Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
Today we continue with Jesus’ discourse on The Bread of Heaven and this passage is either the preacher’s dream or the preacher’s nightmare because there are so many themes that can be explored. There are two themes that particularly struck me which I’d like to share with you. The thing that hit me most forcefully about this Gospel passage was the theme of a crisis of faith. Given, too, that the crisis of faith comes as a direct result of religious teaching, I also think it’s a passage which is subtly calling on us all to be more willing to argue good theology and to challenge bad or lazy theological thinking.
We can all
be theologians.
When many of his disciples heard it,
they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?
I don't know
about you, but sometimes it's easier for me to identify with the crowds who
misunderstand and question Jesus than with Jesus himself.
I think this
is one of those times.
To
understand what I mean we have to recall just what Jesus has been saying here and
throughout the sixth chapter of John's Gospel: that Jesus, for instance, is the
bread of life; that he provides the only food which truly nourishes; that he
gives us his own self, his own flesh and blood, to sustain us on our journey;
that we are actually to eat the flesh and drink the blood in order to abide in
him. These are, indeed, hard words: hard to hear, hard to understand and for
many, hard to believe. For many they are stumbling blocks to faith, as they
were for some of Jesus’ followers in this passage.
Are we really all that different? I mean,
which of us has not at one time or another wondered whether we have got it
wrong about God? People of faith don’t find ourselves immune to doubts.
Something of
this sort appears to be happening in today’s Gospel. Earlier in this same
chapter we read about how Jesus has fed five thousand people with five small
loaves and two small fish. This had amazed the crowd so much that “they began
to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’” Jesus
responds with an extended discourse on bread from God and the assertion that he
is himself the Bread of Life, using words that associate himself with the God
who had revealed himself at Sinai as “I am who I am.” “I am the bread of life,”
Jesus has already declared to them.
That’s some
claim: “I am the bread of life.”
And many
felt that he had crossed a line with those words. Some around him had already
been grumbling because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ Their
discontent was clear when they said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph,
whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from
heaven?’”
No wonder,
then, that many of those following Jesus now desert him. And at this point we
need to be careful how we characterise them, because it's always tempting to
write off those who gave up on Jesus as people too stupid or lazy or unfaithful
to believe. But John calls these people not simply "the crowds," as
in earlier passages, but rather "disciples."
Disciples.
The people
in today's reading who now desert Jesus are precisely those who had, in fact,
believed in him: those who had followed him and had given up much to do so. But
now, finally, after all their waiting and watching and wondering and worrying,
they have grown tired, and they can no longer see clearly what it was about
Jesus that attracted them to him in the first place, and so they leave. We are
so attuned to his words we probably find it hard to understand how offensive
Jesus had become to his hearers by this point, with the things he was claiming.
“Does this offend you?” Jesus had asked.
“Yeah,
actually it does.” Was, effectively, their response and they turned their backs
on him.
What just
happened?
What a contrast:
the crowd witness the feeding of the multitude but within a short space of time
have given up on the man responsible because his teaching was too hard. For
some, the religious implications of Jesus’ words were a step too far. What we
see here is that the teaching of Jesus is itself, not just the stepping-stone,
but sometimes the stumbling-block to faith.
The problem
was that this wasn’t the Jesus they wanted: they’d backed the wrong horse.
Their understanding of Kingship and his were incompatible. They wanted the
warrior king, the political leader who would lead them to victory over the
Romans and Jesus was offering them quite a different sort of kingdom: The
Kingdom of God.
“Pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die!”
Some of them no doubt thought. “We want action now.” What good were all these
words when contrasted with the expectations of what they really wanted to from Jesus?
Jesus then
turns to the Twelve, his inner circle, and asks them whether they, too, wanted
to leave him. After all, if significant numbers of others were disillusioned
with Jesus, surely those closest to him must be having the same sorts of doubts.
They knew him better than any of those who had left. So what did they think?
“Lord, to
whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Said their chief spokesman,
Peter, in words so significant that they have been incorporated into the
liturgy of the church.
Now, given
that the Gospels make it fairly clear that there were many times when the
Disciples failed to understand what Jesus was telling them, it’s probably fair
to assume that they weren’t feeling much more enlightened than the others by
what Jesus had said. Remember, we come to passages like this with the benefit
of hindsight. We’ve heard the stories; we’ve internalised the meanings we’ve
heard them that many times ….. but try to imagine hearing and trying to make
sense for the first time of some fairly abstract and intractable ideas. You
might even have got a handle on what Jesus was saying, but the implications …
the implications. “Really? Have I got this right? Did he just say what I think
he said?”
These
disciples were also plagued by doubt and fear. They suffered at times from
pride or a lack of courage, and they, too, eventually deserted Jesus at the
very time he needed them the most. So if
they aren't any better than the rest of Jesus' followers - then or now - what
is it that sets them apart? The Disciples surely didn’t respond as they did
because they understood the words that much better than those abandoning Jesus.
But they knew one other thing that made all the difference in the world and
that made them say that he had “the words of eternal life.” That difference was
this: “We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Those leaving had
neither come to know or believe this. For the Twelve, it was the one thing that
made them stay, even though they carried on failing to grasp the meaning of
much of what Jesus was saying. Perhaps for some of them it wasn’t until Peter
articulated it that they were forced to confront this for themselves.
This man was
introduced to the readers of this Gospel as “The Word made flesh.” “The Word
was God and he was with God in the beginning.” In him, John asserted in those
opening verses, resided life: the “life that was the light of men.” Perhaps the
disciples couldn’t have spoken that eloquently when Peter spoke up for them
all, but they stuck with Jesus because at some point they recognized the divine
in him.
O.K. So
we’ve looked at the Gospel story and analysed it.
So what?
It has to
have a practical application or we’ve rather wasted our time. We have to turn a
piece of religious history into something we can work with in our own lives;
that has the power to touch us, or we’ve missed the point of being here.
Well, this,
according to many Christians down the ages, is what makes what we are doing
here this morning so important, so vital. Because each week, through the
preaching of the Word and the sharing of the sacraments, we're offered again
the words of eternal life which Peter and the others recognised. We're offered
again, the chance to encounter Jesus and his living Word. Through preaching and
through the sacraments, Jesus' real presence is revealed in our world, we
receive the promise that Jesus is, indeed, the bread of life and we are pointed
to the place amidst all the mess and ugliness of this world, that we can look to
and know with confidence that we can find God there, in Jesus, offering us
again the promise of forgiveness, acceptance, meaning, and life.
The 16th-century
reformer Martin Luther argues this point. "God is present everywhere, but
does not wish that you grope for him everywhere. Grope rather where the Word
is, and there you will lay hold of God in the right way."
The trouble
is that we have to keep reminding ourselves of this. We are so far removed in
time from these events that, however much our imaginations might be grabbed and
transported back through time during the readings and the sermon; however much
our intellect and soul engage with the spiritual meaning of the words - the
theology - coming here week by week can very often seem a tired routine. Perhaps
we don't renounce or desert Jesus openly like those followers in today’s
passage, we just don't make the extra effort to get to church quite as regularly,
or we reduce what we've been giving, are more reluctant to support church
events, we give up on prayer, we find different priorities and other calls on
our time until, in the end, we’re just like those in today's reading: turning
our backs and leaving.
Considering
the difficult times, the times of doubt, the times of misunderstanding, the
stale times in our pilgrimage of faith, other preachers at this point might
remind us of all God’s blessings and encourage us to consider what God has done
– and continues to do - for us. Well, true as that most certainly is, it never
quite works for me. It seems a trite refuge when things don’t feel right in
your spirit. I don’t necessarily want to count blessings. I’d rather struggle
with the problem.
Those other
disciples deserted Jesus because his teaching was a stumbling block to their
faith. We hear this all the time. “I and the Father are one.” Jesus goes on to
tell us later in John’s gospel but in my Religious Studies classroom I am
repeatedly told “I can’t believe that Jesus is God. How could one man have
created the universe?”
“Man? One man. Right… ” And thereby we might start
discussions about God’s transcendence or the Trinity.
And so,
unlike the first group of disciples in today’s reading, we aren’t satisfied
with our initial reaction to what we read and hear. We spend some time looking
at the reasons people give, their stumbling blocks, for not believing in God.
We examine them, we analyse them and then we look at alternative perspectives,
a bit like Peter did.
“Actually,
not all Christians take that view because …..”
“But many
Christians would disagree with that viewpoint. They would say …..”
“Actually
that isn’t what the Bible says.”
“You’re taking something literally that wasn’t
intended to be understood literally.”
Then there
are the misunderstandings of what Jesus says that are the stumbling blocks:
“I can’t
believe in God. Look at Jesus’ teaching on abortion and homosexuality.”
These are real stumbling blocks for some people.
That Jesus doesn’t actually have anything to say about either issue tends to come as a surprise. Does that come as a
surprise to you?
People
believe some very strange things about God; about Jesus, and what they believe
is often a stumbling block to their faith, and when they express it, to the
faith of others. It is a shame, then, that much of it is ill informed. If you
aren’t sure about that, spend some time looking at the statements of American
politicians and evangelists in the run up to their election. It has been said,
rather unfairly perhaps, that the Church of England is the Conservative Party
at prayer. In America, something which passes for Christianity is the
Republican Party at prayer and it’s not a Christianity - in some of its
expressions - that many of us would recognise. Often what it proclaims is a
stumbling block to the faith.
In the same
way that ignorance, misunderstanding and false expectations caused some of
Jesus’ would-be followers to turn their backs on him in today’s Gospel, so it
is today, but very often the stumbling block for Jesus’ would-be disciples now
are not the words of Jesus but the words of other Christians.
It’s not the
same because some other people have agendas and don’t necessarily speak with
the mind or authority of Jesus.
“Does what I
say offend you?” Jesus asked his followers. Perhaps some of Jesus’ latter day
followers could do well to adopt that mantra for themselves.
So a
practical application for dealing with stumbling blocks to faith?
Well, count
your blessings of course, but if it’s of any help at all try to think more like
Peter. Don’t be satisfied with an inadequate answer. Don’t assume that what
you’ve understood is the meaning that was intended and leave it there. Dust off
and examine your own position on things.
Are there
alternative perspectives you’ve not considered? Perhaps it’s time you
considered them.
Are you sure
that what you think is the teaching of Jesus or the tradition of the church
actually is the teaching of Jesus or the tradition of the church on any given
topic?
What type of
Christian is espousing that view you’re listening to? Are you generally in
sympathy with such people?
Is what
they’re saying related to issues of salvation? If not, in all conscience, can
there not be more than one viewpoint?
Ask yourself
the question: “Who would I rather have put words into the mouth of Jesus? The Gospel
writers or Iain Duncan-Smith?
Perhaps in
our spiritual lives we do need a bit more of:
“Actually,
not all Christians take that view because …..”
“But many
Christians would disagree with that viewpoint. They would say …..”
“Actually
that isn’t what the Bible says.”
“You’re
taking something literally that wasn’t intended to be understood literally.”
“Jesus never
said that.”
I know it sound
trite, but a stumbling block to faith – even a mature faith – is only a
stumbling block if once you’ve tripped on it you stay down.
Let’s not
stay down.
Let’s
struggle with it. Let’s argue with it. Let’s engage with it. Let’s talk about
it.
Let’s do
Theology.
We can all
be Theologians.
Who has the
words of eternal life?