14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16B

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16B August 26, 2018 The other day, I was walking back from a service in our chapel, and I listened to the people walking ahead of me talk about difficult topics of faith, like why does God allow sickness. They each talked about ways they had wrestled with this hard topic, and the ways that they had made their peace with it, as a part of engaging their faith. In our gospel reading for today, we have the culmination of the five weeks we have spent in Chapter 6 of John’s gospel. The chapter starts with the feeding of the 5,000, and the people are so impressed with Jesus’s miracle, that they follow him, asking for more. This inspires from Jesus a long chapter’s worth of teachings on how he is the bread of life, much like the manna that was given to their ancestors in the wilderness. And like their ancestors, the people begin to grumble and complain at Jesus’s teachings. As a result, Jesus seems to get more and more graphic in the language he uses, and it is more and more offensive to his hearers. First, it is “the Jews” or the leaders of the religious establishment who take issue with the teachings. And in today’s reading, we see that even Jesus’s disciples are not immune. “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” many of his disciples begin saying, and Jesus says to them: “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” The writer of John’s gospel tells us that “because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” Now, these aren’t just members of the crowd who followed Jesus after they witnessed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. These are disciples, who had seen something in Jesus and had already given up much to follow him. They come to a cross roads in their faith, in the face of this hard teaching, and they choose to turn back rather than to go forward. This provokes Jesus to say to the 12, who still remain: “‘Do you also wish to go away?’” And John tells us that “Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’” It is a beautiful sentiment on Peter’s part, and there almost seems to be some sort of redemption in it, that even though Jesus has gone from being so popular and followed by so many to being deserted because of his radical teachings that are hard for people to stomach, at least he still has his 12 most faithful followers. But listen to the last two verses of chapter 6, which our lectionary cuts off for today: “Jesus answered them, ‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.’ He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him.” And we know that not only does Judas, one of the 12 betray him, but also, just about everyone else deserts him, too. This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? In the life of faith, sometimes the way forward is smooth and easy, but at other times, things get difficult. Our lives bump up against the hard teachings of Jesus, and we, like the disciples, find ourselves standing at a crossroads. Do we continue on the way forward and continue to follow Jesus, or do we turn back and seek an easier path? In the gospel of John, the Greek word that our passage for today translates as belief (pisteuo) is used almost 100 times. And this word doesn’t just mean an intellectual sort of belief or thinking. It means placing confidence in, entrusting oneself to, even choosing a path and following it through. C. S. Lewis hints at this in his book Mere Christianity when he writes, “There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief… Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience.” Our lives of faith are all made up of times when we felt that the teachings were too difficult, and so we turned away, turned back and of times when we stayed true to the course of belief that we had set to follow. As I look back over my life of following Jesus, I am struck by the fact that it is the difficult times that I remember most, and it is because I followed the path before me, even though I could have turned back. Even though that way led to heartbreak and failure, much like Jesus’s way led to the cross, even in those difficult times, I was sustained by God in ways that were uncommon from other easier times in my life. I invite you this week, to reflect upon the difficult times in the life of your faith, when you chose to follow the path of belief forward rather than turning back. Think about the ways that the Spirit gave you life in those times, or is giving you life now, if you find yourself in a difficult season. Ask yourself, “When, in the life of my faith, have I felt really alive? When have I felt the Spirit giving life to me?