REASON FOR STAYING

(Preached August 24, 2003)

So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”

-John 6:67

 

In 1996 there was a gathering of Christians and Buddhists at the monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. 

At the meeting were scholars and monks from both traditions, as well as the Dalai Lama himself. 

After days of intense conversation and shared prayer, one of the Buddhist participants spoke to an urgent point. 

What had been bothering him throughout the conference was the prominent display, in almost every room of the monastery, of a suffering man pinioned to a cross. 

To his mind, the crucifix represented the agony to which the meditation and practices of his religion were the solution.

And thus, he asked his Christian hosts, what precisely was the point in showing this terrible scene over and over again?

Those who were there say that this question — blunt, direct, and challenging — changed the tenor of the meeting for the better, forcing representatives of both sides to cut to the heart of the matter.

 

It takes an outsider to remind us of how strange and bothersome is our Christian faith. 

We Christians have become so accustomed to so much of the strangeness of our faith that we have lost any sense of how awful and bothersome it truly is.

But the early Christians understood this fact. 

That is what John’s gospel is illustrating with Jesus’ “in-your-face” teaching about “eating my flesh and drinking my blood” and “abiding in me.” 

Jesus is not speaking of bread for the stomach but bread for the soul.

He is talking about that which we need more than anything else — God, fellowship with God, experiencing God’s love.

All this and more are being offered in him.

This teaching, though, was becoming more and more difficult for those listening.

Rather than become conciliatory, Jesus gets even feistier at this point.

“Does this shock you?” he says, implying that if it does, what he says next will only increase their shock. 

He then goes on to assert that what he has been doing is explaining “right relationship” — that is, the real truth about the utter primacy of god in human life and how everything else is well-ordered only in relationship to that core relationship.

 

Jesus never pulled any punches.  A fact we often forget.

The life of discipleship is not an easy, soft existence.

We are called to renounce our trust in all else and trust only in Jesus and the God Jesus teaches us about. 

I think those who turned away from Jesus at this point did so because they fully understood what Jesus was saying. 

They turned away because they “got it.”

It is striking that John uses the word “disciples” for those who turn away. 

These are apparently not just casual listeners, not the folks who show up only at Christmas and Easter. 

These people have been teaching Sunday school and working in the nursery; they have been attending the Bible study and the prayer group and serving on committees.  When longtime pillars start leaving the church we get a little restless; people want to bring in consultants and do focus groups to diagnose the problem.

 

So Jesus called the Twelve together, the real core group of disciples, and put the question to them with unsettling directness: Do you also wish to go away?

I wonder sometimes how I would have responded to the question. 

Because the truth is, at times I do wish to go away. 

I don’t like thinking this about myself.   

But in those times of temptation, in times when I deceive other people to avoid trouble or get what I want, I am one of those who want to go away. 

In those times when I deliberately close my eyes to the sight of those who are poor or marginalized because I don’t want to feel guilty or bother to help, or because the problems just seem too big for me to make any difference, when I rationalize that we just don’t have the funds or the means or the will to help, I too am one of the ones who wish to go away.

This following Jesus stuff is difficult. 

It is difficult when my wife’s little quirks come out and I react with frustration and some anger, to humble myself and ask her forgiveness, especially when she was wrong, or crazy, to begin with, but that’s not the point. 

The point is my reaction and my lack of acceptance at all times and of loving grace at all times.

It is difficult when I am asked to take a stand for justice and what is right and others in the community don’t understand it; when income to the church continues to be tight; and when more people seem to leave than join. 

Yeah, there are many times when I am one of the ones who wish to go away.

 

I suspect that, at times, we all would like to walk away from the church and never come back.

We want a God different from the one we find in Jesus.

Flesh and blood?  Yes.  But demanding?  No.

Resurrected?  Yes.  But crucified?  No.

Salvation?  Yes.  Repentance?  No.

Love?  Yes.  Commitment?  No.

Unfortunately you cannot have one without the other.

The rose comes with the thorns.

The pains come with the birth.

 

We don’t like to hear this.   We are like those disciples who mumble, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

Many of us who grew up in the faith, going to church since we were infants, had sort of thought the Christian life comes naturally, that you get discipleship just by breathing the air, drinking the water, or being lucky enough to be born in St. Louis.  It is tough to discover we were wrong.

Some of us thought that Christianity was roughly synonymous with being a thinking and caring person, church as a sanctified form of Rotary. 

God’s Junior League.

But Jesus called “disciples,” not admirers. 

He called people to a way of life that involves service, taking up our cross and following his example, denying ourselves for the good of others, forgiving our enemies that the world might truly become a community of love, not hate.

None of that is easy.

 

Do you also wish to go away? 

I have just spent the majority of this sermon focusing on the reasons for leaving, for going away. 

But the real question is not why we might go away, but why do we stay? 

Why do we return to this place, week after week after week? 

Why do we hold onto our faith in God and continue to follow Jesus? 

Is there reason to stay?

 

Perhaps your answer is like Peter’s. 

Peter’s response is striking. 

He doesn’t say “Yes, of course,” but he doesn’t quite say no either. 

Instead, in good Jesus-style, he answers back with another question: “To whom else can we go?” 

It is not, perhaps, the most flattering answer in the world, but it is honest. 

It’s a little reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s famous description of democracy as the worst form of government except for every other form that has ever been tried.  Jesus may not always be easy, or pleasant, or even totally comprehensible, but when it comes to the eternal-life business, to tell the truth there’s not much out there in the way of alternatives.

Peter had been with Jesus long enough to realize there was no one else like Jesus.  He didn’t understand everything about Jesus, but he stayed to find out more.

 

This is the response of the church-goer to who responded to another church-goer who had sent a letter to the editor of the local newspaper complaining that it made no sense to go to church ever Sunday.  The letter went like this: “I’ve gone for 30 years now and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons.  But for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them.  So, I think I’m wasting my time and the pastors are wasting their by giving sermons at all.”

The response read like this: “I’ve been married for 30 years now.  In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals.  But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals.  But I do know this... they all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work.  If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today.  Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!” 

 

Other people stay because it takes courage to stay and they find this choice to follow Jesus helps to build their courage.

Other people stay because following Jesus helps build character.

Let me offer you my reason for staying. 

It is because what I have found at the center of Christianity is the message that God comes after us with a reckless abandon, breaking open God’s own heart in love in order to include us in the rhythm of God’s own life. 

For me, following Jesus is not a matter of my disciplined quest for God, but my response to God’s relentless quest for me — even to the point of death. 

God died in order that we might become God’s friends.

That is a radical message and invitation that I do not find in any other religion or option for living life. 

That invitation I believe holds the best possibility for improving me, my life, and the world around me.

For the possibility of real intimacy with God, of knowing myself truly loved by God, stirs into motion all my capacity for loving in return, for virtue and character, integrity and courage — it brings out my best.