This Sunday Message was originally delivered at Weasley Chapel United Methodist Church on August 11, 2024. Below the recorded-live video is the sermon text I preached from, if you would like to follow along. Biblical texts for reference: John 6: 60-69 and Jonah 4. Read online with https://www.biblegateway.com – a fantastic resource.
“This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”
The words that begin our Gospel reading for today. Words by which the Disciples set the tone for today, as they so often do, by just not quite getting it…
And they are hard words. The words of John 6 that we have dealt with over these last two Sundays. Words about eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood… Words about rising from the dead… About “bread of life” that both is and is not the same as the manna in the wilderness… References to the great Hebrew leader Moses that somehow, at the same time, both affirm his significance as the great prophet of Hebrew history and also, somehow, downplay his significance, or the significance that Jews gathered around Jesus right then want to give him.
And then, of course, that whole eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood thing…
I think that’s the thing that’s really lingering in the Disciples’ minds at this moment.
But these are hard things, hard sayings. They are indeed offensive things that cause offense, just like many people are still offended by tales of cannibalism or, worse, undead monsters rising from the grave to subsist on human flesh and blood—and that is an ancient concept, by the way. Cannibalism is certainly ancient, but that other one, too, the idea of creatures—ghosts, ghouls, something of that nature—rising from the grave to consume living flesh and blood—that idea is found in some of the oldest written documents that we have. There’s evidence of a real fear that the dead would come back to life in prehistoric gravesites. And the idea of feeding the dead, sacrificing to the dead, so that they would not return and harm the living, is something that pretty much every culture on earth has believed in at some point. So, in John 6, when Jesus starts making these statements about “raising [his followers] up at the last day”—that is, bringing people back from the dead, all while talking about magical bread from heaven, and then going into this last part about his own body and blood—I’m pretty sure that at least a few minds went there… Vampires and Zombi and death cults… Death cults and sacrificing to the dead being things that the Hebrews and the Jews were always very, very against, by the way. Christianity is too, to be clear.
But then Jesus does say these rather difficult things, that—let’s be honest—do at least skirt up to the edge of cannibalism… So…
So, I think some of people in his audience that day do kind of have to take a step back and wonder: Wait, what have we gotten ourselves involved in, here? I mean, the whole wandering itinerate preacher, bucking authority, reinterpreting Scripture in every which way that doesn’t actually make sense to us, miracles we can’t explain either but, well, they’re not doing any harm, thing—okay, we can accept all that. But… How weird is this gonna get…? Exactly…?
“This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”
To which, Jesus responds: Does this offend you?
Does this offend you?
But not just, does this offend you—Jesus goes on. Just puts a little perspective on the question. Does this offend you? Okay, well, what if I went back where I came from? What if I gave up this body that I just told you to eat? What if I shed the very thing you’re getting so hung up here, put these things into ultimate perspective, did everything possible to illustrate how totally these little details, the vocabulary words like flesh and blood, are just not the point here?
I think what Jesus is saying is not that he could prove his point if he did ascend into heaven right there in front of their eyes. I think Jesus’s point is that even if he did do that, get all glowy and ride a beam of light straight up into the clouds right there and then—maybe send a lightning bolt or two back down for good measure… You know, I think his point is that even if he did that, it still would not prove the point. They still wouldn’t get it. They would still be getting hung up on the details. They would still be saying “Ewe, cannibalism” and “Wait, I didn’t know this was a Vampire cult…” And they would still be offended.
And ultimately, of course, this all proves to be true, Jesus does eventually ride that beam of light back into heaven or—I don’t know what it looked like. But we’re told in the Gospels that after the resurrection, after enough people saw him alive, he did ascend back where he came from. But it doesn’t prove any points. In fact, the only people who are even allowed to see that ascension are the people who have already gotten the point…
It is interesting how often that seems to happen in the bible. And by interesting, I of course mean telling—how often the only people who are let in on the mysteries of faith are the people who have already gotten the point of faith itself. Faith is, by literal definition, an unproveable thing. You either get it or you don’t. You either have it or you don’t. And actually, if you think of it, that’s true of most kinds of knowledge. We tend to think of faith as this unique branch of human knowledge that’s not even actually knowledge—that is unprovable and insupportable and cannot be taught. But the reality is, you can’t really teach anyone anything they don’t want to learn.
In a way, I think that all knowledge actually does begin with faith.
“It is the spirit that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words I speak to you are spirit and they are life…”
That’s how Jesus says it in John Chapter 6.
Sometime later, the apostle Paul would refer to himself, and all believers, really, “as ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter [that is, the literal meaning of the Old Testament law, things like, you must be circumcised, don’t eat pigs, etc.] but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life…” (2 Cor 3:6)
What are the things in life cause offense? Division? The things we stay up well past midnight arguing about on the internet? What actually provokes these things? Is it the point? Or the detail?
Do we get hung up on the big-picture metaphor about Jesus being the provider of all our needs?
Or do we get hung up on tiny little vocabulary words like flesh and blood?
And these aren’t rhetorical questions, by the way.
These are questions that really need to be answered.
Because sometimes we are not arguing over vocabulary words. Some of our arguments are significant. They do matter. The challenge is not just to avoid all argument. The challenge is to know which arguments are worth having.
The book of Jonah ends with a question that has become one of those guiding questions in my own life. You know, Jonah, the whole getting eaten by a whale thing is only half the story. In the second half of the story, he actually does go to Nineveh. He does preach to them. And against all odds, they actually listen. And Jonah gets all annoyed by that.
And to be fair to Jonah—because I don’t think we always are. But to be fair to Jonah, historically speaking, he actually had good reason, first to run away from Nineveh, and then to be annoyed that they actually listened to him. Because Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. And historically, Assyria was pretty awful. History itself has almost nothing good to say about Assyria—they were essentially the Nazis of their time. And that’s not an exaggeration, so just, think about it—Jonah, a Jewish prophet, has been sent to evangelize the Nazis of his day.
There’s something offensive just in that concept, right?
Like, actually offensive.
And I think—after the whole fish incident, right? After Jonah resigns himself to, “Yeah, I guess I really am going to Nineveh”—jumping straight from the fish’s mouth into the lion’s… I think, at that point, Jonah takes some comfort from the fact that, at least, he is going there to preach Nineveh’s destruction. They might kill him first, but the fire and brimstone is coming.
But then, we know the story, right? The unthinkable happens. Nineveh repents. Thousands of people renounce their evil and turn to God. And so, Jonah storms off, goes and sits on this hill looking down on the city and just waits. He’s in total denial at this point. No, the fire’s still coming. The fire’s still coming. The fire is still coming!
And while he’s out there for a few days, it gets hot. Not fire and brimstone hot, unfortunately, but hot. Sun’s shining straight down on me in the middle of the day, hot. But to Jonah’s relief, this plant grows right behind him, gives him shade, for a day or so. And then the plant dies…
I’ve seen an image—unfortunately, I don’t remember where. But in the image, Jonah is holding this wilted plant like it’s a body. Like it’s his friend who has died. Jonah gets really upset about this plant dying, and not just because it gave him shade, but you get the sense that it had become like a friend to him, his only friend out there on the hill, looking down on Nineveh. And that’s when God asks him a question: This really simple, profound question, that I think can be a guiding light in all kinds of circumstances in all of our lives.
This simple, profound question: Jonah 4:9—
Have you any right to be angry?
Does this offend you? Jesus asks, in John 6, centuries later.
And like Jesus in John, at the end of Jonah, God goes on to put the question and the point into perspective. God points out that Jonah’s upset about the death of this plant, a living creature, yes, but without a brain, without feelings, without freewill. Jonah’s upset, even though Jonah had nothing to do with the plant’s creation. Jonah didn’t plant the plant. Jonah didn’t even cultivate the plant.
But down in Nineveh—thousands of people, cattle, children… If the city needed to be destroyed to prevent worse things, then God was ready to do that, but—if there’s even a chance it’s not necessary… If there’s now a chance that those people can change, now that they have indeed committed themselves to change…
Bigger picture, right?
Have you any right to be angry?
It’s such a profound question because it is not rhetorical. Just like I don’t think Jesus’s “are you offended” question from John today is rhetorical. These are actual questions that are meant to provoke honest answers. You know, God doesn’t just yell at Jonah, tell him he has no right to be upset about Nineveh not being destroyed. God waits for Jonah to experience an actual loss—silly as some of us might think it is to mourn a plant, it is an actual loss for Jonah. A friend who made his life better. And God doesn’t call the loss silly, God uses it, for perspective, to illustrate the far greater loss that would be Nineveh’s destruction.
Have you any right to be angry? It’s a profound question because sometimes the answer to that question is going to be yes? Yes, we do have a right to be angry. Yes, we are offended.
Righteousness is not never being offended, or being somehow above being offended by anything. Rather, the righteous is knowing when something is worth being offended at.
That’s the real challenge. Not to pretend were immune to being offended. Knowing when an issue is big enough to warrant the time and the energy that goes into being truly offended. And to know when some issue or stance is worth the risk of offending other people.
Is this issue worth losing friends over? Unfortunately, in this life, the answer is sometimes going to be yes. But let’s make absolutely sure that when we answer yes, it’s because the answer really is yes.
Are we arguing over real issues, questions of eternity, or justice, or salvation? Or are we arguing over vocabulary words?
And this has been an issue in the church for as long as I can remember. These arguments over things that just don’t matter—you know, there is actually this really handy list. It’s right here, printed in every hymnal in front of you. It’s called the Nicene Creed. It’s been the authoritative statement of faith for the entire Christian church, every denomination, for sixteen hundred years. It was written by not one but three committees—it took them decades to put the final form of this creed together, decades of debates in more than one worldwide church council meeting—and that’s after the first 300 years of Church history in which Christians were already wrestling with these questions. Three centuries and then decades more to dig out the things that are actually fundamental to Christian faith, that really do set our religion apart. Our actual hills to die on…
And turns out—it’s not that long of a list. Which is one of the reasons that it has indeed stood the test of sixteen hundred years and even more church schisms now than can be counted.
This upcoming election season—if I could just bring all this into the here and now for a moment… As utterly absurd as this election season is continuing to be… in all the insanity, there are real issues, big issues, real, serious problems, that do warrant offense, do warrant our concern and our anger.
And then there are all the stupid things that so many of us are taking offense over, the name calling, the game of which politician is more corrupt, the fear-mongering—That’s the one that’s really starting to get to me, I think because, let’s be honest, a lot of it is aimed directly at younger women, right now. And it’s pure distraction from real issues, like impending war, but even more immediate, the fact that eggs now cost four dollars a carton. You know, that’s a real issue that actually affects every person’s life. And meanwhile, distracted by mostly manufactured fears, and a state of righteous anger over which candidate’s personality we detest more, we don’t notice that we’re maxing out credit cards just to pay for groceries.
Bread and circuses, right? Politics is the same in every age. A game of pure distraction.
And our challenge, as citizens of a republic, with a responsibility to other citizens of this republic is to push through the nonsense and find those real issues. Those real hills to die on.
The things we really should be offended by.
The ending of the reading today is, I think, the most important part. Because a lot of people just walk away from Jesus at that point, say nope, this is getting too weird, and leave.
And then Jesus turns to those who stay and asks: Why? Why are you still here?
And their answer is: because you have the words of life.
The answer is: You know, we may not understand everything that you’re saying, Jesus, but we know that it’s true
We know that it’s true.
That ability to just stand firm on what we know to be true – that’s what we should all have. That’s what we all need to have. To follow the words of life wherever they lead no matter how weird it does get.
