John 6:60-71. (May 24, 2015)
I.
Jesus has finally gotten through to his hearers so effectively that they almost all abandon him. On the one hand we can wish that this is all a misunderstanding, because they insist on taking him literally when he talks about the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. But on the other hand, I think they may be understanding him all too well and simply deciding that what he is saying, even if taken figuratively, is crazy. I mean, you don’t have to believe he’s talking about cannibalism to realize that what he is saying is very demanding and utterly contrary to our normal way of thinking.
He says it more explicitly in chapter 12 about how those who love their lives in this world lose them and those who hate their lives are the ones who gain eternal life. It is not easy, attractive, seeker-sensitive teaching. We don’t see this kind of thing on too many church message boards. It is like Bonhoeffer states so bluntly in The Cost of Discipleship: “When Jesus calls us he bids us come and die.” It is a far cry from what I saw on one church message board last week: “Join us for coffee!” Jesus never says, “Join me for coffee.” Just so you know.
I read something by Frederick Buechner the other day about how when preachers read from the Bible the people hear what they are conditioned to hear: safe, moralistic, boring, familiar, and superficial, not to say trite, words. If they’re paying attention at all. I have sometimes worried that if people really heard what Jesus and the Scriptures are saying, few if any would come back for more. Most of us might even walk out. Were it not for ignorance and denial who would show up?
Sometimes I wonder if it’s not the people who don’t come to church who have really understood Jesus. And the rest of us are only still here because because we are not fully comprehending what he is saying. It’s like, okay maybe we don’t take him literally, but instead we’re ignoring him altogether, choosing to focus on being nice together. And having coffee.
Maybe we should turn this place into a Starbucks.
And the literal piece is itself still a huge roadblock for people. It’s not just the eating of his flesh and drinking his blood, but all the rest of what people think are just fairy-tales, at best, and at worst, prescriptions for mass-murder. Ever read the book of Joshua?
We live in a time when people are leaving churches in huge numbers. And we’re sort of between a rock and a hard place because we say people leave because they haven’t heard the gospel, therefore we have to do a better job at that… but I wonder if people also leave because they heard the gospel and don’t want anything to do with it. It’s too costly, too demanding, too expensive, too time-consuming, too much of a commitment. And they don't see what they will get out of it… which means they haven’t really heard the gospel at all, in my view. We talk about eternal life, and people might as well respond: “Really?”
II.
So Jesus turns to his remaining followers, and even they are grumbling in confusion and anger because this once popular, growing movement has just had its leader commit PR hari-kari and alienate everyone in Capernaum… and that’s supposed to be their home base!
“Does his offend you?” he asks. I think they are more offended by the fact that Jesus’ deliberately annoys people and refuses to be diplomatic or gentle for the sake of keeping this movement together, than by what he is actually saying.
Jesus says, “Well, if I am such an embarrassment and so offensive maybe you would rather that I just went home. Shall I go back to my Father? “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” Could you all do better without me?
At this point the disciples may be thinking that, yeah, we could do way better without you, Jesus. Maybe you should go back to heaven and let us take care of this business down here. I think we can communicate a bit more effectively than “whoever eats me will live forever.” I ask you.
The church has made this choice repeatedly over the centuries. Christianity is a great and attractive, powerful, wealthy, successful religious institution, and most of that worldly success has occurred because they ditched Jesus, relegated him to “heaven,” and took on the world’s values and practices. The church does way better when Jesus is in heaven and not down here messing everything up.
Then Jesus says, in effect: “Look. I know this is difficult teaching. But my point is that ‘It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.’ I am talking about bread and food and flesh, just like I talked about living water and being born from above. But this is a way to break your minds open so you can receive the Spirit. In order to welcome the breath and life of God into you, you have to move through and then beyond the material, the physical, the ego-centric, the literal, the historical, the temporal. Not to reject or escape them, but to embrace, include, and grow into a higher, wider, and more inclusive place.”
“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Jesus’ words point beyond and within themselves to something at once infinitely higher and infinitely deeper and infinitely broader. For his words are more than the way the air vibrated when he spoke them, in Aramaic; and they are more than the marks of the letters on a page in Greek or for us in English; and they are more than even the ideas that appear in our brains when we hear or read these words.
Jesus’ words point us to the fundamental coding embedded within and beneath everything that is; they reveal that everything is finally and literally made of God’s overflowing love in creation.
III.
Remember that way back at the beginning of this gospel, God speaks the whole universe into being by means of the Word; the universe is the sort of crystallization or condensation of God’s Word, conveyed by God’s breath or Spirit. And this Word finally “became flesh,” it materializes in an even more direct way and emerges in matter as a human being who was sent into the world. And that human being, the Word, speaks words, the words of the Word. And these words become our connection to the Word, and thus to everything the Word spoke into being. Those words are the essence of the truth because they are reality itself. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
And if we abide in these words by doing them, by embodying them, by letting them shape us and inform us, by trusting these words implicitly like we trust gravity, then we start to share in their reality, we become real, we become awake and alive in ways we could never imagine outside of these words. Then we move away from the tension and conflict and contradiction and collision and out-of-synch-ness with everything, which characterizes our experience of the world in our normal, ego-driven, self-centered, dark existence. And we begin to emerge into the world as it really is, as God originally spoke it into life, and we discover it a place of peace, justice, equality, beauty, communion, wildness, and goodness.
Because they create a pathway to the Word Jesus’ words open up reality for us. And we discover that, in a sense, we never really left the Garden of Eden. It’s still there all around us. But we in our blindness and fear, our ignorance and shame, our pain and anger — all brought upon ourselves — have spawned this other, imaginary but very effective, world of enmity, conflict, greed, selfishness, and violence.
The Word comes into this very twisted existence and says, “It doesn’t have to be this way. In truth, it isn’t really this way at all. We’re projecting this hell ourselves, all of us, but we don’t have to. What we are doing profoundly contradicts our very nature that we are doing this. We are choosing to subsist in one great lie. Turn to me! Turn to the One who reveals our true humanity! Turn to the living God of love! Turn to the One who saves and heals, and live! We’re supposed to live in joy and peace forever!
But the message mostly doesn’t get through. We read that: “Many of [Jesus] disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” So Jesus asks the 12 who are left: What about you guys? Do you want to go as well?
And it is Peter who says what’s what. “Where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.” You have shown us the way to life and truth and goodness and joy. We can’t go back. We can’t decide now to go back to being blind, addicted, lost, and broken people. We’ve had a glimpse of what’s real! “We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God!”
IV.
People left Jesus because all they saw in their blindness was the price tag. They perceived what it was going to cost them to follow him. Basically, they would have to give up their whole lives, everything that gave them comfort and security, every allegiance and loyalty, every tradition and habit, every relationship, and even their whole way of thinking. All that would have to go.
What they did not see was what they receive in relationship with him. Only Peter and these other eleven perceive the benefits of following Jesus. They see it because they know him and have been close to him for over a year. The only way to know what Jesus is about is to get to know him. It is to live the life he gives us to live. It is to follow his words and teachings. It is to be in relationship with him and others who follow him. It is to gather with other disciples on a regular basis around the Word, and sharing how we put that Word into our thoughts, words, and actions.
That is the only way to get to the place where Peter is here, realizing that belonging to Jesus, believing and knowing that he is the Holy One of God, that God’s love is the center and fullness of all that is, that he has and gives the words of eternal life, is the only place to be. It is the pearl of great price or the treasure found in a field. It is easily worth your whole life, and you wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Heard from outside, taken literally, Jesus’ teachings, especially what he says here in chapter 6, are nonsense. But heard from within, from a situation of belonging, from among the body of disciples, from the heart, these words connect us to the truth in such a way that they give birth to eternal life in us. In these words we live forever.
And our job is to live in those words in such a way that we create a community together in which this happens. A community of acceptance, forgiveness, welcoming, inclusion, healing, and love. A community where people may meet the Lord Jesus, the Word of God, and so come to live in the world where he reigns forever.
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