“Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you - they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.” From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
(John 6:57-69)
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Life is all about choices. We’re making choices all the time - even if we don’t realize it. I’ve read that the human brain processes about 4 billion bits of information every second. Our brains take these and make use of them to help us confront those situations where we have choices to make, and the same source estimates that an average adult makes approximately 35000 distinct decisions every day. Some of them are complex decisions and some of them are simple; some are important and some are relatively meaningless; some of them require a lot of thought; others we’re not even particularly aware of - but our brains make those decisions. That’s about a decision that your brain has to make every two and a half seconds. Like right now - “do I stay and listen to this silly sermon, or do I leave?” When you hear the numbers, it’s a bit overwhelming isn’t it. But life is about choices, and one of the choices we’re confronted with comes to us from Jesus - just from the very fact that he walked on earth for a few years and that we have some accounts of his life. So we have a choice to make: are we or are we not going to be his disciples? Are we or are we not going to follow him? How far are we going to be willing to follow him? Those have been the choices ever since he appeared, and every time a person has confronted him or been confronted by him down to this very day: will we or won’t we follow him?
It’s the kind of choice that the people of God have always been challenged to make. We think of faith as a source of comfort or inspiration. No doubt that’s true, but sometimes we seem to forget that there’s a challenge involved with being a person of faith. The choice to follow Jesus isn’t easy. It shouldn’t be easy. If our faith is easy then frankly there’s something wrong with our faith! Long ago, even before Jesus, this was the challenge given to God’s people, from the lips of Joshua: “revere the Lord!” Put away all the other things you depend on, Joshua told the Israelites, all the other gods that are out there seeking to draw you to them, and commit yourself to serving God. That was the challenge. “... choose this day whom you will serve … but as for me and my household we will serve the Lord.” In the four thousand or so years since, the startling thing is that not much has changed. We may have been to the moon, we may have sent spacecraft beyond our own solar system, we may have gone from a society in which only the very rich had knowledge to one in which almost all knowledge is available to anyone with the click of a mouse, we may have gone from spears that could kill a person to weapons that can destroy the world - but still - at the most deepest human level, inside our very hearts and souls - there’s the same choice to be made: choose today whom you will serve. Will it be the Lord, or will it be any one of the almost innumerable false gods that are all around us all the time that try to draw us into their service and away from God.
It seems a simple enough choice. Who wouldn’t choose to follow God? Except - it isn’t easy. No one ever said that a life of faith was going to be easy. The teachings of faith are hard to accept, and the life of faith is hard to live and the road of faith is hard to travel. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise hasn’t really read carefully the words of Jesus or considered the claim he makes on their lives or reflected on the examples of his earliest disciples.
They had a hard life. They knew it would be hard. When I read this passage from John’s Gospel as I started to prepare today’s message, I found myself intrigued with these words that I had never paid much attention to before: “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” Fourteen words that had never really leaped out at me before. These were disciples of Jesus - they’re identified as such - who had decided that this was a way they simply could not adopt. Maybe the teaching was too hard to understand. Maybe the price being asked of them turned out to be too high. Maybe the life they were being called to carried too many risks. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t what they had expected; this was more than they had signed up for. There was something about being a disciple of Jesus that had suddenly made them realize that they didn’t want any part of this. Jesus’ teachings had challenged them to come into a truly deep and intimate and personal relationship with God. That type of relationship with the divine isn’t easy. It carries risks. There are a lot of reasons to back away from such a commitment. And so this group of disciples turned back. They had gone as far as they could go; as far as they were willing to go. Only a few remained. To paraphrase what Jesus would say in a different context, many will choose the wide path that leads away from God, but only a few will choose the narrow path that leads to God and to eternal life.
We don’t know how many disciples had been travelling with Jesus at that moment, but the feeling I get from the passage is that most had chosen to stop, to leave and to go their own way. Jesus looked at the few remaining disciples, and I sense sadness in his voice: “You do not want to leave too, do you?”
A sad Jesus. Not the picture we want, is it. But the way of Jesus isn’t easy - it wasn’t easy even for Jesus. Abandonment, betrayal - and we know where it would lead him to. It’s not easy for the disciples of Jesus. Many fall away. Many have always fallen away. Faith in Christ is not for the feint of heart. And I wonder if, even today - even right at this very moment - Jesus isn’t looking at us, and saying “You do not want to leave to, do you?”
Sometimes it’s tempting to leave. This life of faith isn’t - or at least it shouldn’t be - an easy one. But I’d like to think that we - all of us here today - are just a little bit like Peter, who said, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” I find that those few words from Peter resonate with me. It’s not that Peter sounded especially enthusiastic. He as much as any of those who left must have realized that this was no easy stroll Jesus was calling him to. But Peter understood something much deeper. There really was no other way that would lead to true life. The way of Jesus was the way of life. The way of Jesus was the way to life. “To whom shall we go?” It’s not that there weren’t options - and it’s not that the options weren’t potentially easier than the way of Jesus - but in the light of everything Peter had come to know about Jesus the options just didn’t make any sense. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Joshua said it: “choose this day whom you will serve.” There are all sorts of spiritual options out there - all kinds of gods you can choose to follow. And in so many ways the way they hold out will be a lot easier than the way of Jesus. But the way of Jesus makes sense to me - and I hope to all of you as well. After all, it is the way of eternal life! Peter’s question was a good one for us: “To whom shall we go?” I hope we all choose Jesus - if we dare!
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