Notes for preaching Sunday.

As our preaching elder is on Sabbatical, I was one of those asked to preach. These are my notes for the sermon I gave on 11 September.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 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. 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.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:60-69 ESV)

Christ has just lost almost all his congregation.

I can imagine the modern church growth people taking him aside and telling him he has to change, right quick, now.

So why did this happen and how?

To understand this, you need to look a little backwards. Jesus had been teaching around Galilee and had fed the crowd. The following day he had a crowd find him on the other side of the Lake, where he had gone with his disciples.

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” (John 6:25-27 ESV)

The first thing that Christ did was reject any sense that he was going to get his kingdom on this world by acts of power, by providing goods, and by making people comfortable. He had fed the people out of compassion.

Once and again.

But not regularly. Not as a routine, not as a right.

We know that too much aid harms. That if you continually provide a dole, there is no incentive to work, and we are not designed to be idle. We are not to bribe people into the kingdom of God. It is not about our prosperity.

I’d argue it is the opposite. If you want a comfortable live, leave! Abandon Christ. Don’t try to live to his standards: they are high, but follow the standards of this world and this world will love you and embrace you and share its destruction with you.

Jesus continued to teach this way. It appears that there were a series of messages.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. (John 6:35-37 ESV)

This did not help. People were getting puzzled. Perhaps Jesus needed a marketing platform. People were getting confused.

You see, Jesus had grown up in Galilee. He was a local. People knew his Mum, his Dad, his brothers, his sisters. And he is saying he is the bread of life? What is that about?

So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (John 6:41-42 ESV)

These people could not consider that Christ was God incarnate. They would not accept that he was calling them to a greater union. And that this was greater than the politics of their time, their region, and the needs of the people in that area. But Jesus did not comfort them, or let them consider that there was an option to just be a good zealous Jew and treat him as another teacher.

He instead demanded that they take his words seriously.

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 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.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 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. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (John 6:48-56 ESV)

And this is the hard saying that the disciples could not withstand. They were Jews: the flesh of pigs and camels and snakes and frogs was (and is) tref, unclean, detestable, disgusting.

This predated communion, and as Christ is talking about the spirit he means that we need to draw daily, spiritually, from him – as we eat and drink most days, so we should pray and abide in Christ every day.

The interpretation of this leads us to the table, to communion. Now, Christ was not afraid to use symbol and ritual and metaphor. This is a God who regulated sacrifices and a tabernacle and consecration of the descendents of Aaron and inspired Psalms. He is not afraid of liturgy. The bread is as his body, the wine is as his blood. And in doing this we declare the complete and entire payment for our transgressions was made by Christ when the Romans executed him.

For me, the plain text suffices, and I’ll leave further speculations to Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.

But this was too hard a saying. It offended.

And so people left.

So why did Jesus offend?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the truth is often offensive. Many don’t want to hear it.

Many want to regulate it.

Many want to take the words of Christ and ignore them. They want to turn Christ into a nice endorsement of their current project, their current empire. They want to say God is blessing them, when often they are doing the exact opposite of what Christ taught.

There are many people who tell us how to be Christian.

But there were as many people telling Jesus how to be a good Jew.

In those days, the traditions of the Pharisees subverted, contradicted the Law of Moses, and made injustice holy.

So what should we do? How should we act?

Firstly, we need to seek truth. For me, this requires that I spend a lot of time in the Word. The more research I do and read, the more I see the underlying lies of the assumptions within the questions unasked… and the more I find myself turning to the truth.

And Christ is truth.

Secondly, we have to stop being scared. We are having our speech regulated by those who tell us how to be a good, polite, kiwi: they allow certain injustices to flourish and evils to go unchecked while ensuring that we travel no faster than 102 km/h and honour the treaty.

Perhaps we need to care more about truth and justice than keeping these commissions and politicians off our backs.

Perhaps instead we should please God.

And thirdly, we need to continue to follow and not fall away. The sayings of Christ are not nice. But they are true, and only in them there is life.

Far better the world hate us, call us every name they can think of, and walk away from us. (The names they have become really boring, really quick… and yes, I’ve been called all of them)

For there is only one source of teaching that leads to life eternal, and that is Christ. There is no other.

So follow no other.