St. Johns Lutheran Church
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
Know Christ. Love Christ. Serve Christ.
August 25, 2024
LECTIONARY 21
Questions Remain
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Throughout his time on earth, Jesus taught the disciples what it means to follow him, delving deeper into difficult concepts with each step toward the cross. Jesus’ thought-provoking and life-changing words challenged existing wisdom, stretching the boundaries of belief, forcing each person who heard them to reevaluate everything they thought they knew. How could they eat this bread and live forever?
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Is it any easier for us to wrap our minds around Jesus’ teachings? How do we open our hearts to the mystery of flesh given for us, blood shed for us, and bread come down from heaven when our culture insists that there is a simple black-and-white answer to every question? Who takes time to slow down and reflect on challenging Bible passages? Can we allow those words we do not understand to just be, to percolate and take root in the fertile soil of Christ’s presence until the Spirit can coax a shoot of understanding to spring forth and grow into the light?
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Too many unanswered questions weighed heavily on some of Jesus’ followers. They wanted out; it was too difficult. They turned back to the safety of familiar routines and comfortable ideologies, prompting Jesus to wonder if all the disciples would abandon him. “Do you also wish to go away?” he asked the twelve (John 6:67). He asks the same question of us today whenever the circumstances of our lives challenge our faith, whenever our hearts are broken and our bodies exhausted, whenever it feels like we cannot take another step. Will we trust in Jesus’ promise that his words are spirit and life? Do we believe he is the Holy One of God?
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Questions remain, but the good news is that God’s love is stronger than our doubts and fears, calling us back to worship, filling us with strength and giving us peace in the midst of uncertainty.
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From sundaysandseasons.com.
Copyright © 2024 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.
John 6 concludes by contrasting those of Jesus’ disciples who eventually left his movement with those believers who remained. John has moved the setting from the shore of the lake (v. 25) to the synagogue (v. 59). Thus the discourse that began as a comment on a specific miracle has been generalized to one that echoes the Christians’ late-first-century debate with Judaism. Jesus is called Son of Man, the apocalyptic judge, and the Holy One, a common designation in Hebrew for God. In John’s paradoxical fashion, verse 56 calls the food “flesh” which one must eat to live, and verse 63 says that the flesh is useless.
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The seventh-century book of Joshua narrates the history of the Israelites’ entry into Canaan six centuries before. To encourage the Jews who were facing military defeat and exile, the authors reiterate Deuteronomic theology: if the people are faithful to the Lord, they will be blessed, and if not, they will be punished. The name Joshua, which is Hebrew for the Greek Jesus, means “the Lord saves.” Since in the ancient world it was usual for the deities of power to be resident in the land, the Amorite religion was attractive to the immigrant Israelites. Many scholars concur that it is unlikely that in the thirteenth century the Israelite tribes were already unified and shared a faith that God was blessing their conquest of Canaan. Interestingly, this passage does not backdate Yahwism to before the conquest. Rather, this sense of divine mandate was important for the preservation of communal identity when the book of Joshua was written.
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In a metaphoric tour de force, the author of Ephesians concludes the epistle’s call to Christian unity and communal ethics by likening the struggles of a life of faith to battle and God’s power to armor. Undoubtedly, this military imagery functioned very differently for a small illegal religious sect struggling to survive in the Roman Empire than it does for us. At the time of the writing of Ephesians, few Christians would have served in the Roman army. The author is clear about the menacing might of evil. Yet Christians are called, not to fight back, but “to stand against,” to proclaim peace: the advice is entirely about protection and resistance, not about aggression. First-century Jews had incorporated into their monotheism the devil, the figure in neighboring religions of a supernatural power engendering evil. Christian prayer is not only for the self, but “for all the saints.