Text: John 6:60-69
Date: August 29, 2021
Event: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
John 6:60–69 (EHV)
60When they heard it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it?”
61But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, asked them, “Does this cause you to stumble in your faith? 62What if you would see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh does not help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. 64But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning those who would not believe and the one who would betray him. 65He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me, unless it is given to him by my Father.”
66After this, many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore. 67So Jesus asked the Twelve, “You do not want to leave too, do you?”
68Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Jesus Is Difficult
Is the easy path or the difficult better? That’s really impossible to make a blanket statement on, right? Those of you who know me well might know that one the past times I enjoy is video games. There’s a continual conversation around video games about whether you should be playing them on an “easy” mode or a “very difficult” mode. Easy sometimes is dismissed as avoiding a challenge, while people that use an easy mode want to relax with a game not be frustrated by it. It really depends on who you are and what you’re looking for from that past time—a challenge or a diversion.
Sometimes the difficult way for anything in life seems foolish outside of maybe seeking out a sense of accomplishment. Why walk to visit someone in Reno, NV when you could drive or take other transportation? Why make your own paper out of the dead tree in your yard when you could buy a pack at the store? Something being difficult doesn’t necessarily make it the better or wiser choice.
But sometimes, it is. Sometimes taking the easy road is just avoiding the difficult necessities. If you’ve ever devolved a conversation into small talk when you really needed to discuss something difficult with someone else, you’ve felt this. If you’ve known you needed to go to the doctor to get something checked out and you’ve avoided it because you didn’t want to know the truth of what was going on, you’ve felt this. If you’ve tried to lose weight or just clean up your diet, but the chips or the fast food were just right there, you’ve felt this.
We talked last week about how Jesus is necessary for us. We cannot remove our sin. We cannot set things right with God. We need Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to accomplish and prove that our sins are forgiven. He has to be the one to fix the mess of our sin and solve the problem of hell. Jesus made it clear to the people that they needed him. They needed the spiritual blessings he alone provides. Jesus had said in our Gospel last week, a few verses before this week’s Gospel: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh…. Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves.” (John 6:51, 53).
Jesus wasn’t couching this in easy to understand terms, but he was making the people face a difficult problem. They wanted Jesus to be an easy Savior, one who would save them from hunger, a bread king who would keep them full and satisfied in this life. But that was not why Jesus came. He came to do something more, to do something far better. He came to give eternal life. He came to give his life for the sins of the world. He came to rescue all people from hell.
But that’s difficult to hear, right? It’s difficult for a couple of reasons. First of all, it means that Jesus isn’t as concerned about our immediate-term desires as our eternal-term needs. And for us who so often have blinders on and can only think about the here-and-now, that is not what we want. It would be easier if Jesus was just making every bad thing in our life good, changing every trouble into joy, and making it so we didn’t have a care in the world. But that’s not what Jesus promises, is it? He promises to work good from bad, but he doesn’t promise an absence of bad. In fact, he promises just the opposite. He says life in this sinful world is going to be difficult. But, while we struggle here, we should pick up those difficulties, those crosses, and follow him.
Jesus’ insistence on something bigger and greater than tending to earthly needs is difficult for another reason: it forces us to acknowledge things about ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge. None of us likes to admit that we have spiritual needs. I don’t want to think about the fact that I’ve sinned against God. I don’t want to think about the fact that the wrong things I’ve done and the good things I’ve left undone have earned me hell for eternity. But the necessity of Jesus’ work for me doesn’t let me avoid that. Following Jesus means facing head-on that I’ve ruined everything with my sin and am hopeless and powerless on my own.
So, Jesus is difficult. Being around him and associated with him means this is not the easy path. So how do we treat that difficulty then? Are we avoiding it or embracing it?
In our Gospel this morning, we have two different approaches to this difficulty. When they heard it, many of his disciples [that is, those following Jesus but not part of the twelve] said, “This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it?” … After this, many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore. That’s one approach, right? We just leave Jesus behind and say, “I’m taking the easy road. This isn’t worth the trouble.” We can abandon Jesus altogether or leave him at the periphery of our lives without taking him seriously. We can become Christians in name only, in a family or social sense. Or, we could stop pretending and just abandon the Christian faith altogether. Either way, it probably makes things easier now, right? If we don’t have to think about sin and hell, if we don’t have to come to grips with our own failures to live up to God’s standards, if we can just focus on what we want to do and when and how we want to do it, that makes things easier, at least in the short term.
But what does it do for the long-term, the eternal-term? If we just abandon Jesus wholesale or don’t really care what he says about sin, death, and hell and our spiritual needs, we find ourselves trading eternal security for temporary ease, and that’s not a good trade at all. Jesus said clearly to those mulling over deserting him, “The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh does not help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” In other words, “You might not like it, but you need what I am giving you. It may not be easy, but it’s absolutely necessary for your eternal security. The things of this life pass away and end up being meaningless. What I do for you and give to you lasts forever.”
So the crowd’s reaction en masse was not really commendable. What’s the other option? We see it in Peter, being a spokesman for the twelve. When Jesus asked them, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Peter’s response is clear and to the point, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Peter and the rest of that core of disciples had made the choice to go with the more difficult path, to stick with Jesus no matter what the crowds were doing. Now, we know they were not perfect. As John makes clear in our reading here, among the twelve was Judas who would betray Jesus. We know Peter himself failed spectacularly in a time of trial and difficulty when he denied even knowing Jesus while Jesus was on trial before the Jewish leaders.
What does that tell us? Following Jesus is difficult. It’s a struggle. You and I? We will fail to do it at times. But that failure doesn’t mean it’s not worth it nor that we’ve ruined anything. Because Jesus solves even that failure in what he provides. When we’ve been tempted to and have followed and easier path rather than following Jesus, Jesus forgives that. When we’ve stumbled in our dedication to Jesus and not lived our lives the way that we should to thank him for what he’s done for us, Jesus forgives that. When we’ve let sin or anything else become more important to us than what God does for us in Jesus’ life and death in our place, Jesus forgives that. Difficult as it is to follow Jesus, his forgiveness restores us at every single misstep and failure. Following Jesus is difficult, but it is not something we do alone.
So, my brothers and sisters, knowing how difficult it is to walk this path, be rocks and encouragements for each other. Is there a church member you’ve not seen since the pandemic started either because they have stayed away or you have? Call them! Email them! Be a support to them because you know how difficult this path is and how easy it is to give up on it in the best of times. And our current circumstance perhaps make it even more likely that we will move on from Jesus and seek out something different and easier.
Continue to encourage one another as we walk this path together, because there really is no where else for us to go. Jesus alone has the words of eternal life. May those words that speak of his work in our place be our prime focus and delight now and forever. Amen.
