Clingers

Scripture: John 6:56-69

John 6:56–69 NRSV

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said 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.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” 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.”

When We Don’t Know

What do we do when we don't understand what God is doing?

About a dozen years ago, I was working at a church camp as the chaplain. I got to work with all the camps and all ages of campers. The Day Campers were the youngest group and my interaction with them usually happened during breakfast. One morning, early in the week, we discovered one little boy curled up underneath the table while the other children ate their breakfast. The camp director asked me to help her find out what was going on.

All the normal things crossed our mind. Sickness, some kind of allergic reaction, or maybe even bullying from some of the other campers. I crawled down under the table and sat next to him and asked him what was wrong. His tummy hurt a little, he wasn't hungry, no the other kids were not picking on him. I got ready to take him to the camp nurse when he suddenly said, "I'm just really missing my mom right now."

Alas, the most contagious illness among our young campers had struck: Homesickness. We knew that if we did not isolate this fast we would have 50 crying children wanting to go home and missing out on the camping experience. He was only five years old, but Day campers got to go home each night. The Camp Director Deb, had a lot more experience with this than I did, so she distracted the young boy before the waterworks really got going.

Deb took us both on a tour of the kitchen, including the big walk-in cooler. The little boy had never seen anything like it. Such a huge kitchen. So much food. It made him completely forget home for just a few minutes, which helped him get back into enjoying the moment of being at camp. After that short kitchen tour, I accompanied the young boy back to the rest of his campmates who had gathered for swim time at the pool.

On the way to the pool, the little guy looked at me and said, "You know, I have a friend who got homesick one time, but then he got to see a giant kitchen and it made him feel better.""It took everything I had in me to hold back laughing out loud. An epic meltdown that could have affected an entire group of new campers

Sometimes the mountains we face are just molehills at the moment, but we cannot see beyond them from where we stand.

Difficult Teaching

We have spent several weeks grappling with and digging into one teaching of Jesus: That He is the bread of life, and those who consume Him will have eternal life. Jesus does not want us to settle for less than the full measure of life God intended for us even if it is not something we asked for ourselves. Even more, He knows we cannot live that life without Him and each other. This was all such a drastic change from the way they understood God that hearing Jesus talk like this disturbed them. It was a difficult teaching for them to hear, let alone figure out how to put it into practice.

Jesus had many moments when he preached from the field or from a shoreline. John says that this particular difficult teaching took place in the synagogue in Capernaum, Peter's home town. It wasn't far from Nazareth, the home of Jesus either. It's often easier to share difficult things with strangers than it is with the people who know you best. Jesus style teaching was to give milk to the infants and meat to the adults. Those who could handle tougher teaching, received it from Him.

Sometimes Jesus gave his disciples teaching that was more than they could handle. I know it is a popular saying among Christians that God will never give you more than you can handle, but that is not a biblical idea. Throughout scripture, God consistently gave people more than they could handle. What He didn't allow was for things to get beyond what He could handle. That requires faith in God moment by moment, not just faith that God sets us up for success ahead of time. I think it requires more courage too. It requires trusting God beyond what we can understand.

We are physical beings living in a physical world and Jesus is trying to teach us to live spiritual lives. It is like that story about the karate kid, whose sensei, Mr. Miyagi, had him waxing his car and cleaning his floors to teach his body the motions he would need in the fighting ring. He did not understand it at the time, but He trusted Mr. Miyagi and his body learned before his mind fully understood the techniques.

It is also like trying to teach someone who has lived their entire life in the desert how to swim in the ocean. However, there is only so much you can do in the classroom before you have to get them into the water, way outside of their comfort zone. And you don't send them into the water alone. You go with them. Jesus doesn't send us into spiritual waters. He leads us into them.

What spiritual waters is God leading you into?

Granted by the Father

Layer upon layer, Jesus is trying to paint a picture of what life with God looks like and it is a struggle. Like a calculus teacher walking into a kindergarten classroom, Jesus knows that we have to come to Him one step at a time, and each of those steps is important. We won't understand fractions until we can add and subtract. We will panic when they start bringing letters into math equations if we cannot multiply and divide yet. Trigonometry will be beyond our grasp until we learn angles and shapes. There is a constant movement of tension and release as we are introduced to new spiritual things, and then settle into learning and applying them... and we don't really learn them until we practice and apply them. But we cannot learn and do it all at once.

That is important to address before we get into the business of who is and is not chosen by God. Of the twelve disciples, John tells us in this passage that Jesus knew who would betray Him and who were doubters. If you fast-forward to the cross, this moment of self-sacrifice that Jesus was portraying with this lesson about Him being the bread of life... who is still there in that moment? Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus,... and John. That's it. Everyone else fled.

What about the others? Were they chosen? Yes. We know Jesus specifically chose Peter, even though He doubted, and Jesus predicted it. Jesus told Peter that he would deny Jesus three times before the rooster crowed, and he did. That was almost a betrayal in and of itself, fueled by doubt. Being chosen by God does not mean you get a free pass to the finish line. It means you are invited to the table, invited into the family. But it is going to take some walking with Jesus to get there.

You know, the word John uses to describe how God leads us into a relationship is translated "granted" in the NRSV. Other bible scholars sometimes use the word "drawn", which has an appeal of its own. But the Greek word basically means "given" in its most basic sense. God gives us this relationship with Him, by giving us Jesus, the true bread from heaven. In ancient Greek myths, the pagan deities might give their heroes weapons or armor. These are common examples of what a God might give. Our God gives us Jesus.

But there is another powerful sense of the word as well, tied not with the subject "God", but the subject "Father", which is the word John actually uses in this passage. This word is used to describe a Father giving away his daughter as a bride to a groom. Now, put aside for a moment trying to figure out who the bride is and who the groom is and focus on the Father. Most fathers at weddings do not give up their daughters willy-nilly. Even if they have a lot of daughters. Tevya, in Fiddler on the Roof, complained about how many daughters God had given him, but he grieved giving up every single one of them. God does not have lots of children to give away. He only has one: Jesus.

There it is again. That weird mix of words that describe our relationship with God. Marriage between the Lamb of God and the Bride of Christ. Adoption into God's kingdom as His adopted children through the sacrifice of His True Son. These are all glimpses of this Holy, Intimate, and Life-Giving relationship God wants with us for eternity - starting today. Jesus is trying to teach us spiritual calculus to prepare us for heaven, and we just haven't seen it yet. We hope God has chosen us. We think God has chosen us. But we are not sure what to do about it. While the rest of the world tries to separate us out into our own little descriptive boxes, categorizing, organizing, pointing out the distinctions and differences... Jesus looks to us and says, "Will you follow me in your confusion, or will you leave?"

Clinging to Jesus

That's where the Twelve disciples were that day. They didn't understand any better than anyone else in the room. They would have failed the theology test. And without an accurate understanding of God, we can't well preach, teach, or heal the way God desires of us. We get stuck in this place where we feel like we have to just make it up as we go. But that is not our burden to bear. We are not responsible for figuring out our relationship with God and each other on our own. We are responsible for following Jesus. Trusting and obeying Him. When we don't know what to do we cling to Him.

We have some beautiful songs, both new and old about clinging to the cross. They give us this assurance that even if we mess everything up, destroy the church, destroy the world... God still loves us and forgives us, and He will let us into Heaven. But what if we started clinging to Him before we go on a rampage? What if we clung not to the cross, but to the risen Savior who is here with us and wants to show us how to live a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control - right in the middle of pandemic, political unrest, natural disasters, and everything else? What if clinging to Jesus did not mean hiding, it meant following our master and learning to love as He loves?

For most of us, our struggles with God do not begin with the terrible things that happen on the other side of the world. They begin on a very personal level: at home, within our families, friends, and those whose lives touch our own. They begin in ourselves. We want so badly to just fix those things, and yet we often know we cannot. Jesus is not asking us to figure out how to fix them. He is asking us to take off our crowns, our titles, our experience, and everything else that we draw our strength from. He is asking us to cling to Him, to follow Him, to trust and obey Him, and to watch what He does in our life as God works through us, around us, within us, and sometimes even despite us.

Brothers and Sisters, welcome to Heaven’s Day Camp.

There is adventure around every corner. We will have some hard work to do and we won’t get everything figured out the first time around. Things may look different than you are used to, but don’t give up on God or on us yet. Jesus is starting a work in us that He promises He will finish if we stick with Him.