It is true that some of the teachings of Jesus are hard to take. We should not be afraid of this. In the Gospels, some people like Him and some do not. But in today’s Gospel, even those who liked Him are struggling to trust Him and to understand what He is teaching.
The core message of St. John’s Gospel is stated one more. Jesus has come from the Father. His origins are in God and the life He speaks of is born in that place. His identity as ‘Beloved Son’, flows from this relationship. He offers this same experience to anyone who can trust Him and make His teaching their own. This is something completely new. The older consciousness cannot transcend death; it turns people, who are afraid, in on themselves. Here is a teaching that frees us from fear and opens us up to ‘eternal life.’
The pairing of flesh and blood and eating bread from heaven sets the stage for the disciples to unwrap the gift they are being offered. They have been brought up to believe in the utter transcendence of God and their own smallness. What Jesus is saying does not fit well into that mindset. He understands how His teaching might give offence. Perhaps the offence could be less if He, the Beloved Son, started with Earth and ascended to Heaven. But even if it makes for an easier beginning, we still have to trust Him when he asks us to notice the partnership between the physical and the spiritual, earth and heaven, ascending and descending Angels and a descending and ascending Son of Man. Everything comes from above and it is there that we must look to find the truth. This change from ‘flesh to spirit’, to ‘spirit to flesh’, is a difficult shift. Many will walk away with their old mind intact rather than trust in the new possibility. Those who stay, do so because they trust the Father.
Staying with Jesus is always a decision and it is a decision that is not made only once. The disciples who left were unable to make the shift. They were not ready to eat the food that the ‘bread’ who ‘came down from heaven’ had prepared. The Twelve did stay because they were already eating. The words of Jesus had opened a window into eternal life. If Jesus could give them eternal life, He must come from God. This is the beginning of something amazing which will require them to trust and grow even more.
So, we have two choices. To leave or to stay. But it is the reason for staying that is intriguing. When Jesus asks the question, ‘Are you going away too?’, Peter answers, ‘We have come to believe and know..’. What begins with trust is completed in a depth of understanding and flows as eternal life whenever we gather to fulfill His command, ‘Do this in memory of me’.
The community of disciples – the church- only exists to disclose the meaning of Christ as the embodiment of God in the world. We exist for the salvation – health and well-being – of all people, not just for the comfort and consolation it brings us. This means that the only way to build the community of those who ‘choose to stay’ is to look outwards, to see how we might bring this Good News to the poor. The Church, like the Kingdom of God, cannot grow through following a programme. It will grow through the joyful witness of those who celebrate the gratuitous blessing of Christ. We have to return to the service of the Gospel and the command to spread it to all peoples. Today’s Gospel is a heady reminder that this is a painful and costly process precisely because it means stripping away our old safety nets, our addiction to personal comfort and our riches -whether secular or not – which we think are so important for the maintenance of the church.
We must respond to the urgent promoting of the Spirit who gives Life and who through the community, upholds the life of all people. As Jesus clearly tells us; The power of God is at work in the world, the story of Salvation is being told, and we are the privileged and responsible stewards of God. This, it seems to me, is the solid ground of our trust and the reason why we are constantly seeking to deepen our understanding of the Beloved Son of God.
