Do you also want to go away?

 

 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, as Jesus spoke of Himself as the bread of heaven, the religious 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.  My study Bible comments that even His disciples took Christ's teaching on His Body and Blood as a hard saying, and so many walked with Him no more.  It comments that still to this day, many reject Christ's words concerning the sacramental eating of His Body and drinking of His Blood, and so do not walk in this teaching.  It says that because of the difficulty of grasping the depth of this Mystery, many seek to define its nature rationally, or to explain His words by casting them as metaphor.  But either extreme is risky; to reject the sacramental nature of it is to reject the witness of the Scriptures and the unanimous teaching of the Church throughout history.  

 

 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.  Here is the power of confession, at a time when others fall away.  In John's Gospel, Peter's confession comes in response to Jesus' question, "Do you also want to go away?"  He asks a question in return, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" and expresses the remarkable finding of faith:  "You have the words of eternal life."  Note that Peter speaks for all of the apostles here, and in His confession, "Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  My study Bible comments that to name Jesus as the one and only Son of the living God distinguishes Christianity from being seen as merely another philosophical system or path of spirituality.  It adds that this position excludes all compromise with other religious systems.  Peter's understanding cannot be achieved by human reason, but only by divine revelation through faith (1 Corinthians 12:3).  Christ means "Anointed One," equivalent to the Hebrew title "Messiah."

 

Let us note the unusual turning of the hearts of people given to us in today's text.   As Jesus reveals that "the words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life," there are many who fall away, because they cannot accept the "hard saying."    We are told that many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.   Jesus has His own pronouncement on this:  "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."   So we are to notice this spiritual connection between the Father, the words of Christ, and faith.  There are those who cannot "walk" with Him any longer past this point.  But then Jesus turns to the twelve:  "Do you also want to go away?"  And Peter responds with his confession, and evidence not of turning away, but the opposite; that is, a deepening of faith, a deeper grasp of the reality of Christ.  In an echo of Jesus' own teaching that His words are spirit and they are life, Peter says, "You have the words of eternal life."  And this in turn leads to his confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  As we noted above, Peter's statements here are made on behalf of all the twelve, as he speaks in the plural "we."  Of course, the text also notes that Jesus is aware one of them will betray Him, as are the hearers of the Gospel.  So couched in today's reading, and in the context of the whole of chapter 6, are important indicators of the movement of faith in the hearts of people.  Some move away.  Some have never believed, but have instead demanded a sign in order to be convinced.  These are the ones who wanted to make Him king after they were fed in the wilderness, but He taught them, "Do not labor for the food which perishes...."  Some have simply complained against Him and criticized Him (the religious leaders in the synagogue),  Now in today's reading, there are many disciples who no longer "walk" with Him, because they simply cannot hear His words, they cannot grasp His teaching on His Body and Blood.  Jesus speaks of those given Him by the Father, clearly indicating that those who cannot continue this journey of faith any further (or perhaps we could also say 'any deeper') are not included among them.  So, our faith doesn't come simply because others believe, nor is it based solely on signs, nor some form of intellectual acceptance.  But there is a powerful key in His teaching that His words "are spirit and they are life," that Peter says He has the "words of eternal life," and that He is the "Son of the living God."  For spirit and life are intertwined here, necessary for faith and the deepening of that faith, the continuing journey the disciples are on.  They are intertwined also with the "living God" who is the One who gives all to Christ who are truly is -- and those who cannot go further in faith are not among them.  For we have this working of spiritual reality among us, and the action of Father, Son, and Spirit cannot be excluded from this understanding and connection.  For faith and community go hand in hand, and there is the power of spirit and life to be grasped in faith.  We know that the disciples who continued Him did not understand all that He taught, but faith in Christ is more than intellectual understanding.  It is trust in Him, and the compehension that despite mystery, His words are "spirit and life."  For most of the world's denominations, today is the feast day of the Annunciation, the time when Mary was told by the angel that she would give birth to a Son.  If we look carefully at Luke 1:26-38, we can see some similar elements there that we pick up in today's reading.  There is the spiritual action of the angel Gabriel, sent by God to Mary with an announcement, special words that also convey spirit and life, teaching her that she is blessed among women, and that "the Lord is with you."  Mary doubts, asking, "How can this be, since I do not know a man?"  But the angel replies, again bringing in the power of the Holy Spirit working among human beings, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God."  Gabriel also teaches about the child coming to her elderly cousin Elizabeth, and adds, "For with God nothing will be impossible."  Mary responds with faith, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word."  She responds to the words of spirit and life, and her faith will sustain her through all the rest that is to come, even the pain of losing her Son in such a way as will come.  In John's Gospel, we have yet another reference to Christ's words of spirit and life, and what an impact they make, when the temple officers, sent to arrest Jesus, are unable to do so.  When they are subsequently questioned about this, they simply reply, "No man ever spoke like this Man!"  (John 7:45-47).  Even they were able to hear and grasp what most of the leaders could not, responding to the "spirit and life" in Christ's words.  Let us consider today the Annunciation and Mary's faith, and that deepening journey of faith that is asked of us when we are invited by God to know the Christ.  For this is indeed a continuing walk, a path that threads throughout our lives and their difficulties and joys.  It will try our faith, our trust, and we will come to new roadblocks that seem to defy all logic and meaning, asking us to grasp yet more deeply the spirit and life in His word and teaching, and find what they mean to us.  For this is the journey we see in the Gospels, and it is also ours.  In Greek, the Annunciation is called "Evangelismos/Ευαγγελισμος" -- the same word that means gospel, literally "good news."  Let us take heed how we hear, and grasp hold of the spirit and life in His words as we go forward in this journey and walk with Him and all the rest who've come thus far.

 

 

 

 

 

The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are 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

In recent readings in John's Gospel, the current theme began after Jesus fed 5,000 in the wilderness.  The people wanted to make Him King by force, but He escaped them, eventually coming to Capernaum.  The people followed Him there.  He spoke in the synagogue about the food which endures to everlasting life.  He taught them that He is that bread of life. The religious leadership quarreled among themselves, asking, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"  Jesus taught, "The bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."  In yesterday's reading, He 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.   Jesus' difficult sayings have an effect, and He loses disciples:  many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  Even His disciples feel this is a hard saying, impossible to understand.  The sacrament of the Eucharist, of the Body and Blood of Christ remains a profound Mystery that is still disputed in different ways, be it with rational explanations for the saying or making His teachings purely metaphorical.  The ancient early Church had instituted the Eucharist right away; by the time of the mid-second century Church writings show that it was a core of worship.  It was considered a sacrament and a Mystery, and remains so.  Throughout history, it is part of the witness of Scripture and the unanimous teaching of the Church.

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.  Here is Simon Peter's answer to the ultimate question about Christ's identity.  There is nowhere else to turn, nowhere else to go: He is the one whose words have eternal life.  This is the answer of faith, and the confession of faith.  In the Gospels, it is Peter who speaks for all the disciples.  It is Jesus who brings up -- here at this juncture of a crucial question of faith -- the one who will betray Him, the one without such faith, even one chosen by Himself.

Here we come to a crux in Jesus' teaching, a turning point.  His saying is hard, how are they to understand it?  The sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, of the Eucharist, is still a hard saying, so to speak.  It remains a disputed Mystery.  But perhaps that is just the point.  Faith is not concerned only with the purely rational, but rather with information from Sources far beyond what our understanding of the rational, and of facts at hand, can explain away.  Faith, we remember, really means that we put our trust in something -- or rather in Someone.  And faith works at such a depth in us that it becomes not about choosing which brand of soap we want to use based on "information" we have about its ingredients, but rather about trust, a deeper level of knowledge or information that can't come through purely intellectual understanding.  It involves the heart, the center of who we are.  Moreover it involves our capacity for relationship with Persons who are not 'only' human beings who live on our level of comprehension, but of Divine Persons.  God's full substance or essence isn't comprehensible to us.  We can't understand what it is to be the Son or the Father or the Holy Spirit in the same way we can understand, for instance, who our brother is, or our spouse.  (And here's a mystery about what it really means to be a person:  if you think carefully, you will find that you don't fully know the depth of another person either, no matter how deeply you know them.  As persons, we're not completely quantifiable.  This is part of the nature of personhood which makes us something "like" God and created in God's image.)  Just as we choose to put faith in or trust in certain people, so we have faith in Christ and faith in what He teaches.  Here are His words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood.  We know how He will give His flesh for the life of the world.  We know of His voluntary death on the Cross, and we know of His Resurrection.  But the depth of these mysteries, the mystical reality of the work of God, isn't something we can know fully and rationally.  It isn't something we can prove in a lab -- and it's not something whose meanings and myriad values in our own lives, touching on all kinds of circumstances in which we may find ourselves, we are ever going to exhaust.  This is the nature of Mystery:  it continues to unfold on depths we hadn't suspected even existed.  Even within ourselves and in our own experience of our faith, we won't exhaust the possibilities, for instance, of just how the Cross may uplift us or give us life when we experience something of "death."  Mystery is a crucially important reality to accept even though we can't fully understand it.  There are simply things that any educated and intelligent person of faith must accept to which the answer really is, "I don't know."  It's an important answer that acknowledges not only the limits of our knowledge, but in fact the only answer that acknowledges the fullness of the things we don't know.  It is the only truly wise answer to the fullness of life and existence.  But in faith, we find we're on a voyage of discovery.  It is an internal journey that will involve all the things we experience outside of ourselves as well.  In this Mystery of sacrament we find a depth of relatedness that touches on all things in ourselves:  past, present, and future.  We may find ourselves reviewing old hurts in light of the Cross, and resolving conflicts we hadn't managed to deal with that are years old.  We may find ourselves with the courage to face something we've hidden from ourselves or others.  That is just the nature of Mystery:  it keeps giving what we don't know; it is inexhaustible in its Truth.  Let us accept His words of spirit and life without limiting them.  Let us know and experience the truth of faith, the perception of something so deep within us we don't really know its Source.

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are 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

In this week's reading, we are going through John, chapter 6.  First, we began on Monday with the feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness.  The people followed Jesus to make Him king, but He eluded them.  He sent His disciples by night back across the Sea of Galilee, and walked on the water to them in the middle of a tempest.  When the people saw the disciples' boat gone, and themselves went to Capernaum and found Jesus there, they asked when He had arrived.  There, He spoke to them about what they sought from Him.  Jesus taught that they sought Him because they were fed.  He said, "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him."  They asked, ""What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."   Moses gave the people manna, but "My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."  He told them, "I am the bread of life."  All that the Father has given Him should not be lost, but raised up at the last day.  In Thursday's reading, Jesus said, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.  It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.'  Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me."   He told them, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."  Finally, in yesterday's reading, we read that the leadership therefore 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?"  My study bible tells us that "even His disciples took Christ's teaching on His Body and Blood as a hard saying, and many of them departed from Him.  the Lord Jesus is aware of the thoughts of men."  Let us remember that these people hearing these words for the first time have no idea what will take place as the Last Supper, have not been introduced to a remembrance or Eucharist in this manner.  They do not yet know of His sacrifice on the Cross.  It tells us something about faith that these teachings are revealed and later they will come to be understood in a new and greater light.

"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."  Here is a mysterious teaching, leading us to Mystery.  Jesus' words are spirit and they are life, and it is the Spirit who gives life.  If we are to truly understand, we must approach in relationship, in a place of true spiritual relationship -- we don't leave out any capacities of ourselves in this relationship but every part of us is included.  That means even that deepest place that the Father touches, utterly mysterious to us, but in which even God the Father is somehow at work.  To my mind, these words sum up a great message told in all the stories of John's Gospel, that by simply sticking to the material, the surface appearance and meaning, we will not understand Jesus nor our relationship, nor the meanings in His words.  It is the Spirit that plays a role in all of it.  His words live and are filled with life.  St. Cyril of Alexandria has commented:  "It is not the nature of the flesh that renders the Spirit life-giving but the might of the Spirit that makes the body life-giving. The words then that I have spoken with you are spirit, that, is both spiritual and of the Spirit, and they are life" (Commentary on the Gospel of John 4.3). 

From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  The words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood cannot be understood without the spiritual life that is in them; they cannot be comprehended at all except by faith.  They become a stumbling block to those who cannot accept them in this sense.

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."  John's Gospel repeats again the words of Jesus, this time spoken by Peter.  It is Christ who has the words of eternal life.  This is sign of Peter's understanding of the spirit and life in the words of Christ.  If nothing else, that Peter (speaking for the rest of the disciples) understands.  In Luke's Gospel, after the Crucifixion, we get another sense of what it is to hear these words when two disciples, after entertaining a Stranger on the road to Emmaus, say about Him, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"

"Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."   Peter confesses faith in Jesus, a recognition that He is the Christ.  Elsewhere Jesus says that such confession is only possible through the revelation by the Father.  My study bible tells us, "This confession of faith is a pivotal moment in the life of Peter and the disciples on behalf of whom he spoke." 

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.  Here is Jesus' foreknowledge of what is to happen.  Many disciples have left, and He will be betrayed by one of the Twelve, chosen by Him.Again, there's a kind of mystery here; it's a partial revelation.  It's something to put them all aware - but Jesus does not reveal who it is He speaks of.

John's Gospel continues to invite us to dig more deeply into our understanding.  Perhaps the most illuminating passages of all are those in which Jesus tells us that it is the Spirit that gives life -- and that the words He speaks are spirit and they are life.  How are we to understand this?  We see the ones who continue with Him.  There is the power of faith, drawn by the Father and drawn by the Spirit -- the same thing reflected in the "hearts that burned" on the road to Emmaus as they listened again to the words of spirit and life in the One whom they thought was a stranger.  Faith, as John so cleverly tells us through the ways in which His Gospel is written, will draw us forward into things we don't know and don't completely understand, into the mysteries of God.  If it is the Father who draws us to faith in Christ, and the Spirit who gives life in the words of Christ, then all of the Trinity is at work in our faith, and therefore in us -- somewhere in our hearts at depths we can't quite understand.  That ties us in with something of which we must always be aware:  that in a relationship of love in which our faith is deepened there is always the power of God at work.  None of us gets there alone.  To be participating in such a relationship of faith is therefore a gift of God, into which we are invited as intimately and as completely as is indicated by Jesus' teaching that He is the bread of life, and that to eat His flesh and drink His blood is to abide in Him.  We are created by our Creator to be in union with Him.  This is the opposite of a disparaging of our flesh and all our worldly lives; in fact, what Jesus is saying is that in the union of Father, Son and Spirit with us in faith then all things may become transfigured into the fullness of life that He promises.  Let us remember that gift.  May faith (which does not always have all the answers now) enliven and enrich your life, and draw you forward into its gift and promise of greater life in abundance.