christian faith and they can turn to that faith to acquire that
stuff. Can I say it even happens in the
west today, the idea of the prosperity gospel… come to Jesus obey God and he
will richly bless you… materially… he’ll supersize your lot, or even that old
evangelists message come to Jesus and everything’s going to be all right. Yes
there is what Jim Anderson calls a redemptive lift for people who come to
faith, if you change their life style, and priorities it will have a benefit,
but Jesus is more about relationship with him in the midst of the ebbs and
flows of real life, rather than lifting us to skim along to top, or to skim the
cream off the top. It’s not about going
through the drive thru and getting the fast food and the plastic toy that comes
with it. Don’t get me wrong there are benefits, the presence of God, peace,
joy, love but Paul Metzger finishes his comments on this passage by saying
“meaningful relationships,” which is what Jesus is after, “are costly and they
don’t always taste nice.”
The second thing that people would have found hard follows
on from that. Behind a lot of what Jesus says here are references to his death.
In v.53 Jesus changes to talk not only about eating his flesh but drinking his
blood as well, as Leon Morris comments the blood and flesh separate at the
point of death. Then in verse 62 Jesus talks of ascending back to where he had
come from and again it is talking of his death and all that takes place after
that. In the synoptic gospels it is when Jesus starts talking about his death
that we find even his close disciples questioning him and many stop following. They
want simply a crust but Jesus offers them the cross and If people stumble at
this discourse they will stumble more at the cross.
The resting image we have been using for the service this
morning I think encapsulates this very well with the one way sign casting the
shadow of the cross. To follow Jesus ultimately is the way of the cross, it is
the way to life but that life comes from the cross, Christ laying down his life
and in response to the life we receive us laying down our lives as well. We can
gorge ourselves on Christianity high on glitter and glamour but low on Cross.
Thirdly, Jesus claim that he is the only way to find life,
challenges what the people of his day and ours think. For the Jews their hope
and identity as God’s people lay in who they were, they were God’s covenant
people, by birth, and here Jesus dismisses that, he says that the flesh means
nothing it is only through the work of the spirit of God, in Christ, that
people can find life. Jesus exclusive claims about himself, confront their
preconceived ideas and religious beliefs. Of course that exclusive claim that
Jesus makes still puts people off today, with an increasing pluralistic society
with its cultural diversity, we find it an affront for someone to claim they are
the only way to find life.
There are some misunderstandings about Jesus claims that
make it more offensive for our society that values tolerance. Jesus does not
claim to have the exclusive truth. WE need to acknowledge that all religions
and philosophies are able to express truth. It does not mean if we have come to
put our trust in Jesus that we are right and all others are wrong. In fact
Jesus comments here about the fact that no one comes to him except that the
father draws him that should not only help us not be surprised that people walk
away from following Jesus but also that coming to faith in Christ is not about
us it is all about the grace of God, and we can share Jesus claims about
himself, but we do so in a way that reflects that grace.
I want mention almost
as an aside the idea of election that comes up in this passage. Our reformed
tradition is very strong on the idea of the sovereignty of God and the idea of
predestination, that God has called and chosen people to follow him, so they
will come to him and persevere in the faith. It too is often something that
gets people all offended, to think about this kind of choosing goes against our
understanding of human autonomy and freedom to choose our own destinies. I just want to make two comments. The first
is that it only seems to be with hindsight that we understand the choosing of
God, and it always with the sense of God’s grace, not choosing people because
they were the best or brightest or could quote the bible verbatim, in fact
there is a strong sense that God chooses the poor and the foolish and the weak.
The second thing is that many people have made it out to be a major pillar of
the faith, trying to use it to understand Jesus death on the cross, and who he
died for, the idea of limited atonement but here as in Calvin’s works we see it
as a pastoral matter, its pastoral theology, that Jesus knows who will and will
not receive him because it is in the nature of God to know that, the Jesus we
encounter in John’s gospel always knows what is in people’s hearts. It does not
stop him from reaching out to them and loving them, or willingly giving his
life for the world.
Ok I want to finish this morning by inviting us to encounter
Jesus in this passage.
When we encounter Jesus there are always going to be times
when we deal with that Question when we find ourselves saying “Jesus says
What?” when what Jesus says challenges us and pushes us to the core, when we
find it hard and maybe even offensive: Because the road following Jesus is a
costly one. When we focus on who Jesus is and his claims about himself and the claim
he has on those who would follow him, like with the people in this discourse,
it is no longer possible to follow him unreflectively and without committing
ourselves wholeheartedly. When Jesus says What?” it is often hard to swallow
because it takes us from the shallow into the deep, it sifts the true from the
false. It invites us more and more into relationship with Christ crucified.
The response at that time is one of two. To turn and walk away
or to eat joyously, from the living bread that brings life. There are 1001
reasons to walk away from Jesus, but in the end where else can we go “you have
the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy one of
God”.
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