Sermon onJohn 6:51-69

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’ve been reading from John chapter 6 for over a month now. Jesus fed the 5,000, walked on water, the crowd chased him down looking for more food, and he explained to them that he had bread from heaven to give them instead and that his own flesh and blood was what would give them eternal life.

This was more than the crowds could handle:

·       from the religious authorities (problematically called simply “the Jews” in the Gospel of John) who questioned Jesus’ credentials

·       to many of Jesus’ own loyal disciples who started to have cold feet.

Jesus’ reputation was not doing well that day. The crowds who had wanted to make him king turned on him.

Perhaps Jesus expected this: our reading says, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who were the ones who did not believe and who was the one who would betray him.”

But it still couldn’t have been easy to have so many people abandon him all at once.

Jesus turned to his closest twelve disciples and asked, “Do you also want to go away?” I wonder if the words caught in his throat, if he was afraid to ask.

But Peter, whose foot was often in his mouth and who would indeed abandon Jesus later on before repenting, spoke for the group:

“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.”

The ones who had traveled with him and knew him best didn’t turn away at the first teaching that was hard to accept.

They grasped that following Jesus wasn’t about free food and that he had a community and a way of life to offer that was far more powerful than being made an earthly king by the crowds.

Jesus was far more than simply a teacher or a provider of free food.

Still, his teachings can be hard—for them and for us.

Even Jesus’ most basic teachings, rooted in the Hebrew Bible:

Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself

are so hard to follow.

Love God and love your neighbor should be pretty intuitive. It’s not terribly controversial or off-putting, compared to Jesus’ teachings in our reading today, talking about eating flesh and drinking blood.Even if it were purely metaphorical, it’s a pretty gross image. I don’t blame folks for being troubled by it and maybe not wanting to follow this guy around anymore. A free lunch is a lot more appetizing than cannibalism.

And still, it’s hard to follow even Jesus’ most basic teachings like love God and love your neighbor.

Instead of loving God with everything we have, it’s so much easier to go about our daily lives, ignoring God until something bad happens and only then asking for help. It’s easier to keep God on the periphery of our lives instead of letting love for God inhabit every aspect of our being.

And instead of loving our neighbors, it’s easier to gravitate toward people who are like us and not risk being vulnerable with people who have different perspectives, backgrounds, or ways of life.

If we do encounter people who are different from us, we can protect ourselves by making it clear that we are helping them and are not in the same category. Or that they are from a different political party and we are obviously nothing like them.

It’s way harder to look another human in the eyes and admit that we are at the same time infinitely the same and infinitely different from each other.

We are created in the image of the same God, we live on the same planet, and yet we have unique experiences, ways of living, and things to teach one another.

It’s easier to keep people who are different from us on the periphery of our lives and not let love for every person we encounter move us.

It’s safer and more comfortable to keep people at an arm’s distance. But that’s not what we’re called to.

C.S. Lewis said this in his book The Four Loves:

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, air-less—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?

But Lewis has a point. When we insulate ourselves from vulnerability, from the risks of love, it becomes harder for us to feel anything at all.We lose our relationships, because relationships deepen from vulnerability, and we ultimately lose ourselves. We confine ourselves to Hell on Earth.

God is calling us to the opposite of that. Jesus gave even his body for love of us.

When Christ’s flesh and blood is flowing through our veins, animating our bodies, pumping our hearts, love is both the cause and the result.

It is God’s love that allows us to love God and love our neighbors.

That can hurt—sometimes hurt more than we think we can bear.

This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?

But that is the price of love—a price Jesus knows very well. And out of that life-giving love, Jesus calls us to love, too.

So, this week, talk to someone who is different from you. If you’re going to Crittenton today, you’ll have the opportunity in the next couple hours. If not, learn something about someone you don’t talk to much. Let your love for them grow. Feel your heart soften and expand.That is the life Jesus offers us.

To whom else can we go?