hard words

I read this morning of the time when most of Jesus’ followers quit following. As a person who is required by my job and often asked by my church to lead, I was interested to see why.

The passage was this one, from John 6:66-68 “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
“’You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve.
“Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.’”

Here’s what was going on: Jesus had just had a run-in with the religious leaders for healing on the Sabbath. During that debate he made the case that he had dual authority to do God’s work on the Sabbath, authority that superseded Jewish religious law: he was God’s son, and he was sent by God to act as his agent here on earth. Then Jesus made the startling claim that the only way to be saved was to partake of Jesus’ flesh and blood.

One or maybe all of these things were finally too much for most of Jesus’ followers. Was it the charge of blasphemy that he faced? His claim to be God’s son? This weird thing of eating his flesh?

Followers can leave when their leader runs into opposition, or when he challenges their long-held beliefs, or when he says or does something they don’t understand. Most of Jesus’ disciples did. I confess that the temptation has occasionally been there for me to question my loyalty to Jesus for one of these reasons as well.

But I always end up at the same place the Twelve did: “Lord, who else could I turn to? You have the words of eternal life.” In the end I trust Jesus because he saves, and he saved me.