John 6:51-69
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” 61 But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Ask them what makes them comfortable.
Who wants to turn off the AC? Oh come on, isn’t it fun when we turn this place into a sauna?
I think a lot of us take for granted the things in our lives that make things more comfortable. In America, we have so many things it can be hard to list them. We have A/C, access to a millons different kinds of food, entertainment, and technology.
We even have shoes to make walking outside a lot more comfortable than if you tried to go outside without them. My family even has an alexa that makes turning lights on and off extremely convenient. I don’t even need to get up off the couch if things are a little too dark. Just say the word and the lights come on.
It is natural for us to want to be comfortable. Our brains are wired to set us into patterns that help us go through each day without stressing over every little detail. It would be exhausting if we had to decide to breathe each and every breath.
Or if walking always required complete mental focus. It does at first right? A Toddler takes months upon months of experiment and falling over before walking starts to make sense and settle in. For those of us who have been walking for a while this pattern feels second nature because of the thousands of times we have taken a step since that first wobbly one.
Our habits and routines help shape us and order our day to day. And when these patterns have settled in we feel comfortable. We know what to expect next. We’ve done this before and don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We become comfortable.
The funny thing about being comfortable though is that it is relative to what we have just experienced. Growing up I was in the Boy Scouts and we would go on backpacking trips a few times each year. And the first and the last day of each trip always seemed to have a few things in common. On the first day, we would unload from the car with all our stuff packed into our backpacks and start out on the trail. Usually that first day was a little bit slower as everyone’s legs and backs began to get used to carrying those extra pounds of clothes, food, tent, flashlight, and all the other gear we were going to need.
And after we had hiked the miles that were charted out for that day. Sometimes six other times ten or twelve miles. We would plop down and set up camp for the night. And when the sun began to go down I’d curl up in my sleeping bag on top of the thin air pad I had blown up. And it was uncomfortable but usually hiking has a way of making you tired enough to sleep anyways.
Then the next Day would come and falling asleep that day was even easier. And depending on how long the trip was day would be a little less uncomfortable to fall asleep. Sitting on the ground or a rock begins to feel normal and your body adapts to being outside with everything you need strapped to your back. Being comfortable takes on a completely different meaning when you are out in the woods.
And finally when the last day would come, we would all pile back into cars smelly and dirty and tired. And there was always something magical about sitting down on an upholstered piece of furniture again. There is no other time in my life where a couch has felt so comfortable as the first time you sit in one after a backpacking trip. Your body after getting used to being out in the woods melts into a sofa. It feels like sitting on a cloud even though it is just a normal ordinary sofa.
Being comfortable is very very relative and once we get used to something, comfort seems to become elusive. Sitting in a nice big cushy armchair is comfortable until you’ve sat in it for too long. And the temptation comes to keep searching for thing after thing to make us just a little more comfortable.
Even in conversations we all have the urge to stay away from uncomfortable topics. It is hard to bring up things we know people will start to squirm when they are brought up. But Jesus in our reading today has absolutely no issue making all his disciples squirm and fidget while he talked.
He starts off with a short saying that begins to stir the pot: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
If someone came up to you and said that you should take a bite out of their arm. You’d probably look at them a little weird too. You want me to do what?
But the interesting thing is that the jews who were there did not go to Jesus to ask for clarification. Instead they started to argue among themselves trying to figure out what in the world Jesus was saying.
Now it seems like Jesus could have stopped things here and started to explain the whole plan of the cross and how he was going to die. This dying was what he really means by saying he is going to give his flesh for the life of the world. And he could have even gone a step further to talk about how he was going to give his church the rite of communion to have a physical avenue to receive his body in a tangible way.
But instead of trying to clear things up. Jesus ratchets up the intensity of what he says. Instead of just offering his flesh to eat he adds something that would have completely disgusted the Jews he was talking with. Jesus goes on to say: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
Now to understand why this would have been such a disturbing saying we need to go back to the old testament for just a brief moment. Drinking blood was something expressly forbidden within the mosaic law.
Leviticus 17:14 puts it this way: “Since the life of every creature is its blood, I have told the Israelites: You are not to eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it must be cut off.”
Not consuming blood was a matter of respecting the life of the animals the Israelites ate. So it was unthinkable to drink the blood of an animal let alone the blood of a human. Jesus didn’t just sound crazy to them he was starting to sound impious too.
Jesus makes no effort to smooth any of this out in front of the crowd but just leaves the saying there. He ends with a beautiful promise of eternal life and participation with God himself that seems to have been lost on not only the jews listening to him but many of his disciples as well.
This incident evidently was enough to keep many of his disciples talking. These would not have just been the twelve disciples we usually hear about but anyone who had been following him up to this point. They just couldn’t understand what Jesus was getting at and it was making them uncomfortable.
Jesus was talking about the deep abiding connection he was offering to everyone. A connection so close that his flesh and blood is consumed, eaten and taken inside his people. We often speak of it in terms of the indwelling of the holy spirit. But this image of eating and drinking connects us to the physical act of communion but more importantly to just how close of a connection Jesus was driving toward with his disciples.
And the funny thing about connections is that the closer we get to someone things can get a little uncomfortable. There is no hiding or covering up of who we really are before Jesus. He knew exactly where each and everyone of those disciples were at and he was pushing past the easy surface connection to the challenging, troubling even uncomfortable.
This proved to be too much for many of them and they just left. But Peter, the twelve and whoever else stuck around got a glimpse into the mysteries of God. The wonderful mysterious provision of God for his people to bring resurrection and eternal life.
Conclusion
Jesus was simply not interested in the comfort of his disciples. It sounds bad when you say it like that, but it’s true. He was more interested in telling them the truth and the depth of what kind of commitment and participation they needed to have with him. He chose the most evocative and jaring way to tell them this.
So much so that many walked away from him. The truth of God’s word is not easy or clean. It is all encompassing. It wraps the world around us with new colors. Things we could never see apart from Him.
Following the word of God has caused people to do things that look absolutely crazy from the outside. For example, the prophet Ezekiel laid on his side for 390 days to preach the wake up call God was trying to send to his people at the time. John the baptist went out into the middle of the desert to start preaching.
God pushes and pulls us in directions we would never dream of going on our own. A shepherd boy was pulled into being a king. David, the last one anyone expected to be a king becomes the most famous King in Israel’s history. The ancestor of Jesus himself. Common fishermen are pulled into leading the church. Peter, and John both led in ways they could have never expected. With communities of Christians spreading all across the continent. An ordinary monk named Luther was pushed into challenging the entire political system of his day. Luther stood on the conviction of God’s word even when it could have easily cost him his life.
We now live in a world where we have medical professionals to take care of the sick. But this was not always the case. In the time of the early church sickness was viewed by most people as judgment from angry gods. This meant that the sick were often abandoned and left to die. Especially during times of plague and pandemic the healthy were more interested in taking care of themselves getting away from the disease any way they could. Even to the point of leaving their family and friends behind.
One particular plague started in the year 250. It started south in Ethiopia and spread north throughout Greece and most of the roman empire. It was called the plague of Cyprian. Named after Cyprian the bishop of Carthage at the time. He wrote of the terrible disease that spread from house to house wiping out countless numbers of people. This was not a short plague either, it lasted for over twenty years. Cyprian expressed his feeling that the world was coming to end. But rather than become hopeless he urged the believers under his care to remember who they are as Christians.
And while everyone else was hiding and looking to save themselves. Christians had a unique reaction. Christians cared for the sick and the abandoned. In fact they were the only ones to care for these people. No one else dared. And I won’t sugar coat it. Many Christians caught the disease while tending the sick. But there was something more important than their own comfort or safety and that was the love of Jesus for each and every person around them.
News of this uncomfortable, self-sacrificing love for their neighbors spread across the empire. It was unthinkable, strange, insane. And while the world felt like it was ending because of the spread of the plague. The love of Jesus was spreading faster. Not only that but later sociological research has found that cities who had Christians in them cut the fatality rate almost in half.
Following Jesus can be uncomfortable, it can even be dangerous. He wants our full participation with Him. The love, forgiveness, and hope in Jesus is everything. The world around us can fall apart at the seams. We can even feel like the world is ending. But we have confidence. Not in ourselves, or our government, or even a vaccine, but in Jesus. Jesus who loves us and calls us to love our neighbor.
Now this is a tall order and something all of us are just really learning how to do. So we are going to start small right now.
Who here knows everyone in this sanctuary?
End with saying hi to someone you don’t know