Ephesians 6. 10 – 20
John 6. 56 – 69
Fr Alex
Picture the scene, if you will: a politician on the campaign trail, giving a speech to a great crowd, his advisors and staff gathered around him. At first the crowd is cheering every sentence – this guy is saying just what they want to hear. But as the speech goes on, the politician starts to tell them difficult truths; and the cheers die away, and the crowd grows silent.
As the politician continues, the silence gives way to grumbling, and even angry outbursts – “you can’t say that!” they shout.
The politician’s followers watch on in horror as their man goes off-script and starts saying things that are guaranteed to lose them votes, and cost them their chance of power and authority.
Some of them try to get him to stop; others slink away, and find another politician to follow, one who says what people want to hear, rather than what they need to hear.
It could be a scene from any political TV drama of the last few decades. It could even be a scene from real political life on both sides of the Atlantic, in recent times!
But in fact it’s reminiscent of what’s been going on in our Gospel passages over the last few weeks.
It all began so positively. Rumours have spread that Jesus is someone worth going to hear, and a great crowd seeks him out.
At first, he gives them just what they want: food to relieve their hunger. But then they want more – they think this is their chance, and they want to make him king, and give them power over their oppressors.
But then he starts to tell them difficult things; all this stuff about coming down from heaven, and even that he wants to give them his own flesh to eat and blood to drink!
Today we see the consequences of this difficult teaching. The crowds, and even some of his own people, “turned back and no longer went about with him.” No doubt they went off to find one of the many other prophets and teachers around the place who offered them what they wanted.
As he sees his support crumbling away, Jesus asks the twelve, his chosen few: “Do you also wish to go away?” And Peter says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
In a sense the whole Christian life can be summed up by those wonderful words of Peter. The teaching might be difficult, but Peter knows it is true. He knows that there is no one else who can satisfy his deepest desire: to come close to God. And he knows that it is only through Jesus that he can find him.
At the heart of the Christian faith is the truth that we need God. We need him, quite simply, because he is the one who gave us life, and is the end to which our life is moving. We will always be restless until we find our home in him.
God created us in love, and knows and cherishes each one of us. And he longs for us to know him too. Our deepest desires are so strong, and so impossible to satisfy with the things of this world, because that desire itself comes from God.
It was the feast day of St Bernard of Clairvaux earlier this week, and he reflects on this beautiful mystery in his Commentary on the Song of Songs. He writes that when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him.
In other words, we desire God, because God desires us.
The Gospels show us the way to find the God we need: through Jesus, the one whom God sent to become one of us, and bring us closer to him – Jesus, the human face and the human name of God’s love.
And this long series of Gospel readings reveal to us one of the most important places we can meet with Jesus – in the Eucharist.
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.
The Mass reveals both our need of God, and that Christ is the only one who can fulfil our desire. The Mass is the place where our hunger is truly satisfied: not with food that perishes — that leaves us hungry and thirsty again — but with the food of eternal life. The very body and blood of Jesus, who gives of his own self to sustain us on our journey towards God, the end of all our seeking.
Our faith can often be difficult; our experience of life can throw things at us that shake our faith, and maybe might even tempt us to look elsewhere for the truth. There are plenty of competing claims to the truth out there.
But in those moments, remember that great confession of St Peter: “Lord, to whom can I go? You have the words of eternal life.”
And in those moments, hold on to the great gift that is the Eucharist. Know that even when your faith is tried and tested — perhaps especially at those times — Jesus still offers you his very self, his flesh and his blood, to sustain you, and to give you the power to endure.
Not the power of a politician, or even a king, but something much better: as St John wrote in the very first verses of his Gospel, Jesus gives us the power to become children of God. Amen.