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 religious leaders in the synagogue quarreled among themselves regarding Jesus' teaching, 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 comments that even Christ's disciples took His teaching on His Body and Blood as a hard saying, and many walked with Him no more.   To this day, there are those who reject Christ's own words in the Gospel which concern the sacramental eating of His Body and drinking of His Blood, and therefore do not walk in His teaching.  My study further comments that because of the difficulty of grasping the depth of this Mystery, many attempt to either define its nature rationally or to explain away Christ's words completely -- that is, giving them a purely metaphorical meaning.  Either extreme is dubious.  To reject this sacramental teaching is to reject the witness of the Scriptures and the unanimous teaching of the Church throughout history.  From the earliest times of the Church, the word Eucharist (its root meaning to "give thanks" in Greek) came to refer both to the Liturgy and to the sacrament of Holy Communion.  Before the end of the first century, the Didache refers to the celebration of the Liturgy as "the Eucharist."  In the year AD 150, St. Justin writes, "This food we call 'Eucharist,' of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes the things we teach are true, and has received the washing [Holy Baptism] for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ commanded us."  According to St. Justin, the Church accepts "that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from Him is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus."

 

 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.   This "hard saying" (see above) is so difficult to grasp that many of Christ's disciples left Him.  So He turned to the twelve.  In other Gospels, we can read the description of Peter's confession of faith (see Matthew 16:13-20, Luke 9:18-20, Mark 8:27-30).  My study bible affirms that Peter's answer to Christ's question, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, excludes compromise with other religious systems, and renders the Christian faith from being seen as merely another philosophical system or path of spirituality.  It says that Jesus' question is the ultimate one in Scripture and in all theology, for how it is answered will define the universe.  Christ is not simply another king or prophet, but the long-awaited Savior.

 

 In the Synoptic Gospels, Peter's confession that Jesus is the Christ comes during a discussion, prompted by Jesus, about who people generally say He is.  And then Jesus asks the twelve, "But who do you say that I am?" prompting Peter's confession.  But here, the text is slightly different.  Peter says, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."  John's Gospel gives us this powerful vision of Christ's words and meanings themselves, and of the effect which His words themselves have on people.  When the religious leaders send temple officers to arrest Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles, they return empty-handed, and all they can say for themselves is, "No man ever spoke like this Man!" (see John 7:45-46).  We are repeatedly given a sense of the power and the life of Jesus' word itself, and nowhere more clearly than in the words of Peter here.  In John's 8th chapter, Jesus says to the leaders, "I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him" (my italics).  Further along in the same discussion, He tells them, "Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.  Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?  He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God" (again, italics are mine).   In today's reading, Jesus says explicitly, "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life."  The emphasis in John's Gospel is powerfully on the word of God; that is on the meanings, authority, and power itself of the words given to Christ by the Father to speak to the world.  In future chapters, Jesus will become even more explicit regarding the word He gives and the Father who gives that word to Him to say and to teach to the world.  But this Gospel also gives us the effects of Christ's word in those who believe, and that is best described by Peter's response:  "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."   From the beginning, John's Gospel has taught us that Christ Himself is the Word, the Logos (John 1:1).  And here, even as Jesus has just finished teaching about the Eucharist, and the mystical presence of His body and blood, Peter gives us the words that tie together the Eucharist's promise of eternal life (John 6:54-55) with the very word of Jesus:  "You have the words of eternal life."   We are given powerful hints of something similar in Luke's Gospel, when Luke reports the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).  After they realize the Stranger with whom they were speaking was Christ, they ask themselves, "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 the very response to the word of Christ.  And in the same story of the road to Emmaus, it's coupled with another regarding the Eucharist, that "He was known to them in the breaking of the bread."  So here is the question for all of the readers of this blog:  How do you respond to Christ's words?  Do they hold fire for your heart?  Are they the words of eternal life?  Let us consider what we're given, the power in the words given from the Father, words of spirit and life -- and their power in us.