To whom can we go?

Joshua 24.1-2a, 14-18 We will serve the Lord, for he is our God

Ephesians 6.10-20 Put on the whole armour of God

John 6.56-69 Who shall we go to? You are the Holy One of God

 

 

Simon Peter answered Jesus, ‘Lord, to whom can we go?’ (John 6.68)

 

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The last verses of this morning’s Gospel reading are poignant, and stinging:

 

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? (John 6.60,61)

 

There are echoes here of the people of Israel in the Exodus from Egypt, murmuring and complaining to and about Moses, declaring that they preferred their life in captivity as slaves to the new freedom that God has delivered them into.

 

Despite God overcoming the Egyptians; despite being led by a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night; despite being led through the parted waters of the Red Sea to deliver them; despite God feeding them with manna from heaven, the daily bread they were given by the Lord who provides: still the Israelites grumbled.

 

Our first reading alluded to the fact that the Israelites had wandered away from the Lord their God. (Joshua 24.14-18)

 

You’ll recall that the Israelites constructed a golden calf, an idol of their own making, that was to be their object of worship, even as Moses was receiving the commandments from God on Mount Sinai.

 

‘Is that what you want?’ asks Joshua, ‘choose this day whom you will serve…as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD’. (Joshua 24.15)

 

There’s the crucial question, ‘is that what you want?’

 

Jesus knew that among his disciples - that wider band of those who have been following him - there were some who just did not believe:

 

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?’ (John 6.66,67)

 

What does your heart say when Jesus asks, ‘Do you wish to go away?’

We are invited to respond to the same question, albeit for our times.

 

Peter says, on behalf of the Twelve, ‘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.’ (John 6.68,69)

 

With Peter, believers see the vacuousness of any way, other than that of Jesus Christ.

 

Other ways, and their ideas - the so-called Zeitgeist - can seem very seductive: ‘influencers’, the powers that be, the rich and famous all are captivated by the ideas of the moment.

 

Is that what you want?

 

Passing idols, ideologies, fantasies, fears and fads: all can distract us from the living God.

 

The Christian life is not just about rejecting things - though it certainly includes that - it is about embracing Christ, about desiring to know Christ: as St Paul puts it, ‘that I may know Christ and the power of his resurrection…’ (Philippians 3.10).

 

Echoing confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Matthew 16.16) Peter says:

 

there’s nowhere else to go. But more than that, you, Jesus, have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.

 

This is the culmination of the teaching of John 6, that Jesus is the Bread of Life on whom we feed, and that this is so much more than just something we think, but something we embrace and receive through Christ’s presence in what we see as bread and wine, and what he teaches becomes his body and blood.

 

Peter’s declaration moves us from seeing belief simply as a mental act, to belief and faith as a whole-body experience.

 

The move of the eighteenth century was to say ‘I think, therefore I am’, in other words my mind is me.

 

If that is what moves us, then we too will reject Jesus’ teaching in John 6.

 

If Christ moves us, then we will know that we can feed on Christ; we can imbibe Christ; we come to know him at a cellular level.

 

We are not disembodied brains - thinking machines - after all, we love, we desire, we express ourselves in song, movement and gesture: there is so much more of us to feed!

 

Only to be fed with ideas and thoughts will not ultimately feed us. We will continue, as John 6 is telling us, to be hungry unless we feed on Christ.

 

And we need to keep on being fed, otherwise we fall away and find other ‘food’ that cannot satisfy but that can lead us away from the living God: that is why we receive the sacrament week by week, if not day by day.

 

John 6 invites us to encounter and know Christ on a level much deeper than our intellect, thoughts or even feelings, but to know him in such a way that knowledge is hardly the right word, rather it is a becoming knowledge, knowing by becoming as he is.

 

So Christ says:

 

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. (John 6.56,57)

 

We abide in Christ and he abides in us when we eat his flesh and drink his blood.

 

This is a becoming, a mystical and contemplative way of knowing, so that our lives are shaped by the love, the truth, the hope, the life of God.

 

St Paul puts it like this in his letter to the Galatians,

 

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God. (Galatians 2.20)

 

Today our journey through the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel ends, but do return to it as you grow in knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, who invites us to become as he is, that we may come ‘to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God’ (Ephesians 3.19)