Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Jesus said, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.”  +In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.             
 
We now live in a time when Biblical teaching on the family, on marriage, and on human sexuality is under attack by our culture. This is not news to you, I know. Increasingly, we Christians find ourselves at odds with American culture and society over several fundamental issues. To be a Christian today is to open oneself up to the charge of being an ignoramus, or worse, a bigot. Certainly, being a devout Christian today is not a path to social respectability.

Sadly, what has been happening over the last 15 years is that some Christian leaders have been compromising the Gospel by their teaching and their actions. There’s a new book out called, “Shepherds for Sale” by Megan Basham. In it, Basham indicts a few prominent evangelical pastors for compromising the Gospel and the Word of God for the sake of popularity, cultural respectability, and money. We are discovering today that there are many Christians who have stopped following Jesus Christ because they cannot accept His teaching, particularly on marriage, on divorce, on gender, on human sexuality. There’s been a trend over the past 5 to 10 years of once prominent evangelical leaders either denouncing traditional teaching on these subjects or them rejecting Christianity and the Church altogether. Joshua Harris, who wrote How I Kissed Dating Goodbye, made a lot of money with his book, which called for Christian young people to reject dating in favor of what he called Christian courtship. Later, he renounced the book and his Christian faith altogether. The lead singer for Caedmon’s Call, a Christian rock band, came out strong for transgenderism, writing songs that testify that Jesus thinks transgender people are “beautiful.”

While this is disheartening and even shocking, it is not new. Today’s Gospel lesson from St. John tells us that there were many of Jesus’ followers who simply could not accept His teaching, and so they fell away. In response to Jesus’ teaching about He is the Bread of Life, that one had to feed on His flesh and blood to inherit eternal life. This was too much for some who said, “This is a hard saying, who can listen to it?”
When we read this passage, we find it remarkable that people who lived during the time of Jesus, who saw Him in person, and who watched Him perform miracles, could then turn away from Him because they couldn’t accept what He taught.

Jesus’ response to those who struggle to accept His teaching is two-fold: First, Jesus says, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?” Jesus is underscoring His identity as the eternal Son of God become Man. He reminds them that He is no mere prophet, but that He came from the Father to become a human being and live among us. And He will return to the Father, thus telling them of His coming Ascension back into heaven. Therefore, Jesus’ teaching is divine teaching, straight from heaven. Because it is divine teaching, not mere human wisdom, then we must recognize it as ultimately authoritative and receive it.

Second, Jesus tells them, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Jesus is reminding them that human intellect alone is incapable of understanding the things of God. We need divine assistance; we need the Holy Spirit to understand and receive the things of God. Jesus’ words are powerful, and Spirit filled, and they speak beyond our intellect to our souls and spirits.

Jesus is not surprised that there are those who cannot accept His teaching. St. John writes, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray Him.” And Jesus tells them, “This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted to him by the Father.” Here again Jesus points to the mystery of our salvation. We choose to believe in and follow Jesus Christ. Yet, at the same time, we cannot take credit for that choice. We believe because God the Father reveals the truth to each of us. We are saved because we responded to God’s drawing of each of us to Himself through His Son Jesus Christ. This is a cause for joy and gratitude, not pride or self-satisfaction.

The Christian teacher and Bible scholar A. W. Tozer once said, “A whole new generation of Christians has come up believing that it is possible to ‘accept’ Christ without forsaking the world.” We read in today’s Gospel that many of Jesus’ disciples stopped following Him because they couldn’t accept the truth He was proclaiming. It was true then, and it is true today. And the fundamental reason for this is that there are those who refuse to yield fully to the Holy Spirit, to embrace Christ and reject the world and its values.

We are now living in a time when the contrast between Christ and the world is stark. Each day we are being tempted with the idea that we can somehow “straddle the fence” and be a follower of Jesus Christ, and yet be accepted by the world. This is a delusion. You cannot do it. For all of us who have come to know Jesus Christ, there is only one choice.

“So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’”
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+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.