John 6:35-37, 53-71
“Is Christianity Hard to Swallow?”
By: Rev. Ken Sauer, Pastor East Ridge UMC, Chattanooga, TN
In our Scripture lesson for this morning we see the first instance—as it pertains to Jesus Christ and the Christian faith—of the revolving door!!!
By this time lots of people were following Jesus.
Many of them had been a part of the feeding of the 5,000.
They had been hungry…
…they had been given a great sermon…
…and they had been well-fed to boot!
So they decided they wanted more.
So they started to follow Jesus.
They had come to consider themselves disciples of Christ.
And for a while everything seemed to be ‘peachy keen’!
What a cool way to spend one’s life.
Listen to a good sermon, have some fun fellowship and get fed!
“This discipleship stuff is easy,” they may have thought.
“We have come upon a gold mine! We’ve won the lottery. We’ve joined an awesome new club!”
“Feed us again Jesus. Tell us some more neat stories. And feed us again.”
Jesus, earlier on in Chapter 6 says, in essence, to these new converts, “I tell you the truth, you are following me because you ate the loaves and had your fill.”
Kind of sounds like what my dog Wesley does.
She follows me wherever I go in the house.
Especially if she has not yet been fed!
But she also just plain follows me.
She doesn’t follow everyone.
Mary Ellen, for instance, would just love—more than anything-- for Wesley to follow her—but Wesley won’t even come when Mary Ellen calls her.
The reason?
I’m the one who feeds the dog.
The dog knows this.
It’s that simple.
So Jesus tells these fair-weathered disciples: “Do not work for bread that spoils, but for food that endures for eternal life.”
They must have been blown away!
They had really hit the lottery!
So they replied, “Sir, from now on give us this bread.”
They had no clue as to what Jesus was talking about, and then He comes up with this: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Things are getting better for these folks all the time!
They can all retire!
“Just follow Jesus and we will never be hungry or thirsty again!!!”
“How cool is this? Jesus is a traveling vending machine!”
And this is often how persons view the Christian faith.
Many of us come into this discipleship thing thinking, “All I gotta do is follow Jesus and all my problems will magically disappear! I will have no more financial worries. I will never again be sick. Jesus will provide for my every whim!”
And thus begins the revolving door…
Does life become real and alive if and when we follow Christ?
You bet!
Is following Christ the only answer to this life’s pain and misery?
You better believe it!
Is it a way to escape the troubles of this world?
Not a chance!!!
As a matter of fact…
…when we follow Jesus, we take on—not only our problems—we take on the problems of the entire world!
I love the way J.B. Phillips translates one of the Beatitudes, “Happy,” he writes, “are those who take on their share of the world’s pain for they will get much more out of life than those who avoid it.”
So Jesus is not an itinerant vending machine.
Neither is He a magic slot machine that keeps spitting out quarters.
Jesus is the Savior of the world Who paid the Ultimate price—His very Life—so that we may live!
And Jesus calls us into the struggle with Him.
Jesus calls us to leave the material aspects of this world behind for the spiritual.
Jesus calls us to get down in the trenches, in the fox holes and fight alongside Him for the salvation of the world!
Not so glamorous after-all is it?
Unless you want to be a hero.
Unless you want your life to make a positive difference.
Unless you are willing to lose yourself—your selfishness—for the sake of others—and get more out of this life than those who are only interested in bread that spoils!!!
Jesus says, “whoever comes to me, I will never turn away.”
Wow!
How awesome is that?
“Come to me! I will give you eternal life! I will make you whole! I will make your life meaningful. I will never turn you away!”
But we turn away from Him, do we not, and find ourselves back in the same mess we were in before!
To so many of us, Christianity is just too hard to swallow!
So we leave through the revolving door.
We leave.
We turn away.
We run from the only One Who can give us LIFE!
We see this happen so dramatically in our Scripture passage for this morning.
Who knows how many people considered themselves disciples at this point?
Could have been a full 5,000 people or more…
…most likely it was!
But when Jesus starts talking about some tough stuff…
The five thousand quickly turns into 12!
Imagine a church going from 5,000 members to 12 in just a matter of seconds!
But this is what happens here!
“Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day!”
Boy, people think vampires are cool!
They got nothing on Jesus!!!
Of course, Jesus was not speaking literally.
He was speaking metaphorically.
He goes on, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”
In other words, following Jesus has nothing to do with the material things of this world…
…Jesus has no use for this stuff!
Fancy cars, loud stereos, big houses, resorts…
…these things mean nothing!
Jesus does not offer a get-rich-quick scheme.
I once had a young woman come to me in my office.
She was a member of a non-denominational church which preached ‘the prosperity gospel’ and her parents had just joined the church I pastored.
She had come to me to make sure I believed the right way.
During our conversation, she made the statement, “Jesus became poor so that we could become rich!”
And she meant this literally!
What a shame.
What a distortion of the Gospel.
So many folks who believe and are taught this way…well, they are among the ones who become easily discouraged with Christianity—leave angry at God and the Church and never come back!
They were sold a bad bill of goods.
Jesus, on the other hand, pulls no punches.
He tells it like it is.
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first,” He warns us.
“If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.”
“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
“I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
We are told that after Jesus said this, “many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
“Does this offend you?” Jesus asks.
A Christian missionary was taking care of AIDS orphans in Africa.
She was down on her hands and knees, feeding them, dressing, and binding their wounds.
A friend watched what she was doing, and remarked: “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.”
The missionary looked up and replied, “Neither would I.”
When we consume Jesus and thus allow His love and compassion to consume US we find ourselves doing things we could never imagine doing.
Our entire lives take on a new and different meaning; our priorities change—and we enter into a quality of life that can only be described as eternal!
Not surprisingly, some people have a hard time with Jesus.
His way is not the easy way.
His way leads to a Cross!
But it also leads to the empty tomb!
The most important thing in this life is to say “yes” to God and to stay focused on our faith!
In doing this we will be missionaries in the fields of East Ridge and beyond, souls will be saved because of this community of faith; lives will be healed, the hungry will taste the bread of life!
We can walk away from this--like the vast majority of the disciples did—or we can stick around and answer triumphantly with Simon Peter: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
May it be so.
Amen.
