This Teaching is Difficult

13th Sunday after Pentecost
August 23, 2015

[Jesus said,] 56 “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 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.” 59 He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
  60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” 61 But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63 It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But 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. 65 And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”
  66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. 67 So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” – John 6:56-69

Twenty-two. That’s how many people are officially running for President of the United States for the 2016 election. At least I think so. That’s really a lot to keep track of. They rise and fall on a daily basis. Surely one of them will save us, right? Surely one of them must have all the right answers. One of them must be able to know both the future of domestic and international economics and politics and be able to please our whims in the moment.

No? Probably not. I guarantee you that all of them will make mistakes. And the lucky one chosen to be president 15 months from now will make mistakes in office. Probably even some big mistakes. And the crowds will fall away and the news will report polls demonstrating low popularity, as if popularity were always a sign of good leadership. But for now, all twenty-two of them put on smiling faces and tell America how they can save us.

For a while the crowds have been gathering behind Jesus. With every encounter the crowd grows larger. He is a healer, a wise teacher, a worker of miracles. And there was probably a decent field of 21 others out there doing much the same. But for this crowd Jesus was their candidate. They had purchased their lawn signs and bumper stickers. But they have begun to be concerned in this extended conversation about the bread of life. They are not so sure this candidate has what it takes.

Because Jesus begins to suggest that it won’t be all loaves and fishes for the rest of this journey. Jesus begins to suggest that it won’t be all happy miracles of abundance and nice teaching. I’ve read this over many times this week and I’m not exactly sure what the people are most offended by. There are several possibilities. It could be the oblique reference to the cross, which the crowds wouldn’t have known but John’s readers would have. There’s the suggestion that faith is not so much up to them as it is to God, something we still struggle with today. And of course the main part of the discourse we’ve been reading about eating Jesus’ flesh and blood. Whatever it is that sets them off, Jesus says this is about to get hard.

“This teaching is difficult,” the crowds say, “who can accept it?” Fair enough. Not much of what Jesus says is easy, actually. Jesus is not a great candidate if you read through his typical campaign speeches. He asks us to believe the impossible. That God would come as a human being. That economic gain is the not standard by which we are meant to operate. That every person has worth and value and ought to be treated as such. He deftly avoids the questions of those in power and spends his time with people who have no likelihood of increasing his popularity. All the while something about abounding grace that supersedes our present reality. This teaching is difficult, and Jesus doesn’t gloss over it or try to paint a rosier picture. So many turn away. And Jesus turns to his closest group and asks them, “Do you also wish to go away?”

When I read that this week, I thought, you know, some days, yes. Some days the alternatives seem easier, simpler. Some days Jesus’ call to discipleship – to grace and care for neighbor and forgiveness and all the other things. Yeah, maybe I’ll follow the path over there with that other guy who promises health and wealth and happiness on the journey. Sure it probably won’t last, but it sure sounds better than this pessimist.

But somehow I think God understands that impulse. I wonder even whether Jesus speaks the question with a sense of compassion. “Look folks, this isn’t easy, and I get it if you need to bow out now.” And I wonder if going away is always such a bad thing. This crowd in particular has feasted on the loaves and fishes. They have taken in God’s abundance. God’s presence goes with them as they walk away. And perhaps God is doing something else in their journeys.

But Peter, who so often speaks much more than he even realizes he is saying, suggests that there is nowhere else to go. This road may be hard, but we trust your promise, Jesus, that in going there is eternal life. He doesn’t know any more about what that actually entails than any of the 22 presidential candidates do about what the next four-year presidential term will entail.

Nor do we know. We do not know what our baptismal journey from the font to the grave will confront us with. The church for all its research into emerging trends doesn’t know what the best way to do church in the 21^st century is. We do not know the answers to how best to live as people of faith in the complex world we face. We do not have all the answers to fix the big problems. But perhaps the question before us is whether follow the hero of the moment who promises everything we want or the one who preaches power in weakness and the master bowing in service to others and the one offering himself for our participation in eternal life?

I cannot promise that following Jesus will be easy. I cannot promise our work will transform the world’s problems. I cannot even promise that this church and this pastor will never let you down. I don’t think we say that enough – that failure is a part of our story. The way of Jesus is the way of failure. It’s a path that is marked by our inability to succeed, our inability to find full and abundant life on our own. But with Jesus that failure is not the end. If we choose to go away, I believe God still comes alongside, but we risk missing the previews along the way of how the story ends. We risk missing glimpses of the incredible power of resurrection in the failure that inevitably comes.

With compassion, Jesus lets much of the crowd go. With compassion he acknowledges that this teaching is difficult and the road ahead even more so. But with the promise of eternal life he pulls his closest followers along until in the midst of the worst they can imagine, new life emerges. And in doing so God gathers all those who wandered off, sweeping them up into the new world that emerges.

-Pastor Steven Wilco