First Reading:
1How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
2My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
3Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God.
4Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise.
Selah
5Happy are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
6As they go through the valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7They go from strength to strength;
the God of gods will be seen in Zion.
8O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob!
Selah
9Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed.
10For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in
the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.
11For the LORD God is a sun and shield; he
bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does the LORD
withhold from those who walk uprightly.
12O LORD of hosts,
happy is everyone who trusts in you.
Second Reading:
56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood
abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father
sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will
live because of me. 58This 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.
59He said
these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
60When many of his disciples heard it, they
said, This teaching is difficult; who can accept
it?
61But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were
complaining about it, said to them, Does this offend
you? 62Then what if you were to see the Son of Man
ascending to where he was before? 63It is the spirit that
gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you
are spirit and life. 64But among you there are some who do
not believe.
For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that
did not believe, and who was the one that would betray
him. 65And he said, For this reason I have
told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the
Father.
66Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no
longer went about with him. 67So Jesus asked the
twelve, Do you also wish to go
away?
68Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom can
we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come
to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.
When it comes to Christian faith, and the church, the culture we live in is changing… It has been for a while, in a lot of ways it's already changed. Way back in the 60's, I wasn't alive then, but I've heard stories… I understand there were perks for pastors… preferred seating at shows, discounts on everything from groceries to gasoline to movie tickets. Even when I started out in ministry over a decade ago, there were two places in Seattle where pastors got to golf for free… I keep thinking I was born in the wrong in the wrong generation- none of those things are around anymore. The only perk from the community that I've found in my months of pastoral ministry is free parking at the hospital. Loren Mead, who was a pioneer in studying churches in America said that being a pastor used to be a low stress, high status job… and that reflected the position that the church held in American culture. In a lot of ways the early 60s was the high point of the Christian Church in the United States. Since then, at least in mainline protestant denominations, it's been a slow, but relatively steady decline in membership numbers, in giving, in participation and even in status in the community. It used to be that church was a part of life, something that everybody did. The question wasn't if you went to church, it was what church do you go to… but again, things have changed… and it seems now that Christian faith and churches are almost a taboo topic. It's not hard to think that each of us knows someone who used to regularly attend church but for one reason or another has found that it can't measure up to the other demands on the Sunday morning schedule. The reasons may differ. There may not be any one thing that pulls people away… but it's easy to see that things do pull people away.
In fact, it's a pretty safe bet that most of us have been tempted to
leave the church in the past and it's conceivable that we will again
be tempted to leave at some point in the future. Most of us probably
have a story or two from our own lives where we've been disappointed,
saddened, upset with a church… either this church or another
church that we used to attend. Now don't get me wrong… the
church does do good things… I've seen it in other places and
I've seen it here too. But I still say it's a wonderful thing that
when we profess our faith, we profess Jesus Christ and not in the
church. You see the church, both this church and the universal church
is made up of people, the vast majority are well-meaning and every one
is imperfect. Even those of us with the best of intentions, struggle
to live up to those intentions. There are so many different voices
calling us in different directions pulling us one way or another and
in the midst of all of them, it isn't easy to choose to follow Jesus,
and that's the choice… every day. A mentor and friend of mine
put it like this.
Every day that we wake up, we get to decide if we are going to
settle or if we're going to grow… and that decision is based on
what we decide to follow, because we are always influenced by the
choices we make.
As New Testament scholar Robert Mulholland Jr. describes it,
The question is not whether to undertake spiritual formation; the question is what kind of spiritual formation are we engaged in? Are we being increasingly conformed to the world, or are we being increasingly conformed to the image of Christ?...Every action taken, every response made, every dynamic of relationship, every thought held, every emotion allowed: these are the miniscule arenas where, bit by bit, we are shaped into some kind of being…Life is, by its very nature, spiritual formation.
Our gospel text today is the last in a series of five weeks in the
lectionary dedicated to the 6th chapter of John. Right after Jesus
fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, they wanted to
make him into their king, but he began to teach them instead. We've
spent 3 out of the last 4 weeks looking at the dialogue that follows.
Nobody expected what Jesus had to say… and perhaps nobody
understood it either. It's not a surprise that the crowd didn't
understand him. It's not a surprise that the Jews didn't understand
him… But in today's text we learn that it wasn't
only them
who found Jesus' teachings hard to grasp. Except for
the twelve, it's amazing how quickly the disciples were ready to turn
away from Jesus.
I'm not entirely sure why they were so ready to turn away. It could
have been because his teaching was hard to understand, after all, this
is the one who seemingly is advocating cannibalism. It could have
been because there was increasing clarity that Jesus' agenda didn't
match theirs… he didn't seem likely at this point to become
their king and it also didn't seem likely that more free food was
coming any time soon. But they also could have turned away because
they saw that his teachings were hard to follow. The challenge was
too big and the stakes too high. The people who understood what he
meant, that eating and drinking were metaphors for participation in
the life of Christ and for letting Christ participate in their
lives… they're the ones who could see the extent of the call.
They're the ones who likely realized that following Christ is
something that's going to shift everything because the call isn't for
an hour a week or six hours a month…The call is for every arena
of life. Personal, interpersonal relations, how we relate to family
systems and work structures, how we relate to our environment…
the call has to do with thinking, acting, feeling, being. It was the
disciples who understood the call who said in verse 60, The
teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?
And so many, even most
of them turned away.
It wasn't easy to follow Christ's lead. Even now it isn't always easy
to follow Christ's lead. Where once the Christian church held high
standing in society, it doesn't anymore. And it's even being singled
out as what's wrong with our country… An article in this week's
edition of Newsweek magazine says that the number of American
non-believers has doubled since 1990. It also claims that countries
with the lowest rates of social dysfunction have become the most
secular… and those with the most dysfunction are the most
religious… and I quote the author, I'll leave to braver
souls the question of whether religiosity leads to social
dysfunction...
Personally, it' s hard to imagine that's the case,
but the sentiment is there, sometimes in the media, sometimes in other
organizations… and it would seem that ever so slowly it's
working its way into the public perception too.
The disciples who turned away in the gospel story may or may not have understood that Jesus was God's son. They knew him as an unconventional rabbi, perhaps a miracle worker, a healer, a prophet. They probably didn't think that walking away from Jesus was walking away from God's revelation to the world. They already had rituals, customs and a culture of how to worship. So it probably felt more like they were returning to their comfort zone. They didn't need and they didn't want something that was challenging and that laid claim to the whole of their lives… so again, they turned away.
The reality of unbelief that this passage highlights is that unbelief is not just out there somewhere among the religious leaders of the day… it's not just out there in the crowd, in the opposition… even the disciples struggled. The twelve stayed but even within the twelve there was one who betrayed Jesus one who denied Jesus three times and ten others who scattered when faced with the reality of the cross. But in this moment, they stayed… When Jesus turned to the twelve and asked if they were ready to leave him too, some of them may have considered going. They had seen the kinds of people who followed Jesus. He wasn't shy about getting in trouble with the authorities, he didn't have much reservation about challenging the status quo, and maybe they'd even begun to sense where the road he travelled was headed… and it was hard.
But somehow the twelve who stayed had been convinced that Jesus held
something that they couldn't find anywhere else. Somewhere along the
way they had come to understand that Jesus was something special. And
so Peter answered… Lord, to whom can we go? You have the
words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are
the Holy One of God.
I wonder if they had any idea what that
answer and what that commitment was going to mean for them. It would
have been hard to imagine that they would become founding members of a
world-wide movement that would last for thousands of years. It would
have been hard to imagine that the decision to follow would eventually
cost each of them their lives in one way or another.
But the thing is that the twelve, those who decided to stay; they weren't any smarter or any more spiritual or more religious or better people than all the others who walked away. The difference, perhaps the only difference between the twelve and those who walked away is that that the twelve stuck around. They were given a gift and that gift was the ability to see the promise of life and the promise of hope that came with following Christ, and then they said yes to it.
I say it is a gift because Jesus said in our passage no one can
come to me unless it's granted by the father.
And I found myself
wondering this week, when was it that I was drawn to Christ? …
when was it that you were drawn to Christ… it's clear that we
were. I mean we're here, participating in the body of Christ which is
the church at work in the world. In a small way we've said yes simply
in waking up and getting here this morning. Many of, perhaps most of
us have said yes in choosing to serve the church and/or the community
in a whole variety of ways. And yet many of us may have misgivings
and fears about saying yes in the ways we are being invited right
now… I would love to work with youth or children but what if
they ask a question I don't know the answer to? I think it would be
fun to sing in the choir but I'm not sure that I have a good enough
voice. I want to make a difference in the community but I don't know
which organizations are doing good work… the pull of the spirit
manifests in many ways in our lives and every day we get to make a
choice… probably more than once. Will I settle? Will I grow?
We may not have any idea of where the journey leads when we commit to
saying yes, over and over when we feel the call of Christ, the pull of
the spirit… And it will likely affect every arena of life.
It may not be easy, but we have been given both a gift and an opportunity because in the person of Jesus Christ we get a glimpse of abundant life and we also get a road map to get there. You have the words of eternal life… to whom else could we possibly go?
Amen
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on August 23, 2009.
© 2009 Daniel Holland
