Vacation Bible School was this week at Southport UMC. Or VBS in the alphabet soup that is ministry in the UMC. Many of you have been there, participated, volunteered, helped create an experience of faith and Bible for kids wired on summer, so you know how close it always teeters to the brink of disaster. How quickly it can all collapse like a house of cards. And once it is over you wonder if anything happened, any teaching occurred, any seed got planted. Or is the best we can say that we provided a brief respite for harried mothers and fathers in a too long summer.
My task this year was to be the one who told the “Cool Bible Adventures” when each crew of elementary kids showed up at my station. “Cool” Bible Adventures because the theme was Polar Blast and the kids were divided into Polar Bears and Penguins and Moose. They even took a moment on opening day to point out that they were aware that Penguins and Polar Bears lived on opposite ends of the planet, but that for this week, they were friends, ok? And the moose (mooses, meese, mise? Whatever) were just visiting, I guess. And we were not just supposed to read a Bible story, no we were to “experience a cool Bible adventure.” Right. Easy enough, I’m somewhat familiar with Bible adventures, so no problem.
The first day was Jesus saying “let the little children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven.” Easy as pie. The second day was the crucifixion. And the third day was the resurrection. Um, what? In twenty five minutes I was to help a group of elementary age children experience the crucifixion and then the resurrection. Experience the crucifixion. Yes, well. You know I’ve been trying to do that for adults for over thirty years and I’m still not sure I’ve got that right. But elementary kids on summer break, fresh from hot and sweaty games in the yard and powdered sugar donut holes for snowball snacks? How in the world do we shape these deep and profound concepts around those minds? Around any of our minds, come to think of it? It’s just hard.
In our summer Bible preaching series, we’ve come to the place I decided to call “troublesome Bible passages.” There were so many questions about so many verses and passages and stories, that it was hard to pin it down to just one or two. There is just some difficult stuff in there. Stuff we stumble over on a regular basis. And what seems simple and straightforward to some is impossible for others.
And most of the time we think the problem is us. We’re just dumb, we think, we just don’t know enough. But it may be more than that. Not just our lack, but something that is so radically different from our normal ways of thinking that it comes across as impossible, incomprehensible. We might be able to hear it, but we can’t experience this Bible adventure, cool or not cool. And we aren’t the first to have that problem.
John 6:60-69 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" 61 But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, "Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63 It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But among you there are some who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. 65 And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father." 66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. 67 So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" 68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
Older translations wrote that the people said “This is a hard saying.” It was a hard saying. In some ways an incomprehensible saying. Jesus had been talking about being the Bread of Life, and suggesting that His followers should eat His body and drink His blood. And that by doing so we would live forever. It sounded like gibberish. It sounded like nonsense. They looked at His face, waiting to see the smile break out and the joke would be on them. But He seemed serious. Dead serious. Or maybe eternally serious. Yet what could it possibly mean? Cannibalism? Surely not. The people of God had long ago turned their back on such prehistoric things as human sacrifice and feasting on the blood of the enemy. So, what could He be referring to?
A hard saying indeed. And not the first from His lips. Nor will it be the last. But for some reason John grabs this one as definitive. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. And some of the disciples - notice it was disciples, followers, students, learners, not just the on-lookers - wandered off. And quit following Him that day. If there is one thing I’ve learned in all my years of ministry it is that people walk away. And they walk away for all kinds of reasons. But more often than not, if you look deep enough, there was a hard saying that got in the way. Maybe the hard saying was something complicated like body and blood as a transmitter of life and the modern mind just decides it isn’t worth trying to figure it out. Or maybe the hard saying is something like “love your neighbor as yourself” and it isn’t the understanding that’s hard, it’s the doing. Easier to walk away. Go back to what makes sense. At least what the world thinks makes sense. Looking out for yourself, keeping what’s yours, there isn’t enough so get yours first, that kind of thing. Those sayings fit the world we have better. At least that’s what some think.
Some disciples walked away because it got too hard. Hard to understand, hard to follow, just hard. And Jesus let them go. It made Him sad, I believe. As you read the rest of the moment that John captures in our passage this week, you can’t help but feel that Jesus is sad to see them go. He turns to the twelve, the ones He called by name and asked them to follow. And says “are you leaving too?” They say “where would we go?” It was Peter, he was the spokesperson again. You notice he doesn’t say, no, it all makes sense to us. We’re hanging around. He says our options are limited. You’ve got the words. We don’t know what they mean any more than anyone does. But we know there is something there. Something about life. Something about eternity. We don’t know what it is, but we’re staying with you.
When we worship, we’ll look at some of these hard sayings, we’ll try to come up with a plan on how to deal with them. We’ll take a look at the context, we’ll take a look at the genre of literature, we’ll ask if there are similar statements that maybe put a different light on it. We’ll do whatever it takes to help us deal with these hard sayings. But in the end we’ll also admit that there is some stuff we just won’t get.
Or at least we won’t get it when we’re standing still. Maybe that’s the secret to the hard stuff of the faith. When we sit and try and puzzle it out, we get stumped. It’s too hard. It’s beyond us. But when we take that step of faith, and venture out, what didn’t make sense before now seems so evident we can hardly believe it. Of course we are sustained by the body and blood of Jesus! Of course we want to love our neighbor as ourselves. How could we not? It is in the doing that the understanding will come.
So, I asked my little elementary groups of VBS kids not to understand crucifixion and resurrection, but to experience what it is to be loved. Loved so powerfully, loved completely, loved in such a way that you are filled to the brim with it. Did they get it then? I don’t know.
Do you?
Shalom,
Derek
No comments:
Post a Comment