John 6:56-69 August 23, 2015

When the Going Gets Tough, That’s When You Leave

Before I begin preaching this morning, there’s something that I need to get off my chest:I am really glad that you are here today. You are wonderful persons and I wish nothing

but God’s blessings for you, your family, and friends. If there’s anything in my sermon this morning that offends you or disturbs you, remember that it’s in the Bible. I just play the cards that I’m dealt.

There! The disclaimer is taken care of!I have no intention of saying this every week, but I think that it’s good for me to

remember every word of it. Because if we are to spend time with Jesus and invite Jesus to be our Lord and Savior, we’d jolly well better prepare ourselves to occasionally have our world rocked and our lives moved out of the comfort zone. A relationship with God in Jesus Christ should change everything. As the familiar hymn goes: “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.” Are you able to admit that you have some blind spots in your life? Are you able to let Christ heal your blindness and reveal your sin so that God can help you move away from what you once were to become what God intends you to be?

I say this because preaching about Jesus Christ is hard. It’s hard because we are proclaiming that this man not only taught us about how to live and how to love, but ultimately went to a cross to demonstrate the distance that God’s love will go to redeem us and care for us. When Jesus rose from the dead, it wasn’t just to forgive and save us, but to initiate the coming of the Holy Spirit in which all of us would be called children of God and invited to love the world as Jesus did, with the love of God in Christ guiding us along the way.

It’s not just about what Jesus does for us, but also about what we do for others in the name of Jesus. The Good News of the Gospel isn’t simply something we talk about, but something that we do. And, if we are growing in faith, something that we do more and more, as we let God break down those walls of division that would hold back.

In John’s gospel, Jesus has just finished a long speech about being the bread of life. As he says in today’s passage, whenever we share in Holy Communion, we will abide in him.

Jesus invites us to have more of God’s presence in our lives. Consequently, we should not only be able to talk about God but also seek to listen to God and delight in God’s presence.The most important topic for any Sunday sermon is God. The ultimate Good News is a world in which every man, woman and child is seen as beautiful in God’s sight.

This sounds good but when you try to live it out, it creates a lot of trouble.To follow Jesus (for the disciples) would mean to encounter the wrath of the religious

order and the Roman government. Proclaiming a ministry to the Gentiles will enrage many faithful Jews who have not only worked hard to establish a life set apart for God but who have been under the oppression of a Roman occupation. Really? We’re supposed to tell them about our God?

And then you need to get serious about self-examination. Jesus came to reveal to us the depth of God’s love; a love that is willing to go deep and

suffer for us, a love that knows our capacity for evil and desires to save us from the things that would destroy life. It is also a love that wants us to look in the mirror and compare the person that we think we need to be to be a success in life and then to set it aside to be the person that God calls us to be. In biblical terms, Jesus is telling us to put the flesh aside and choose to live by the spirit. This is hard to do. Every Christian who has used the name of God to tear down another, to declare a holy war, to raise themselves up by knocking others down still has a lot of the flesh getting into the mix.

This is hard work. This is tough going. It is so hard, in fact, that one of the advantages of retirement is that it can give you a perspective on the workplace that you did not have the time to cultivate while you were in the midst of business. God’s will is that every person grows to become a better person in his or her lifetime, but sometimes life is so busy that ethics are often compromised. Yes, in a pinch, it is easier to ask for forgiveness later than to seek permission now. But you’d better not plan to make this a lifestyle. Seeking permission is a way of acknowledging others and valuing community. Working with others means that you may not always get to move ahead on your great personal vision.

I mentioned to my wife Sue the other day that I have come to believe that about 90% of all of the problems in the church can be summarized simply as some person or group becoming upset because things did not go their way.

Modern television preaching and teaching spends a great deal of time showing us how we can use Biblical principles to better our lives and live out our days with more happiness, peace and joy. That’s what we like to hold onto.

But the gospel of Jesus Christ is not just about your happiness. In fact, if we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, our mind and our soul and our neighbor as ourselves, we really need to get busy and love more people. To expand our circle of caring, we will need more than each other. We need God. God needs to be at the center of our life.

No one gets their own way. No one. It’s not about you. It’s not about me.It’s about God’s love and our willingness to abide in it.One of the reasons that so many Christians leave the church and the Christian faith is

that, for so many, a relationship with Jesus has hardly even been tried. So many have had so little of Jesus in their lives, they have not allowed the Spirit to teach them about Jesus and open their hearts to spiritual things.

The United Methodist Church (and every denomination that I know) spends time and money trying to strategize how to reach new generations with the gospel. What kind of music do those Millennials like? What kind of attention span do people have during worship? How can we use social media better?

I really don’t have the time to think about that stuff much any more. I would rather have all of us seek to grow in our walk with Christ. If God’s love is changing us for the better (and we know what we were like before), shouldn’t that be the main thing?

If you want to have a life of meaning and purpose that will get you up in the morning and then offer you enough challenges during the rest of your life, abiding in Christ seems to me to be a really good option. It will shine light in dark places that will never be dark again; it will walk with you through tough times and guide you towards times of great joy. It will never leave you or forsake you.

If you want nothing more than what the world offers, you don’t need God.But if you want a life that will matter today, tomorrow and for eternity? Simon Peter says

it best. “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”Let’s follow Jesus in everything we do, trusting in God’s love. Discipleship is hard work,

but if we do it right, we will do it together and we will pick up more companions on the journey. When the going gets tough, don’t leave. Hold onto a hand and walk with Jesus.