A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69]
You may be relieved to know that while this is the sixth week in succession that the gospel lesson has focused on the challenging subject of Jesus and his proclamations about bread and his identity – you may be relieved to know that next week we move on to other issues that surround our Lord. As a preacher, I am relieved. These last six weeks have been as hard to preach about as they have been for you to hear. And this truth makes an honest segue with a question from today’s gospel. What do we do when living our faith, when following Jesus, gets hard? In this sermon, I want to spend a bit of time on this.
In today’s gospel, Jesus once again strikes the drum of his proclamation that the bread that he inexplicably produced to feed 5000 hungry seekers was, in fact, his flesh, his very life in God. Perhaps like many of you, the crowd (which heretofore) had followed Jesus and consistently suddenly got the message about the bread and his flesh.
Only insofar as you eat and drink flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you.1
So, are we surprised that the crowd’s reaction (perhaps our own reaction) was, “Eoouuu!” “This is tough teaching, too tough to swallow!”2 “Who can accept it”3 And then, reading the room (so to speak), Jesus asks if what he has said was offensive to them.
Jesus’ question begins what I regard as the most devastating gospel scene, save for the details surrounding Jesus’ execution on the Cross. In a very dry, almost journalistic tone, John reports that in response to Jesus announcing yet again the truth of his identity and life-purpose, reports what happens next with these words: “After this a lot of his disciples left. They no longer wanted to be associated with [Jesus].”4
I think the reason the gospels from the last five weeks have been so difficult to parse and to recognize is that Jesus’ graphic (and possibly offensive) description of himself as “the bread of life” draws us into the challenging but important discussion about what you and I know as Holy Communion. Emotionally, historically, and theologically, the issue of the Sacrament of the Altar and how we perceive its meaning and expression can leave us in the weeds (albeit, very important “weeds)”. I am not going to reiterate what I posed to you over these last few weeks on this subject, save to remind you that our Prayer Book tradition, with simple elegance, conveys Christ’s “Real Presence” in the consecrated bread and wine: conveying that they “may be for [us] the Body and Blood” of God’s Son.5 But – but as central as the Eucharist is to our spiritual lives and faithful living, the Sacrament of the Altar is not the focal point of what Jesus has been saying throughout this protracted sixth chapter of John. And the key to what lies at the heart of this entire sixth chapter lies in what Jesus says to the Twelve after the offended crowd abandons him. Turning to them, Jesus asks, “Do you also want to leave?”
I can imagine the look on Jesus’ face and the clutching in his gut, as the heretofore boisterous crowd suddenly turned their backs on him and walked away – and all because they couldn’t take what he was teaching. Such rejection has the capacity to crush one’s soul, not to mention to break one’s heart. And in this painful moment, Jesus turns to the ones he himself had chosen and asks the pitiable question, “Do you also want to leave?”6
As I say, despite all that Jesus has said and demonstrated in terms of his incarnate life as unique food for the God-life, this sad point of rejection leaves the foreboding hints of what is to come at the Cross. From this lesson’s foreshadowing, the deeper and even more profound point of this demanding sixth chapter of John’s gospel is this: Despite it all or because of it all, Jesus is all in.
Jesus is all in. This is the overriding and dramatic point of John’s sixth chapter. “Jesus is all in” functions as the context both for all discussion about the sacramental meaning of Christ’s Body and Blood and the reason for the crowd to reject his “Real Presence” teaching. Jesus is all in.
For his part, St. Paul takes this deep and awesome God-truth that “Jesus is all in” to more lyrical heights in his Letter to the Romans, saying: “So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?”7 “Real Presence”, the “Real Presence” of God can be offensive or at least off-putting; can it not?
And here also is where Peter’s response to Jesus’ plaintive wondering speaks to where you and I (that is, everyone I know) – to where we are as followers of Jesus. Culminating in the Cross, Jesus demonstrates the fact that he is all in; but with extremely rare exception you and I are not. In saying this disturbing fact, I am aligning myself – and you, too -- with Peter and his very human (that is, very incomplete) sense of faith and discipleship.
So, Jesus’ question is also directed at us: “Do you also want to leave?”
Peter being Peter replies, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life. We’ve already committed ourselves, confident that you are the Holy One of Israel.”8
Peter’s response to Jesus’ question about leaving reminds me of the refrain from a gospel hymn. The refrain says, “You’ve brought me too far to let me go now!”9 In other words, if you know, you know. If you dare to know that Jesus is all in, then you can’t run away – not really. Even if you have only done little more than dabble in the Jesus-life, even if you’ve only dared to have had the tiniest taste of his bread and his wine – his Real Presence and the infusion of the God-life – he can’t be ignored. You can’t pretend you didn’t know deep inside that Jesus is all in for us and for the whole world. Even in the face of our hedging our bets (not to mention our times when we have turned our backs on God’s Christ and left for easier avenues) – even in the face of all the religious and spiritual games we can play, the love and life of God-in-Christ never wavers.
Jesus is all in.
Peter’s example (incomplete and as embarrassing as it is) gives me heart because as steadfast as he was in following Jesus, in “the time of trial” Peter and the others ran away. In Jesus’ “time of trial”, Peter and the rest left Jesus to swing in the breeze -- alone. But Peter did return, self-consciously walking in his own verbal steps, perhaps eating his own words: “Master, to whom would we go?”
In this, the words of a hymn we often sing here at St. Philip’s come to mind. The hymn stems from a mid-nineteenth century, American folk tune. Its words start with this phrase: [singing] “Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace…”. But the third and final verse stops me. I never can get through it without double-clutching. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”9
Jesus is all in; and even though I am not where he is, I still quake at the prospect of being too far away. And to the best of my knowledge, I know that Peter and I are not alone in this: am I? Yet, it is the “Real Presence” of our God and the Holy One’s Christ to be present to us always, waiting for us to reach our hands out to receive what we need and cannot provide for ourselves: a silent repetition of Peter’s quaking confession: “Lord, to whom could we go?”
“Jesus is all in”, full strength, no matter what. We may need to eat small bits of his Body and take discrete sips of his life’s Blood. But, irrespective of our qualms, the real question is: To whom else can we go?” – precisely because Jesus is all in. Thanks be
1. John 6:53 – The Message
2. John 6:60 -The Message
3. John 6:60 – NRSV
4. John 6:66 -The Message
5. BCP., . 362
6. John 6:67
7. Romans 8:31-32 – The Message
8. John 6:68-69
9. The Hymnal 1982, #686
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