1. Offense at Jesus

We are now reflecting on ” Bread of life” by reading chapter 6 in which Jesus commenced the ministry in Galilee, his home land.

His healing acts and convincing teachings attracted numerous people and they gathered around him. Many of them also became his followers. Its culminating moment should be the scene where he fed more than 5000 men with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 little fish on the lakeside of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd were impressed by his miraculous power so strongly that they tried to make him their king, regardless of Jesus’ intention ;- Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.(John 6:15)

But a his saying about “Bread of life” provoked people’s repugnance and they began to leave him. The very expression was this ;- Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.(John 6:54-55)

Not only Jewish people but also his disciples were shocked by those words ;-On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60)

We begin today’s lecture by following the story and will see that the crowed admired Jesus as their leading rabbi only because he supplied them with earthy bread. Indeed they might say Amen to his these teaching ;- Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ or ;- “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.(John 6:31-32)
They thought God would feed them in a way that they wished.

They were moved too by Jesus willingness to offer his life for their sake ;- “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:11)

But they took offense at him when Jesus said to them, “I am the Messiah sent by God. Those who believe in me will have eternal life”, by murmuring ;- “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”

They could not accept Jesus’ saying ” Eat my flesh and drink my blood” and left him. Even his disciples felt likewise. It was too difficult for them to believe that the Son of God would die on the Cross to offer his flesh and blood for their salvation.”

Jesus took insight into their mind ;- Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!(John 6:61-62)

“Ascend to where he was before” implies the future Resurrection. Those who could not accept the Cross for the Salvation, should be unable to believe in the Resurrection. Because such a belief goes far beyond human capacity of understanding. John did not conceal the fact ;- time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.(John 6:66)

As a matter of fact, the good news contains elements which may mislead ordinary human understanding. Especially incarnation, redemption through death of the Passion, and the Resurrection for eternal life are impossible to accept with reasonable sense. So much so they thought it was ridiculous to acknowledge them. Therefore Jesus said;- “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."(John 6:65)

And Jesus asked to his disciples ;- “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.(John 6:67)
which suggests if they wanted they could do like other persons crowd.

But ;- Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."(John 6:68-69)

Peter expressed his belief in Jesus as the very Messiah. In contrast, the crowd came to Jesus to get what they wanted, more exactly healing, salvation and Jewish glory. So, once they knew Jesus won’t offer them in earthy sense , they went away from him. But the Twelve remained with Jesus. Why?

2. To encounter resurrected Jesus

This world in which we live now is filled with evil and injustice. A employee denounced to Japanese Fair Trade Commission his construction company for illegal negotiations to obtain public contracts. He was forced by the company to quit the job. Regular employees express openly disdain for temporary workers. In Japan husbands considered very often their wives to be inferior because in general, Japanese women stop working after marriage and become financially dependent on husbands salary. In Japan, due du harsh living conditions, three thousand suicidal cases are reported and two hundred thousand embryos are killed by abortion each year . Many public servants seek their personal interests alone in expense of social welfare. Today’s actualities in Japan remind me of the society blamed by prophet Micah ;- he godly have been swept from the land; not one upright man remains. All men lie in wait to shed blood; each hunts his brother with a net.Both hands are skilled in doing evil; the ruler demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire— they all conspire together.(Micah 7:2-3)

Under similar circumstances, Jewish people met Jesus, a man who ” had compassion for lepers so strongly that he felt as if his bowels were twisted”, man who shared sufferings of segregated persons of the time, like tax collectors or prostitutes. In parallel, he publicly criticized powerful persons of the society, Pharisees and law teachers for their condescending stance toward others. Jesus also accused hight priests as “bad shepherds” who won’t take care of but exploited ordinary people.

As a result, he was hated , arrested, and executed by Jewish authority. Jesus disciples run away, pushed by fear, when they witnessed what happened to him. But Jesus showed himself before them after the Resurrection. At that moment Jesus, without any blaming words, trusted to them his sheep, or his flock. Those experiences led the disciples to confess their faith in him, the Messiah.

Since then they continued declaring , “Jesus is words of eternal life. We believe in him and know he is the Saint of God”, regardless of risk of oppressions and persecutions, or even that of death. The Gospel according to John is said to be written in around 90 C.E., 30 years after Jesus’ ministry. John wrote down his witness to Jesus as a memoir.

Like John or Jesus’ direct disciples, only by encountering resurrected Jesus we become authentic believers. We need have our own “Easter experience” to reach to mature faith.

3. The Cross makes humans alive

Today’s invocation verses are 1 Corinthians 1:23-24 ;- but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Its is Paul’s saying in an occasion of his ministry in Athens. The audience have been listening to his words attentively till that moment. But ;- When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject."(Acts 17:32)

Greeks, or Pagans thought it was stupid to believe that the Cross lead humans to the salvation. As I remarked before , Incarnation, the Passion and the Cross are events very difficult to acknowledge with rational reasoning. It is the same for the majority of Japanese. Therefore, in spite of their appreciation of Christian culture, they refuse to accept Christianity. In Japan, missionary schools are highly praised for their long tradition and educational achievements. Many parents want their children to learn there. Nonetheless parents very often want to avoid their children’s conversion to Christianity from traditional Japanese religion. The don’t want their children to attend Sunday Services or catechism classes. They are not at all interested in Christian belief itself.

Recently I had an occasion to participate a party. And there, one of the guests knew I was a paster and said to me openly ” religious talking bothers me”. She expressed that way her allergy to Christianity. Perhaps it is not difficult for them to estimate Jesus as a moralistic but they reject the belief that he is the Son of God, or the Savior. Very often they politely try to avoid conversations about the belief by saying “We want to hear you again on this subject.”

But, regardless of those reactions, we strain to spread the belief in the Cross. Because we know our life is in the very belief. So what is our life ? We learned from the Bible that all human history follows God’s program and whatever we think about it God makes it advance until the ultimate goal. By acknowledging Providence of God we can endure sufferings and pains because we can believe that God’s will which lead us to the Salvation.

A Japanese novelist Ayako Miura wrote a best seller book titled “Frozen core”, of which theme is the darkness or sin in human heart. She published successfully numerous works too. Many Japanese readers commenced to go to church thanks to her writing. How could she serve God and the church so powerfully ? Because she had suffered from several diseases, very serious ones. She must spend long time in hospital rooms during which she contemplated and noted down what she though was “life”. For example she wrote these phrases in one of her memoirs by referring to a remark of Thielicke, a german pastor*:
–Thielicke said even cancers were created by God. I was moved by the saying and felt as if a light from heaven hit me. Yes, for those who believe in God every things should become expressions of his love, my cancer too. All things must be good for humans because it is God who made them with love for us. Once I understood the truth illness seemed to me a gift from God.
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That is the very faith. God gives us all, illness and death, too. Even though we can not know how it works we must acknowledge that all should turn to blessing. And such a faith allow us to live. It might be simple to become christian-like. We receive baptism, that all. But it is very difficult to remain in faith as real christian. We encounter various trials through our life and harsh experiences easily push us away from Jesus. In hard times we might think Jesus is not helping or supporting us. But we struggle and despair for what ? Many of us seek what is so called “happiness”, material wealth or social reputation, comfortable family relationship, health for example. But are they really make us happy ? All human achievements are temporary ones. Therefore aging and death are considered to be courses and we try to overlook them.

On the contrary, once we stand on the faith we can accept illness, aging and death as natural processes which we must go through. We can arrive to consider them to be included in Providence. Because we know whatever God gives us finishes in blessings. In that way christian faith in God changes negative events to positive ones. And that faith makes us to live a real life based on God’s words.

Then how can we spread our faith, given through the Cross? Mr. Sekita, a retired Professor in theology of Aoyama University lectured about the issue in a Baptist seminar class. He said :
– The African-American civil rights movement seemed to be hindered in 1968 due to the assassination of its leader, Martin Luther King. Nonetheless 40 years later American people chose an African-American, Barack Obama, as their president. New US president appealed for abolishment of all nuclear weapons in Prague. He said in his speech that we must overcome violence and unfairness of this world and our fight should be fought in collaboration of free humans and countries. As he thinks humans can move forward together, by calling for peace and progress in one voice.–

We can see in the fact above a case of realization of Providence, a faithful and pacifist US president, which proceeded through Mr. King’s death on the Cross. “The Cross” is a powerful word. And today we keep in our mind that we try to make this world better with support of that power of the Cross.
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* Thielicke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thielicke