Well, What’s the Alternative?
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69
Jesus asked the Twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” Peter answered him: “Lord, to whom else can we go?”
Hardly a ringing endorsement there from Peter. We’re not leaving you because we don’t have anyplace better to go. And yet we remember and hold up this response of Peter in our Scripture and in our liturgy, so there must be some wisdom in it.
We have been reading from the gospel of John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000 and its aftermath for five Sundays now, and now – finally – we have come to the end of the story. We saw how, in the beginning, people who were stunned at what Jesus was able to do wanted to make him king, but that Jesus wanted no such thing and ran away. When the crowd catches up with Jesus, he teaches them that the food the crowd really needs is himself.
And this is not a mystification or a spiritualization of people’s real needs. Our physical needs for food and water and shelter are real and important. But God’s good creation already has enough bread for everyone. And if some people lack bread here in this bountiful world that God has made, that’s a sign that something is wrong with the world. And ultimately the solution to what’s wrong with the world, the food that we really need, is the flesh and blood of God-made-flesh in Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who in his body makes possible our communion with one another and with God, and in this communion everyone can receive their daily bread.
This is what Jesus tries to get the crowd to see – the God they need, the God we need, is not the God who gives us whatever we want, whenever we want it. Jesus did not feed 5000 to prove that he can give us bread. God has already given us plenty of bread but still many go hungry; our flesh is broken and our lifeblood is being sucked dry – so God comes to save us in the broken and bloody body of Jesus.
A couple of weeks ago we saw the story of Elijah. He knew the trick for calling down fire from heaven, and this gave him power with the crowd, and Elijah used this power to get revenge on his enemies. Jesus apparently knows the trick for infinitely multiplying loaves of bread, and the crowd wanted him to use that power in God knows what ways that would turn out to be just as cruel and inhuman and far from God’s desires.
Elijah, we saw, began to be converted only when he discovered the emptiness of the path he was on. When, in his despair and frustration and hopelessness, a stranger offered him a gift from God, sharing food and drink with him in a desert place. And Elijah began to understand that there is another way than the way of rivalry and revenge, a way where he might find forgiveness and hope for a new life, a long and difficult journey – but a journey on which he would not walk alone, but would be sustained by the grace of God.
This is what Jesus tries to tell the crowd who wanted to make him king – that like Elijah they needed to be converted, but that God was doing something in Jesus, that God will do something in his cross and resurrection – that this is a gift of grace, a gift of food and drink in a parched and barren wilderness, meant to call us to a new and different and ultimately better way of living and to sustain us on the way.
But this is not what most of the crowd thought they had signed up for. Many disciples of Jesus, then and now, would prefer a gospel that didn’t go through the cross. And as the crowd begins to see what Jesus is really calling them to, many begin to walk away.
Does this offend you? Jesus asks them. “What, then, if you saw the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?” In other words, what if you saw me risen from the dead and ascending to heaven, what if you saw God raising up and exalting the one who was crucified? What if you could see that this way of the cross is exactly the way that leads into the very life of God? What if you could see that the glory of God is self-giving love, is human beings fully living into the image of God that they were made to be, forgiving and being forgiven and living in grace and truth? Would you still find the cross offensive? Many said yes.
And then to the Twelve, Jesus says: What about you? Do you want to leave also? Peter speaks for them: “Well, to be honest, we’re not exactly enthusiastic about this flesh and blood thing. If you had asked me, I would not have advised making ‘Pick up your cross and follow me’ your marketing strategy.
“But, on the other hand, what’s the alternative? The world of I’ve got mine and too bad about you? The world of envy and revenge and anxiety? The world of my group right or wrong and I’ll pour out my wrath on everybody else? Don’t get me wrong, Jesus. We’re not sure we can follow you. We’re not even sure that we want to. But we have come to believe that you are right – if there is grace, if there is compassion, if there is love, then this is the way. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God. So, no, we’re not going anywhere.”
And I’ll be completely honest with you – the response of Peter to Jesus here sums up why I am still a Christian. I cannot say that my experience of church has always, or even often, been a good one. I’ve been treated badly by people who claimed to act in the name of Jesus, and I’ve seen other people treated even worse. Often I’ve found church to be frustrating and judgmental and a bit uninspiring.
But I have come to believe that the way of Jesus is the way that leads to life. I don’t think this way is easy, I don’t think it’s necessarily something I can do or even want to do – but look where the alternative has gotten us.
The alternative to Jesus is the world we see on the news every day – people deeply divided from one another, losing patience and falling into cynicism and anger and despair. We need to take action together to protect each other from Covid and defeat the pandemic, and collectively we don’t seem able to do it. We live in a world that is deeply unjust, and if we don’t get it together and change our ways soon climate change will lead to more and more storms and fires and mass extinctions. The world is full of refugees who need a safe home, full of people dying from loneliness and meaninglessness and despair, and what is the hope of any of this changing apart from the way of Jesus?
Is there any other way than learning to put others’ needs before our own? Anything better than the way of gratitude for the gift of life and a world big enough to provide for all? Anything that doesn’t include forgiving enemies and turning the other cheek and treating everyone as we would want to be treated? Can the world be redeemed other than by people who have learned to live without fear because they are confident their eternal destiny is safe in God’s hands, that God’s judgment will always be for our sake and for that of the whole world. I wish there were an easier way, but I don’t think there is.
And so I find myself saying with Peter, Lord, I can think of a million reasons to walk away, and I don’t know if I can actually follow you or even if want to. But I have come to believe there’s nowhere else for me to go. That this is the way that actually leads to life. That you actually are the one sent from God to show it to us, to walk alongside us and ahead of us, to feed us along the way and give us strength.
With God’s grace, with one another’s help, may we stay faithful, may we learn to trust more and more in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and may we be strengthened by the joy and the peace that are promised to all who live in this faith.