Sermon for Sunday, August 25, 2024 || Proper 16B || John 6:56-69

At one time or another we’ve all edited our bibles. We’ve decided – consciously or unconsciously – that something in the bible doesn’t fit our worldview and so we skip it. Our pre-selected readings on Sunday morning do this pretty often, leaving out verses that make us squeamish. Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, went so far as to cut – literally cut – passages out of his bible, mostly Jesus’ miracles, because they didn’t jibe with his deistic thinking. Narrowing down our focus to Jesus’ words alone, there are still plenty of things we’d really rather skip. Today, I’d like to talk about what we do when we find ourselves skipping over some of Jesus’ words.

We’re going down this particular path today because of the crowd’s reaction to the end of Jesus’ long sermon about the Bread of Life. The crowd is physically hungry like they were the day before when Jesus fed them with the miraculously multiplying loaves. But this day, instead of feeding their physical hunger, Jesus decides to feed their spiritual hunger. He uses the metaphor of bread to talk about his nourishing word and presence. Over the course of the sermon, Jesus develops the metaphor until he’s talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

This is not the speech his listeners signed up for. They didn’t sign up for a speech at all! They were hoping for more food. So, many of his followers leave Jesus that day. And before they go, they offer this pointed critique: “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?”

Another translation says, “This message is harsh.”

And the simplest translation is just, “This word is hard.”

This word is hard. How many of us have read or heard something Jesus proclaimed and thought to ourselves, “Whoa, Jesus. I don’t think I can go there.” And instead of stopping in that moment and praying about our reaction, we skip over the words. Instead of getting curious about why Jesus’ teaching is making us stomp the brakes, we erase the words from our memory and from the page. This happens all the time, and usually without our knowledge or active consent. Our minds protect us from the hard words of Jesus because our minds are lazy; they know that if we truly integrated all of Jesus’ teachings into ourselves, we’d have to go about the challenging work of changing our hearts and our lives.

Here’s a few examples of Jesus’ hard words that people have asked me about over the years. See if any of them are familiar.

• “If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well.” (Matthew 5:39).
• Love your enemies and pray for those who harass you. (Matthew 5:44)
• Don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. (Matthew 7:25)
• Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword. (Matthew 10:34)

It’s so easy to ignore verses like these because they either don’t fit our worldviews or they seem to be asking something too hard or difficult of us. When we’re tempted to cut these verses out like Thomas Jefferson did with the miracles, I invite you just as I tell myself, instead to sit with them. To dwell with them. To allow them to itch us, to make us uncomfortable, to be like the piece of grit that grows into a pearl.

When we open ourselves to the discomfort of curiosity, God can surprise us with one of two things: either God grants us new insight into the words of Jesus and how they might change our worldview or God grants us sustained patience to be okay wondering about verses that make us squirm.

In the first example I mentioned, we might come to learn that Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek are the foundation for the concept of nonviolence. We discover that offering the left cheek gives the nonviolent person the power because they preempt their adversary demanding it by force. This doesn’t mean we have to put up with violence; rather Jesus’ words give the nonviolent person the agency to make decisions about how they will stand up to the violent.

In the second example, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. This seems like a bridge too far! I’ve sat with this verse for a long while, and over time I’ve come to realize that Jesus’ desire for us to love our enemies means resisting the urge to dehumanize others, resisting the urge to strip away their dignity in order to make them easier to deal with.

In the third example, we come to a verse about not worrying. And we say, “But Jesus, you can’t expect me not to feel a certain way!” In our consternation, we miss that Jesus is talking about remaining in the sacredness of the present moment. He’s not commanding us to purge ourselves of emotions.

And in the final example about peace and the sword, we might recoil at Jesus’ violent imagery. And that’s okay; it’s better than skipping over it entirely. As we sit with the passage, and maybe even go to outside sources for study, we might come to understand that Jesus is critiquing the so-called “peace” of the empire that is occupying his land. Jesus’ peace is of a wholly different sort.

In their own ways, each of these verses is difficult. And their challenge is what makes them so important because struggling with verses like these, with God’s help, makes us grow deeper in faith.

For me, the most challenging verse I’ve struggled with recently isn’t one you’d expect. It comes from the story where Jesus is on his way to the house of Jairus to heal his daughter. Jesus stops on the way to spend time with the woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. When people come from Jairus’s house to tell him his daughter has died, Jesus says to him, “Don’t be afraid; just keep trusting.”

Just keep trusting. These are the words that I’ve been struggling with for the last few years. I don’t want to cut them out of the Gospel, but I also have trouble with them because trust doesn’t come easily to me. I spent much of my youth lone-wolfing it, doing everything on my own so I wouldn’t have to put my trust in anyone else. That default position is hard to shake, even after thirteen years of marriage and ten years of partnership with you at this wonderful church. Just keep trusting. I long to trust Jesus, and sometimes I do. This word is hard for me, and so I pray for the patience and stamina to remain open to Jesus’ words’ ability to change my heart and my life.

This week, I invite you to think and pray about the words of Jesus that are hard for you. Ask God for the curiosity to wonder about those words and the patience to stay with them despite their difficulty. Then ask yourself why those words are hard for you. Do they challenge your worldview in a particular way? Your sense of justice or fairness? Your need for control?

In the end, there’s no reason to edit the bible or cut out pieces of it for our own convenience. Every passage, even the hard ones, offers us something for our own growth as followers of Jesus. For me, it’s the hunger to just keep trusting. I wonder where your faithful struggle will lead you.

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Photo by Paul Hermann on Unsplash.