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The Rev. Dr. Dennis E. Morey, Pastor
Scripture: John 6:56-69
From a picnic to a funeral… deteriorating good times
I hope you have read the entire sixth chapter of John in your preparations for worship today.
Jesus and the disciples were out in the countryside and thousands of people came to hear him. They stood facing uphill while Jesus taught sitting down from above. Have you ever tried to stand that way? It soon begins to wear on your back and feet, but they stood there all morning. They were eager to find someone who had “good news” for them.
Jesus healed the sick and taught until lunchtime. Then Jesus took five small loaves and two fish and began passing them out, and there were over five thousand people fed. They knew they had found their “good news” messiah.
This was not a miracle that had touched someone else, but one that had touched each person. Everyone there had some of the meal and there were enough leftovers for the twelve disciples to fill their lunch baskets for supper.
The people were so inspired by this miracle that they decided to make Jesus their new king. Jesus knew what was brewing and slipped off into the hills alone. The disciples got in the boat and went off across the lake to Capernaum when night came.
Jesus had walked around the outside of the lake, and the next day he joined the disciples. Soon many of the people who ate the lunch the day before caught up with them, either in boats coming across the lake or walking around the lake as Jesus had.
With the memory of yesterday’s picnic still fresh in their minds, they were eager to find Jesus again. They said, “Remember those good old days when Moses and the Hebrew people were fed manna in the desert?”
Jesus tried to tell them he came to be more than their meal ticket. He was not there to compete with the “good old days.” He came to be the bread of life that would feed the world. He said that those who believed in him would have eternal life.
Then the people began to grumble among themselves. Some of them had known Jesus for a long time. They wondered how he could say that he was the bread of life that had come down from heaven.
They complained to him that it was too difficult for them to understand. They wanted another picnic like the day before and Jesus was talking about dying. They wanted to keep things as they are right now, and Jesus was talking about their seeing him return to God the Father who had sent him.
The people had turned up the second day so Jesus could turn them on with another miracle. But when he began to explain that his purpose was to bring them eternal life, they turned him down and turned back to the lives they had known before.
This picnic had gone downhill fast and was now taking on the mood of a funeral. They didn’t need any more bad news, so they left.
They began with the enthusiasm of the picnic—“Let’s make him our king!”—but moved to the somber mood of a funeral—“This is too much; we just can’t take it.”
These stories are the word of God because in them we have a window not only into the world in which Jesus lived and taught, but a window into our world as well.
In this story we see ourselves looking for the miracle, a reason to believe. We want to hear some “good news” that life is going to get better, that the hard times are going to go away and the good times are going to get better and more frequent.
We are constantly pursuing a messiah who can give us that good news. We come to God looking for the picnic. We want the best. We want good health, we want beautiful weather, we want fantastic financial footing, we want all our friends and family to have healthy and happy lives, we want two inches of rain when the garden is too dry, we want great golf scores and every football game to be a winning one.
In short, we expect life to be a picnic.
In reality we find that most of life is full of challenges. Most of the day is filled with one problem after another and we often cry out to God, “I thought you sent a Messiah to save us. Where is he?”
Although we are looking for the picnic, we find that most of life is more like a funeral. Our bodies are full of aches and pains, there is never enough money, our friends and family are always telling us the bad, sad and awful things happening to them, the garden gets too dry and too wet, and some days there is no sunshine at all and we experience a continual deterioration of good times.
We look back and say, “Remember how good we used to have it? Remember when we were young and healthy, had enough money, and life was like a picnic? What happened?
Friends if we are looking for the messiah, who will provide a continual picnic, keep us young and healthy, and our relationships uncomplicated and our challenges at a minimum, we aren’t going to be happy with Jesus. He is not that kind of messiah.
Jesus talks to us about forgetting ourselves. He talks to us about bearing a cross—that is, taking up a cause that is bigger than us, with the Kingdom of God at its center.
In other words, Jesus is the Messiah who calls us to change the world. Considering the shape our world is in these days, that is not going to be a picnic.
How are you doing that? How is the world where you live and work and play a better place because of your presence there? Have you been trying to find the path of least resistance?
In every situation where we live and work and go to school and play we are called to hear Christ’s words, “Come follow me.” That means that we are to understand that our Savior is just as close to us at school or on the football field, sitting or standing in the bleachers, working at the job, or wherever we are, as he is in this place on Sunday morning.
A couple of weeks ago ten of us were part of a Leadership Summit in Des Moines. We heard Harvey Carey, a pastor who chose to go to America’s poorest zip code to do ministry in Detroit. Michigan.
The Kingdom of God is growing there even among the dilapidated buildings and abandoned junk cars, dead trees, and rampant crime. Some are moving out of the comfortable suburbs with their families to that inner city to join in that ministry. Not just black people, but white, Hispanic, oriental, are moving there, all those God is calling to make a difference for God’s Kingdom in that place.
They understand that when they came to believe in Christ, they did not come to a picnic, but to a funeral. They came to die to their own interests, their own ambitions and goals, so they might live for God’s Kingdom.
We come to Christ as if it is all about what we can “get.” While it is true that when we place our faith in him we have eternal life, that means an eternal relationship with God that begins now. And that eternal relationship is about our living as a part of the Kingdom of God.
Because we are a part of the Kingdom of God, we are called to do the hard thing. We are called to let our own ambitions and goals go as we discover what God has planned for us.
We are not called to a picnic where all our needs are met. Instead we are put in a place that God thinks is the best place we can make a difference. We often come to Christ to have our needs met. We come for the “free lunch,” for the “happy-ever-after,” or to have Christ restore the “good old days.”
At the end of today’s scripture, when so many followers left Jesus disappointed, he turned to the 12 disciples he chose and asked them a direct question. “What about you? Would you like to leave me too?”
Friends, Christ understands his way is not popular. He understands his way is not the easy way. Unlike Staples Office Supplies, he does not offer an “easy” button. Christ wants us to understand that serving the Kingdom of God involves a cross and is not the path of least resistance but the path to hard decisions and demanding standards.
Following Christ is not the easy way. If you choose to step into the “eternal life” he promised, that “eternal relationship with God,” there are going to be some big challenges ahead for you. You are going to experience all kinds of difficulty as you stick to what you say you believe.
You won’t escape having to make some tough choices, some hard decisions. Your faith will be tested. You will be tempted greatly to take the easy way out. You will be made all kinds of false promises if you take the easy way.
You may have friends who make fun of you. Family may advise that you are making your own life difficult. It may not make sense financially. God may call you to a job that pays less or even nothing. Only your determination to follow Christ will be your comfort and joy.
Christ knows where you are, and what you face every day. He wants to know where you stand and the depth of your disappointment. He knows that your life has had its problems. He asks each of us that same question he asked the 12 disciples: “What about you? Would you like to leave me too?”
Those who had come to Jesus for what they could get began to whine, “This is too strange. My friends will think I’m crazy. I thought we were coming to get the next free meal. I haven’t got time for this kind of nonsense. I wouldn’t have gotten up so early today if I had known this would happen. What Jesus asks is too much. This is too hard.” And they left him.
To the 12, Jesus asked, “What about you? Will you leave me too?”
Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
If we understand that the emptiness inside us can only be satisfied by a relationship with God. If a relationship with God is what we are after. If we are looking for a purpose in life, if we want life to have meaning beyond what we earn and who we are, if we are searching for something beyond what we experience in this life, then we are looking for a messiah, someone sent from God to call us to know God.
That person is none other than Jesus, the Son of God. Peter said, “Now we believe and know that you are the holy one who has come from God; the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Are you looking for a picnic? Who is your Christ? How far are you willing to follow him? Are you ready to do the hard thing?
Are you ready for indescribable joy?
Amen.
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John 6:56-69 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.” (From the
New Revised Standard Version of the
Bible) |
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