John 6:66
Based on an idea by Peter K. Perry
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
Good morning.
My name isn’t all that important, but I’m written about in the Bible.
Jesus speaks about me.
Of course I’d love to have a name you would recognize, but… well, you know what they say…
“You make your bed, and you have to lie in it.”
Maybe, if I had acted differently back then, I could have been standing right there beside Peter and John.
Hey, maybe I could even have written a Gospel, like Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
But it wasn’t to be.
Who’s to say?
Who would have believed it?
It was a wild time. I was young.
I was curious, but not committed.
I first met Him at the wedding in Cana.
You’ve heard about it, I’m sure.
Cana is my hometown.
It was a big wedding… two of the most important families in town.
Almost the whole village was invited.
We were all having a wonderful time.
There was music.
Love was in the air.
But then they ran out of wine.
Can you imagine?
Well, the feast was about to fall apart when Jesus stepped in and provided more wine.
It was the best wine I have ever tasted – before then or since.
Some say He worked a miracle.
Others say He simply knew where to find it.
The master of the banquet, though, swears that he had the jars filled with water, and when Jesus told him to pour, it wasn’t water but wine that filled the cups.
And so the celebration went on.
Oh, Jesus knew how to keep a party going all night long!
Not like those narrow-minded priests in Jerusalem, or those barefoot fanatics down by the Jordan.
I think that was the thing that first drew my attention to Him.
Jesus knew how to enjoy Himself.
When He spoke about God, it usually wasn’t something heavy and depressing.
It was a delight.
He knew how to tell a wonderful story.
He could make you laugh.
He could make you cry.
You felt good around Him.
He was the life of the party.
Jesus soon moved on, but word of His adventures made its way back to Cana again.
He went up to Jerusalem for the Passover, and if you believe what people say, He really did put the priests in their place.
He overturned the tables of the money changers and drove all the sacrificial animals out of the temple courts.
“Do not turn my Father’s house into a marketplace!” He shouted.
Our local rabbi called Jesus an agitator, a demagogue, a troublemaker – but when I heard that story, I thought to myself, “Hey, now that’s the kind of religion I like!”
After that, word came that Jesus had gone into Samaria and preached there.
Those who hold strictly to ritual purity were utterly offended.
The rabbi in Cana even preached a sermon about it.
To this day I remember his pompous voice.
“We must keep the faith pure!” he shouted.
“We are a chosen nation, God’s own people!
Don’t you understand that to speak to the Samaritans about God is like dressing a dog in fine robes!”
Well, he ought to have known that he himself had the finest robes in the whole town.
That idea appealed to me.
It seems to me that the prophets had been telling us for years that God is the God of everyone – of the Jews, of the Samaritans, and even of the Romans.
Then one day shouting broke out in the street.
A few young boys were announcing that Jesus was coming to Cana again.
I left my work and headed for the synagogue, thinking that was surely where He was headed too.
Of course, half the town was already there.
Even one of the emperor’s officials was there.
He begged Jesus to go with him to Capernaum to heal his son, who was ill and even on his deathbed.
Jesus told him to go home.
“Go,” He said, “and you will see that your son is well.”
So the official went on his way, and Jesus taught the people.
The next day the officer sent a messenger with word that his son’s fever had broken at the very hour Jesus assured him the boy would live.
It’s hard to believe, I know.
But I decided that simply too many coincidences kept happening around Jesus.
Miracles, new teachings.
My work wasn’t going all that well, and besides, I wanted to travel, so when Jesus left Cana a few days later, I followed Him.
I saw some truly incredible things.
I saw crippled people walk.
I saw thousands of hungry people fed with five loaves and two fish.
I saw signs and wonders I could not explain.
I would have liked more time to think it all over, but there was no time.
It didn’t take me long to realize that life with Jesus was not going to be one endless party.
Jesus had work for us.
We had to feed the hungry, care for the sick, teach the young, and comfort the old and the dying.
Not everyone who asked for a miracle received one.
Not every town we visited welcomed us warmly.
The days were hot, and the nights were cold.
Jesus was surrounded by disciples like me.
He taught the disciples, the crowds, and the would-be disciples at every opportunity.
We drank in every word, trying to understand, trying to believe… But His sayings were hard.
From the way He spoke, I understood that God expects an incredible amount from us.
For Jesus it wasn’t enough that we kept the law.
He expected us to love one another.
And the things He said about Himself…
I know why the rabbis were troubled.
It was almost as if Jesus were saying that He Himself was God.
And He really did say that God had sent Him, that God was in Him.
And He said that God could also be in us. He said that if God is in us, we will live forever.
According to Him, in order to have God in us, in order to live forever, we truly had to eat His flesh and drink His blood.
He also said:
“I am the bread of life.”
Then He added:
“Eat my body and you will never hunger again.
Drink my blood and you will never thirst again.”
Far too grim.
He kept talking about sacrifice.
His own, ours, God’s…
It was all quite confusing.
As hard as I tried, I could not understand what Jesus was talking about.
So one evening, as I was turning in to sleep, I decided it was time to go back to work.
As far as I was concerned, it was time to end my journey and head for home.
The next morning I left.
I suppose you could call me “the one who fell away.”
I wasn’t alone.
There were others like me who couldn’t fit all the pieces of the puzzle together.
I mean, we liked Jesus and all.
Hey, we had even come to believe, as I thought, that He really and truly was sent from God.
But this mystical business, these sacrifices – we simply couldn’t get our minds around them.
So we left.
And that’s where I’m mentioned in the Bible – right there where it says, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”
I went back to work, but I kept an ear open for what people were saying about Him.
And then I heard about that Friday when they crucified Him.
How the soldiers mocked Him.
How His disciples wept for Him.
How Judas betrayed Him.
How the crowd shouted, “Crucify Him!”
How He hung between two criminals, promising one of them that he would be in paradise that very day.
That night I prayed long and hard.
My mind was filled with the picture of Jesus on that cross.
“What a waste,” I said to God.
“If You sent Him, why did You let Him die?”
And then suddenly, as if in answer to my question, the image in my mind changed from Jesus on the cross into a lamb lying on the altar.
All of Jesus’ teachings about sacrifice came flooding back into my mind, and I began to understand. I began to understand that Jesus Himself was a sacrifice.
It was as though He had to die so that we could live.
Life, death, sin, sacrifice, forgiveness – it was all wrapped up in Jesus.
Well, you know the rest of the story.
The cross could not defeat God.
The grave could not hold Jesus.
As it turned out, after everything, Jesus really was the life of the party.
As He said of Himself, in Him is the life that never ends.
I still don’t understand everything, but now, after the Resurrection, it all makes far more sense to me than it did before.
If we want to live, we must take part in this sacrifice that Jesus made, in this sacrifice that He Himself is.
Oh, and about this business of falling away.
I’ve owned up to it.
I turned back when the going got tough.
But I returned – and everything is okay, no problem.
Jesus knows it can get hard to be a disciple.
But I know it’s harder not to be a disciple.
I’m convinced that the sacrifices we are called to endure as disciples of Jesus are worth it.
And so now I spend my time helping others become disciples.
I teach the children.
I feed the hungry.
I visit the sick, the lonely, and the frightened.
I comfort the dying and the grieving.
I seek justice and peace.
I don’t always know what to do, but I try to do what Jesus did.
I already wasted one chance to be His disciple.
I won’t make the same mistake again.
Well, never say never!
But even if I lose my way for a while, I know that God and God’s people will take me back with open arms.
At last I’ve grasped it.
It’s not as hard as it seems.
God sent Jesus to me, so that He could live in me and I could live in Him. Forever.
And God sent Jesus for you too.
I think there’s still room for a few more disciples.
Will you join me?