Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by my Father.” As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6.60-69)
On this Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary TIme, we conclude our study of Chapter 6 of John’s gospel, an important section of his gospel that has been our focus for the last five Sundays. Next Sunday we will find our way back to Mark’s gospel, the primary text for Year B in the Common Lectionary. With the story of the miraculous feeding of the crowd at the start of Chapter 6, the text then moved into a lengthy teaching by Rabbi Jesus who is speaking to the people in the synagogue in Capernaum, urging them to seek the bread that endures, not the bread that perishes.
Identifying himself with the bread of life, he promises his listeners eternal life if they eat this living bread, taking his words and ways into their stomach as one would chunks of bread. As we saw last week, many in the crowd balk at the insinuation that Jesus can give them his body to eat, and bicker with him over the claim that he has come down from heaven, much the same as manna had come down from heaven for the hungry Hebrew slaves.
Here at the end of the discourse, we find that the disputation has not disappeared, but, in fact, has descended into a decisive divide among his disciples–those who choose to believe in Jesus and those who choose not to believe in him. As a result, the chapter does not conclude on a high note, but instead on a low note with many of the disciples abandoning Jesus.
In other words, the grumbling and murmuring that have been the response of the unbelievers up to this point now moves from a verbal exchange to a physical break. Overall, these verses are painful because they put before us the rejection of Jesus by those who initially were drawn to him and to his teachings. Rejection, as we know, is never easy to take.
John describes it in clear terms for us, stating that “many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, ‘This saying is hard; who can accept it?’” Aware of what they were saying, Jesus asks them, “Does this shock you?” He then says, “There are some of you who do not believe.” John inserts an explanation, telling his readers that “Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.”
The poignancy and the precariousness of the moment is captured in John’s informing us that, “As a result of this, many of Jesus’ disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” Watching as they walk away from him, Jesus turns to the Twelve and says to them, “Do you also want to leave?” It may be the most painful question that Jesus ever posed in the gospel.
I’d like us to take a moment to look at the language that is being used in these few verses because they offer us, I believe, a simple way of looking at discipleship which, all things considered, seems to be the greater purpose of this section of the gospel, particularly with Peter’s response to Jesus’ question when he says, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
Going back to that earlier verse in which we heard Jesus ask, “Does this shock you,” we would be more correct to read the question as “Does this cause you to stumble?” There is an important distinction between the two words. Being shocked by something is a mental response. Stumbling is a physical response. A person who stumbles loses his step.
That physical description in the question posed by Jesus is important because it is followed soon enough by another very physical reaction. As we heard, John states baldly that “many of Jesus’ disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” Again, the translation misses the mark even if it accurately describes the facts.
A much better reading of the verse would be, “Many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” This translation allows a vivid description of the physical response of the disciples, something less apparent in the translation we find in the lectionary. While some might say this is much ado about nothing, I see it differently.
We often describe discipleship as living our lives as Jesus did. We also see disciples as students, learning from the teacher called Jesus of Nazareth, his words informing our minds and forming our outlook on life. Likewise, we say that a disciple is someone who seeks to obey the commands of Jesus, particularly the command to love others and to forgive seventy-times seven.
Undeniably, all of these explanations are correct, each directing us to do something if we want to be a disciple of Jesus. However, discipleship at its barest means to follow Jesus, to walk in his footsteps. That basic understanding of what it means to be a disciple is highlighted when we hear Jesus ask the disciples if his words cause them to stumble and when John tells us that many of the disciples turned back and no longer walked with Jesus.
Right there John is telling us what discipleship is. It is walking with Jesus. It is not turning back. It fits tidily with Jesus’ invitation to his first disciples to “come, follow me” and it explains why discipleship in the first decades after Jesus’ death was simply called “the way.” The early disciples understood that there was something very physical in their allegiance to Jesus. They walked the walk.
In other words, before there were well-thought out creeds that stipulated beliefs or certain moral criteria that called for compliance, both of which became a checklist for discipleship, there was simply walking with Jesus. If a person wanted to become a disciple of Jesus, he or she walked the same path he did and, once on the path, did not turn back.
As I see it, it is not coincidental that the Hebrew scriptures frequently spoke of the upright person as walking on the right path. The start of the Hebrew experience begins with the call of Abram, described to us in the Book of Genesis in this way, “The Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land I will show you.” The phrase “go forth” can just as rightly be translated as “walk.”
After Abram walked away from Mesopotamia and arrived in Canaan, he was given a similar command from the Lord God. The writer of Genesis describes it in this way, “When Abraham was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless.’”
Later, when the Lord God made a covenant with the Hebrew slaves, their leader Moses tells them, “Today you have accepted the Lord’s agreement. He will be your God and you will walk in his ways.” That phrase, walking in his ways, would become for later generations of Israelites the surest indicator of their faithfulness to the covenant.
It made sense, then, that the prophets would invoke the same terminology, reminding the people of their identity with the reference to walking in the ways of the Lord, calling them back to the right path. Isaiah the prophet tells the people, “Let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways and we may walk in his paths.”
Jeremiah invokes the same phrase, speaking for the Lord God in these words, “In speaking to your ancestors on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I gave them no command concerning burnt offering or sacrifice. This rather is what I commanded them: Listen to my voice, then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk exactly in the way I command you, so that you may prosper.”
Lamenting the waywardness of the people, Hosea the prophet, speaking for the Lord God, says to them, “When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the farther they walked away from me, sacrificing to the Baals and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms.”
The psalmist, the inheritor of the same tradition, often speaks of walking with the Lord. For example, Psalm 32 contains this verse, “I will instruct you and show you the way you should walk.” Or in Psalm 101, “I will walk in the way of integrity.” Or, in Psalm 116, “My soul has been freed from death, my eyes from fears, my feet from stumbling. I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”
The imagery is found everywhere in the pages of the Hebrew scriptures, perhaps nowhere better expressed or best remembered than in the Book of Micah when the prophet says, “What is it that the Lord asks of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.” So, walking with God clearly was an ancient expression that expressed faithfulness to the covenant between the Most High and his people.
It makes perfect sense, then, that we find the same imagery being used in the early Christian texts, used now to express faithfulness as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Walking with Jesus was both the stance and the sign of the serious disciple, one who did not stumble when walking, one who did not turn back once on the way with Jesus.
On the surface, the definition may seem simplistic. But its beauty is precisely in its simplicity. Often, we find ourselves determining our discipleship by other measures such as the creed we profess or the church we attend. While there may be some merit to such measuring rods, offering us comfort in our self-assessment, they also risk becoming substitutes or stand-ins for the one measure that truly tells if we are a disciple of the Lord Jesus–are we walking with him.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 