25 August, 13th After Trinity
Readings: Joshua 24. 1-2a, 14-18; Eph. 6. 10-20; John 6. 56-69
Theme: The Holy One of God
This week brings to a close our five weeks of reading chapter six of John’s gospel. It is a culmination of all the themes that we have considered over the preceding weeks: bread of life, seeing is believing, flesh and blood, the words of eternal life, heaven and earth. All of these themes are woven together by John in order to bring us on the journey that St Peter has been on; namely, to be able to say that, ‘We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God’.
John has been teaching us from the very start of his gospel that this Jesus is the eternal Word of God come down from the Father and now revealed to us in flesh and blood. We have been steadily led to the point that culminates in this final part of chapter six of being challenged by Jesus to either stay with him or to go away. As Jesus challenges Peter and the twelve whether they too, like many in the crowd, would like to desert him and his teaching, Peter replies for all the disciples by saying, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life’. And in replying for all the apostles, John uses the words of Peter as the answer that we too are to give as disciples of Jesus. We are to come to the point through listening to his word in the power of the Spirit of proclaiming with Peter that Jesus is ‘the Holy One of God’.
However, if we are to come to this point a decision is required. It is necessary that an election for Jesus takes place. It is the same choice presented by the successor of Moses, Joshua, in our first reading for today. Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem, the place where Abraham had built an altar in order to give thanks to God for God’s promise of the land and numerous descendants. It is the place where Abraham reaffirms his trust in the promise of God; in the covenant that was made with him that he and his descendants will be blessed among all the nations (Gn. 12: 7).
It is this point that chapter six of John’s gospel has been leading us to. The previous passages of the chapter have been analogous to the wandering through the desert in order to bring us to the promised land of Canaan. However, for us to occupy this promised land it is necessary to arrive at a point of decision; to make a declaration for Jesus that he is ‘the Holy One of God’.
In some traditions, I would now invite you to come to the front of the church to make your public declaration for Christ. I can remember in 1984 going to a Billy Graham rally where an event like that took place on a massive scale in a football stadium. It is an impressive moment when people make a public declaration for Christ and declare their lives as under his sovereignty.
Many in this church are probably several decades on from this type of declaration and we possibly find ourselves wandering around the streets and alleyways of the Canaan of our discipleship looking for the Lord whom we have declared to be our Lord and saviour: the one who has ‘the words of eternal life’. In other words, we encounter ourselves a considerable distance from the honeymoon period of discipleship; from the first flush of youth, idealistic and desirous of changing the world. We may now find ourselves satisfied by the desire of simply changing ourselves to be a little more kind and loving; a little less self-centred and a little more God centred.
This is a natural cycle of Christian discipleship. The honeymoon period is wonderful while it lasts and then the journey begins. A journey no less exciting and desirous but now matured by the experience of life; by the experience of ourselves as fallen and redeemed disciples of the Lord. It is this journey which confers a degree of wisdom on us as it teaches us what the true meaning of discipleship is all about. No longer believing that we control our discipleship and can deliver results that we would like, we discover a process of letting go and of following the Lord through the twists and turns of our lives. This journey, through the promised land introduces us to many different things: to different people, to different terrains, to exotic foods and ways of living that we had not previously known. All these experiences of following the Lord enable us to discover ‘the Holy One of God’. But now this discovery has a certain depth to it that it previously lacked. The self has been eroded by the journey and we glimpse, if ever so faintly, the promised land as if for the first time. We discover that the decision that we have made for the Lord is never old but always new; always full of encounter with the God of surprises. Just when we thought we had been down every alleyway and byway, somehow we realize that the journey we have been on is life itself. It is inexhaustible because the journey is itself the very life of God that we meander around during our own life. Like discovering a trap door in the cellar and finding that it is very deep, we learn to see life as a door through which we pass on an unending journey into the mystery of God.
So, let us give thanks for these five weeks of discovering the gospel of St John. It has taught us many things that will accompany us on our ongoing journey. And let us remember that on this journey we go accompanied by the Holy One of God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.