Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life

 

 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can understand it?"  When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you?  What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.  The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.  But there are some of you who do not believe."  For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him.  And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."  From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?"  But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?"  He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve.

 

- John 6:60–71 

 

Yesterday we read that the leaders in the synagogue quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"  Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, 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 eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.

 

  Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can understand it?"  When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you?  What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.  The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.  But there are some of you who do not believe."  For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him.  And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."  From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?"  My study bible points out that even Christ's disciples took His teaching on His Body and Blood as a hard saying, and many walked with Him no more.  It states that to this day, there are still those who reject Christ's own words concerning the sacramental eating of His Body and drinking of His Blood, and therefore do not walk in His teaching.  There is a great difficulty in grasping the depth of this Mystery, and so there have been many attempts to rationally define its nature, or to explain away His words as purely metaphor.  But my study bible says that either extreme is dubious.  When one rejects a sacramental teaching, it becomes, in effect, a rejection of the witness of the Scriptures and the unanimous teaching of the Church throughout history.  

But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?"  He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve.   It is an interesting way in which this confession of faith by Peter is spoken in this particular Gospel.  Peter's words single out Christ for His compelling testimony which can't be found elsewhere.  In John's Gospel, this remarkable confession on Peter's part also singles out the betrayal that will come.  

If Jesus has the words of eternal life, where else shall we go, after all?  Peter's comment reminds of the story in Luke of the disciples on their way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).  After sitting down to eat with the stranger they meet, we're told:  Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.  So Christ was known to them, as is often pointed out, in the breaking of the bread.  But my notice is directed to the words the disciples say to one another, once they realize and He's vanished from them:  "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"   This is, to my mind, an echo of Peter's words in today's reading:  "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."  Who else can create that energy in the heart?  Who else has living words that reach down deep into a place for which we have no plumb line?  Who else has the words of eternal life that reflect and touch us and highlight what we need, and tomorrow will spark another thought that helps us through, and thirty years from now, and even two millennia after they were first spoken?  Who else has such words that are a burning fire that doesn't consume but enlivens our lives when nothing else does?  There is just one place, one Person, to whom we can go.  We may not know it, and take a lifetime's journey wandering to find some peace, some place where we can rest and trust, but all so that we come back home and realize that what we needed was always there, but we had to find it.   This was my journey:  I studied and looked and explored and all that work led me right back home, to the place of the words of eternal life -- but more importantly, to the One who has those words, in whom I could ultimately really trust when all else failed.  It's not that I left home behind, but I needed to find out for myself.  Perhaps, a little like the wandering Israelites, I needed to work through my confusion and misreading and misunderstanding to come back to where the treasure was hiding all along.   So Peter's words are the words of the disciples going toward Emmaus who think they've lost their Master, and they are the words of the Prodigal, too (Luke 15:11-32).  We return to the One who has the words of eternal life, who is the very living Word.  We return to the place where the One who emptied Himself to us abides in us, and we in Him.  It is those living words, the words of eternal life, which have no end and never cease to give, where we find we hunger and thirst no more -- or perhaps that they always have more to give us to meet our need.  To whom shall we go?  For here with Him is truly home.