A Fourth Church Sermon by Joanna M. Adams

August 24, 2003 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Not for the Faint of Heart

Joanna M. Adams
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10–20
John 6:56–69

“So Jesus asked the twelve,
‘Do you also wish to go away?’
Simon Peter answered him,
‘Lord, to whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”

John 6:67–68 (NRSV)

We praise you, O God, for all the mystery of life,
for work well done, for hard choices that help us discover who we are,
and above all, for the gift of faith that makes your love in Christ
the sure foundation on which we build our lives.(1)
Allow us now to hear what we need to hear,
so that we may be able to do what you would have us do,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Let me say what a joy it is to be in the company of such wise people who had a choice to make as to whether or not you were going to participate in the Chicago Triathlon or come to church this morning. I think you made the right decision.

In her provocative new book, Beyond Belief, early church historian Elaine Pagels examines a piece of writing called the Gospel of Thomas, a text that was discovered in Egypt in 1974 along with numerous other ancient texts that were written in the first 300 years after the birth of Christ. The main question Pagels’s book addresses is why certain documents, such as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, made it into the Bible and why others, such as such as the Gospel of Thomas, did not. The book provides a fascinating window into the early history of the Christian movement. For example, there is Justin Martyr, a Roman citizen and a very erudite one at that. Around the year 140, he described in his writings the radical change that had come over his own life and the lives of others in his Christian community at the time of their conversions: “…we who once valued above everything else acquiring wealth and possessions now bring all that we have and put it into a common fund so that it can be shared with everyone in need. We who once hated and refused to live with people of another tribe because of their differences from us have now come to live intimately with them.”(2)

For Justin Martyr and for many others, this great countercultural adventure certainly was not without its costs. To the larger culture, to the Roman authorities, indeed, to members of their own families, many of the early Christians were an offense, a scandal, an embarrassment, a force to be stamped out. For example, in the city of Carthage, in the year 202 in North Africa, there lived a young aristocratic woman whose name was Vibia. She was married, had a young son. She converted to Christianity and made the decision to be baptized. When the magistrate of the town asked her if she was a Christian, she said she was, and he immediately had her thrown into prison. At one point during her imprisonment, her father came to see her to attempt to talk her out of this foolish Christian business. She said to her father, “Do you see this water pot in the corner of my cell?”

“Yes, I do,” he answered.

“Could it be called by any other name than what it is?”

“No,” he answered.

“Well, so too, I cannot be called anything other than what I am. I am Christian.”

Though her father and others kept pressing her to alter her convictions, she would not, and so it came to pass that on the emperor’s birthday she was led from her cell and calmly walked into the amphitheater in Carthage, where she and others of similar resolve were torn apart by beasts.(3)

To be a follower of Christ in the early days was certainly not for the faint of heart. One can make a very strong inference in that regard when we listen to the lesson from the letter to the Ephesians, a sophisticated seaport city where all along the streets were temples to other gods. It was a difficult thing to be a Christian in Ephesus. The civil authorities were oppressive. The early believers were besieged on every side. One day, they received the letter that we call the Letter to the Ephesians, outlining in muscular imagery what they must do if they were to resist the powers that underlay their trials: You’ll have to find your strength in the Lord, they were told. Fasten on the belt of truth. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. Take up the shield of faith, so that “you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows” that come your way (Ephesians 6:10-16).

I bring you this brief historical review, because I have been reflecting of late on what we mean when you and I identify ourselves as Christians in the twenty-first century. Are we speaking of a commitment for which we would put our lives on the line? Are we referring to the circumstances of our birth? I was born into a Christian home, as I am sure many of you were. Is that what it means to be a Christian?

Some would say that to be a Christian is to affirm certain theological doctrines about the divinity of Christ. Some would say it is a way of life that distinguishes a person or a community of faith from the values and behaviors of the larger society. Liberation theologians would say that to be a Christian in the twenty-first century is to be in solidarity with the poor, to treat other people with love, and to work for justice. Yet as has been pointed out many times, there are millions of people in the world today—Buddhists and Jews, Hindus and humanists—who work for justice and treat their neighbors fairly and live in solidarity with the poor and the suffering.(4) What was it crusty old Will Campbell said? Something about how the church seems to be full of admirers of Jesus, but with few followers.

This morning’s lesson from John’s Gospel takes us to a dramatic moment in Jesus’ own ministry, when it became apparent who his fair-weather friends were and who his true disciples were. As Jesus teaches in the synagogue, he says strange, even harsh-sounding, mysterious sentences like this one: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6:56). What on earth could he have meant by that? The Jews wondered, but not only the Jews. There were Christian disciples of Jesus in the synagogue that day as well. It was at this point that some decided to follow, and some decided to turn back. They complained about this strange teaching, offended at the idea of something that was so earthly and disgusting. Can’t we have a pure, less messy way of sharing in the life of Christ than participating in his death in order to have life? Why would one have to do that? This was not a crowd-pleasing concept. Many of those who had admired him and thought it would be just splendid to go his way decided that Christian discipleship was not for them, after all. The road was going to be much harder for them than they had anticipated.

Actually, the real offense that lay behind this complicated teaching of Jesus, indeed the offense that lay beneath all the other offenses, was the idea that eternal life is given, not according to what we believe about Jesus Christ, a kind of intellectual works-righteousness, or because we decide to live a good and honorable life, a literal kind of works-righteousness, but for one reason alone: because of God’s “election of grace.”(5) “No one can come to me unless it was granted by the father,” Jesus said (John 6:65). This was the idea that was so difficult to accept, that caused many to turn back and no longer to follow him. No more did they want to put up with Jesus’ already knowing everything before they knew it. No more would they have to hear about everything’s being laid out by God ahead of time, and how God’s purposes were the operative powers in the universe. After they had gone and there were only twelve left, Jesus called to his side the little band that remained and asked, “Do you also wish to go away?”

What a poignant question.(6) “Do you also wish to go away?”

Peter answered for all the rest with a question of his own: “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.”
Jesus answered Peter’s question with still another question, “Did I not choose you…?” (John 6:68–70).

So, which is it, do you think? Did the disciples choose him, or was their staying with him predetermined before the foundations of the universe? Presbyterians have long been theologically associated with the core doctrine of divine sovereignty, the idea that God is in charge. The concept that goes along with sovereignty is the strange notion of predestination.

One of my favorite Presbyterian preachers tells a wonderful story of two preachers in nineteenth-century Boston, one a Calvinist Presbyterian and the other a Wesleyan Methodist of the first order. For years, they had kept up a debate from the pulpit and in their private conversations on this matter of divine determinism. Neither would give an inch, as one was for predestination and the other was for free will. One Sunday in the spirit of brotherhood, they decided they would have a pulpit exchange. So when the Sabbath day came, each of the ministers got on his horse and began to ride to the other’s church and their paths happened to cross. As they greeted one another that Sunday morning, the Calvinist could not resist saying, “My dear brother, I feel as if I must remind you that before the foundations of the universe, Almighty God did decree that on this Sabbath day you would preach from my pulpit and I would preach from yours.”

To which the Methodist brother replied, “If that is the case, then sir, I shall not do it.” He turned his horse around and went back to his own church.(7)

Irreversible fate? Free-will choice? Which should it be? This story from John’s Gospel is of enormous help in answering that question. Note that the twelve were free to go. If they had not been, would Jesus have asked them, “Do you wish also to go away?” They were free to choose, but it is also true that their staying with him, as Jesus explained it, “had been granted by the Father.”(8)

Someone asked me just this week why I did not issue an altar call at the end of my sermons on Sunday mornings. I answered in two ways. First, there is no altar in the Presbyterian church, but rather a communion table, reflecting our Presbyterian emphasis on the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. The other reason is that our tradition places ultimate emphasis not on our making a decision for Christ, but on God’s making a decision for us in Christ. That is not to say that our choice is unimportant. It is to say that our choice comes second, because it is God who elects, God who chooses; indeed, I would go so far as to say that God alone makes it possible for us at some point in our lives to stand and confess, along with Simon Peter, that we have come to believe and know “the Holy One of God.” We cannot take a bit of credit for it, but can only receive the gift of faith with gratitude. Whatever it means to be a Christian today, it means not being arrogant and puffing up one’s own chest and saying, “I am a born-again Christian, and if you are not, then I feel very sorry for you.” Peter and those who stayed were no more religious than those who turned away.(9) He and the ones who remained simply were open to the gift of receiving God’s call to discipleship, a call that turned out to be not one bit easier than Jesus had said it would be, but there is no indication anywhere that any of them, not Peter, not John, not James, not Andrew, not a single one of them regretted for a moment that they followed him.

I think of us followers today and how it is that we are not subject to persecution for our faith. At least in this nation, we are not under threat of death because of what we believe, but it still takes courage to be a Christian, doesn’t it? To follow him is to lay our own lives down alongside the demands of faithful discipleship.(10) It takes courage to go Christ’s way in any age.

“Do you wish also to go away?” Jesus asked. If he were to ask me that today, honestly I would have to say, “Well, yes I do. Sometimes, I do wish to go away.”(11) The road is sometimes hard and the way forward is not clear, but then I realize that, even in these days when we have so many gods in which we could put our faith, I have come to believe by grace that Jesus has the words for eternal life. To whom else would I go?

One of my favorite Reformed theologians, a man named Douglas John Hall, writes of his own personal discipleship. He says, “I was a Christian by birth, but I became a Christian, and I remain a Christian because I began to discover a road, a road less traveled to be sure, but a road that went beyond dogmas and neat divisions of humanity and sheep and goats. I have been traveling that road for a very long time. If I were asked to name it, I would say it’s called grace. If I were asked who built it, I would say Jesus, the Jewish teacher, whom Christians call the Christ.”(12)

I end with a moment of frustration in my week last week as I was trying to figure out what in the world those words in the Gospel of John mean: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” Abide in me, and I in them? I chewed my pencil eraser and scratched my head, and finally in frustration, I decided I couldn’t figure it out and turned away to read my email messages. There on the screen was a message from a member of our congregation. “Dear Joanna, I am grieving today over the deaths of the children who were killed in the terrorist bombing in Jerusalem. I am grieving over the horrible explosion at the U.N. center in Baghdad. What terrible loss of life. I know I need to do something, but what can I do? I am wondering if anyone has thought about organizing people of different faiths from around the world to pray together at a certain time?”

As I read the message, I said to myself, this is it! This matter of Christ’s abiding in us and our abiding in him. The spirit of Christ lives in our identification with the suffering of the world, and as we, through prayer and through action, let his spirit abide in us, there is still another miracle. We are drawn close, very close, to the heart of God, where Christ has prepared a place for us. Remember what he says later in John? “In my father’s house are many abiding places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you that where I go, there you may go also?” (John 14:1-3)

I am telling you, it gets no better than this, these gospel promises. Those who take my life into themselves, I abide in them, and they abide in me. So it was that the Word, the Word that preexisted before the foundations of the universe, became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (John 1:1–14). Thanks be to God. Amen.

Notes
1. Adapted from a prayer by Ernest T. Campbell in Where Cross the Crowded Ways.
2. Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Random House, 2003, p. 13.
3. Ibid, pp. 11–12.
4. See Hans Küng’s classic On Being a Christian, Image Book Edition, 1984, p. 25.
5. Fred B. Craddock, John, John Knox Press, 1982, p. 55.
6. John Ortberg, “Living the Word,” Christian Century, 9 August 2003, p. 17.
7. P.C. Enniss, “Predestination,” Central Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, 24 August 1980.
8. Bruggemann, Cousar, et al, Texts for Preaching, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993, p. 483.
9. Ibid.
10. William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, vol. 31, no. 31, July–Sept. 2003, p. 35.
11. Ibid, Ortberg.
12. Douglas John Hall, Why Christian? Fortress Press, 1998, pp. 13–14.