John 6:56-69
As some of you are aware, each week we have children’s worship bulletins available along with the regular service leaflets. There are no age restrictions! Anyone can pick one up if you wish. They contain activities meant to illustrate or reinforce the Gospel reading for the day. This week’s particularly caught my attention. It includes one of those familiar activities (that I associate with waiting in the dentist’s office as a child) where you are asked to find the differences between two similar pictures.
Some of the differences are the sort of thing you expect in this activity. The sun is in a different place; Jesus is looking left in one picture, right in the other; Jesus’ and the disciples’ belts are different. But what caught my eye is that there are a lot fewer disciples in the second picture. Quite a few of the disciples shown in the first picture are totally missing in the second. This activity does more than illustrate a snapshot from today’s Gospel reading. It tells the story. In today’s reading from John there are fewer disciples in the picture at the end of the story than there were at the beginning.
If I had asked you before church today if there were any Gospel stories where people turn away from Jesus, would you have remembered this story? We think of all of the stories that describe thousands of people being drawn to Jesus, attracted by his words and ministry. But here people walk away.
A couple of observations. I’ll come back to why they walked away and what they missed. But first, as a bit of an aside, this story reminds us to avoid the temptation of looking wistfully to the past as a time when faith was stronger and people more godly… in contrast to the “godless desolation” of our present time. In this story, people who were actually in the presence of Jesus (!) walked away.
Why? There is one clue in John’s Gospel. They say to Jesus: Your words are hard to understand and accept. This teaching is difficult. We don’t like what you’re saying! It’s Jesus’ teaching about sharing his own Body and Blood that offends them. These days it might be something else… Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies…. Or welcome the outsider… We don’t like what you’re saying.
And we have other things we’d rather be doing. As I think about it, following Jesus pretty much always means giving something else up. Disciples in his day had walked away from family, home, work to literally follow Jesus. But it is always a choice to follow Jesus rather than do something else. And people often choose other things they’d rather be doing than following Jesus.
And finally, I can’t really speak for the disciples in today’s reading, but these days I often hear folks turn away from Jesus because he hasn’t answered their every prayer… he hasn’t fulfilled their need, done everything they asked of him. Why bother to follow? So Jesus turns to Peter and the twelve and asks: Do you also wish to go away?
Peter doesn’t quite answer the question that Jesus asks. If he had, he might have said: Yes, Jesus there are certainly days when I wish to go away. But I don’t, because BEING IN THE PRESENCE OF JESUS IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN BEING AWAY FROM HIM.
It’s about being wish Jesus. About sharing life with Jesus. Without Jesus life is empty. Full of activities, maybe, but empty. Little better than death. Being a disciple can be challenging, confusing, and difficult but it is always better than the nothing-ness of life without Jesus.
For Peter and the twelve, even when Jesus’ teaching was difficult to understand or follow, it was still always better to be with Jesus.
We’ve been in the 6th chapter of John for several weeks. This chapter encourages us to reflect on what we, in the church, have come to know as Holy Communion. This week I’ve taken one more step back and want to review the sacraments in general. The Episcopal Church is a sacramental church. For those of us who gather and worship in the Episcopal Church the sacraments are a part of our common life.
And, in the words of the Prayer Book, the Sacraments are “sure and certain” ways to find Jesus, to be in Jesus presence. Sure AND certain. No qualifications, no exceptions. The sacraments are sure and certain ways for us to be with Jesus.
This is not to say that Jesus is not present and active in other parts of our lives, in our civic lives, our relationships, in nature. But we do not always connect with him there. In the sacraments we may be sure that we will find Jesus.
It was interesting for me to be reminded, as I reviewed the sacraments this week, that the early Christians experienced the sacraments before they defined them. The church didn’t create the sacraments; the church discovered that it had been given the sacraments. The definition was shaped by experience.
When the church talks about sacraments, and Holy Communion is the one we encounter most regularly, we talk about them as being two things: Sign (or symbol) and instrument. The bread and wine and the ritual of Holy Communion are signs or symbols that draw to mind for us Jesus’ last supper and his sacrifice for us. But participating in the sacrament is also the means or the instrument to actually convey Jesus’ presence or God’s grace to us. They point to God; but they also convey God’s grace.
When we participate. Sacraments aren’t something that can be watched or read about. They are participated in.
So the Catechism defines sacraments as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” And the second part of that definition is just as important as the first part. Given by Christ. Sure and certain means by which we receive grace.
The Catechism also defines grace: Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our will.”
Which seems to me to be pretty much what the presence of Jesus did for the disciples. And what the presence of Jesus does for us when, by grace, it comes to us through the sacraments.
No matter what’s going on in your life, in the church, in the world around you. No matter what. Participating in Holy Communion is a sure and certain way to be in the presence of Jesus. And Jesus’ presence brings renewal, hope, life, peace, perseverance. All those things that the world cannot give. Given to us by God’s grace through the sacraments.
