Hard sayings

Christianity is not an easy option (John 6:60-66)

Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at it, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray him. And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

John 6:60-69 (RSV)

“This is a hard saying,” said many of Jesus’ disciples; “who can listen to it?” (Jn 6:60).

And they were right. “I am the living bread,” Jesus had said. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” With the words “I am,” he took for Himself the holy Name of God revealed in the burning bush to Moses. He reminded His listeners of the heavenly Manna bread, that divine gift given to sustain their forebears in the desert, and said that His own flesh was the true and greater bread which would yield life eternal. More potent than the flesh of the Passover Lamb by which the Israelites were freed from slavery and immediate death, His flesh offered on the Cross would offer salvation from sin and from eternal death. This, He kept insisting, was the one and only way to the Father. His disciples had only to believe and eat. But they took the saying hard.

As they should. To be a Christian is to take a hard message. There are far easier ones on offer. Some of them, you even hear in church:

“Jesus was not really divine, but a great moral teacher, whose words were culturally mediated and need to be reappraised in the light of modernity:” an easy saying.

“Jesus gave bread and wine as only a symbol of his body and blood, which really means his teachings, of which Holy Communion is an affirmation of individual faith:” an easy saying.

“Jesus is only one way among many to God, and everyone will be saved in the end:” an easy saying.

But if Jesus’ sayings had really been that easy, so many of His followers would not have deserted Him. Families and synagogues would not have been divided against each other, He would have brought peace and not a sword. Those who stayed were those who accepted the hard sayings, even when their peers and friends rejected them.

Among the remainder were the Twelve whom Jesus made Apostles, whose belief was summed up by their chief, Peter: “you have the words of eternal life.” Even one of them would ultimately turn, impatient with the way of the Cross and seeking instead the way of revolution and retribution. The eleven left would see Jesus “ascend to where He was before.” And in that seeing their belief was finally vindicated.

To be a Christian is not to apply our own personal interpretations to the Scriptures against the collective discernment of the Church over the ages. It is not to heed the voice of modernity and conform Our Lord’s hard sayings and the hard wood of the Cross to its soft and easy lures. It is, rather, to say with the Apostles, “we have believed,” to accept the hard sayings in faith, and then seek understanding.

It is an empirical fact that in those churches which have departed from the faith of the Apostles, made their own interpretations, chosen the easy path and ceded to modernity, the disciples have continued to fall away. Churches which heed the hard word prosper. Jesus commands Christians to receive His Body and Blood in the faith He taught to the Apostles, to be transformed within by His sacrifice, and to share with others the truth of Christ crucified, risen, ascended and given for the world. And if the world finds this too hard to hear, then let us learn to take each persecution as a blessing: for “it is the Spirit that gives life: the flesh is of no avail.”