A new non-denominational church was getting ready to open its doors, and the pastor sent a letter to people in the area, encouraging them to attend the opening service. Here’s how that letter began: “Many folks view religion as a few people getting together and using God to spoil their fun. I vow to help change that perception by always sharing messages that emphasize the Good News, hope and comfort, rather than emphasizing shame and condemnation. Our commitment to you is always to consider your needs and feelings, and to present solid Bible-based messages that touch your minds and emotions.”
In today’s Gospel lessons, the Jews who were listening to Jesus were hearing things that touched their minds and their emotions, but they weren’t hearing what they really wanted to hear. Just one day after seeing Jesus feed the 5000 with the five loaves and two fish – just one day after comparing Him to Moses and even talking about making Jesus their earthly king – their minds were having trouble understanding what they were hearing. And their emotions? Well, they were quickly turning from excitement to doubt to outright anger. As St. John tells us, “The Jews grumbled about him.”
Jesus was saying some mighty strange things about Himself. He kept referring to Himself as the bread of life. He kept saying things about coming down from heaven. And He kept talking about His Father in ways that just didn’t make sense.
After all, these people knew Jesus’ father – he was Joseph, a carpenter who had lived in Nazareth. They knew his mother Mary. They knew that Jesus had been born in Bethlehem but had grown up in Nazareth, where he had learned to be a carpenter just like his father. All of this talk about coming down from heaven was nonsense. Only God could come down from heaven – and there was just no way that this man Jesus could be God.
During the final two months of my Vicarage I conducted a weekly Bible Class for inmates of a drug unit at the Harrisburg Youth Facility. The unit housed approximately 30 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 19 who had been incarcerated for drug-related crimes. At the end of my second visit, one of these young men asked if he could speak privately with me for a few minutes before he had to return to his cell.
He told me that he had been raised in a Christian household, where he regularly read the Bible and attended church services. He said that he got into trouble when he quit reading the Bible and going to church. And the reason he quit was that he just couldn’t believe that Jesus was both a man and the Son of God. He wanted to believe – but he couldn’t. He was reading his Bible again – you tend to have a lot of time on your hands when you’re in prison – but he couldn’t understand how Jesus could be a man and God at the same time. And since he couldn’t understand it – he didn’t believe it.
The Jews didn’t understand how Jesus could come down from heaven when they knew him to be a man just like any other man. That young man at the Harrisburg Youth Facility couldn’t understand how Jesus could be anything other than just another man. People still can’t understand.
As Christians we believe, teach and confess that Jesus is true man and true God. Luther’s explanation of the second article of the Apostles Creed states it so well when it says: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.” As St. Paul wrote in chapter 4 of his letter to the Galatians, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Roughly 700 years before Jesus’ birth, the prophet Isaiah wrote: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
God’s own perfect plan of salvation for His people demanded that our Savior must be true God and true man, for as the author of the letter to the Hebrews writes: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.”
True God and true man. Yes, we believe it. We can’t understand it – but we believe it, because we see its truth through the eyes of faith and not through our imperfect and sinful human eyes and our limited human reason.
Belief in God – belief in the true God, the Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit – never has been and never will be an intellectual act. It’s not something that we can figure out on our own, that we can research and reach a rational decision. If I want to buy a new car, I can study the different models that are available, I can read the reports about reliability and resale value, I can look at insurance rates for different models, I can test drive them and I can reach a logical decision. But faith doesn’t work that way. In fact, that’s what Jesus tells the Jews in verse 36 of our Gospel lesson: “You have seen me and yet you do not believe.” They had seen Jesus perform miraculous acts. They had heard His words, His preaching. The Gospel writers frequently tell us that when people heard Jesus and saw his miracles, they were amazed. But mere seeing and hearing and even amazement didn’t translate into belief, didn’t produce faith.
Instead, we read that the Jews grumbled. In the 17 short verses of our Gospel lesson Jesus makes four different statements that he has “come down from heaven.” He continues to repeatedly refer to Himself as the bread that gives life, just as He did in last Sunday’s Gospel reading and as He will continue to do in next Sunday’s reading. He makes repeated references to God as “the Father” and as “my Father” – and He makes it perfectly clear that He has been sent down to earth to do the “will of him who has sent me” – the will of God. The Jews who were there with Jesus on that day had all of the facts, all of the evidence that Jesus was true God and true man. But they didn’t believe. Instead, they grumbled. They denied. They looked for reasons to justify their unbelief. “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” they asked. How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
Jesus replies: “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Jesus makes an interesting choice of words here. The Greek word that is translated as “draws” can have several different meanings. It can mean to pull in, to drag in, to haul in – often with the sense that this pulling or dragging or hauling is done by force.
Scripture says that we are enemies of God. We are born in the filth of original sin. We are, by nature, unclean – and no matter how hard we may try, we can never wash the stench of sin from our weak, pitiful bodies. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – and “the wages of sin is death.”
So God draws us to Him. But in our sin, we really don’t want to be drawn to God. Let’s face it – sometimes it would be a lot easier to not be a Christian – it might seem to be a lot more fun. No more worrying about breaking those stodgy old 10 Commandments. No more worrying about living by God’s rules. No need to get up early on Sunday morning and go to church when it would be more fun to just roll over and sleep for another hour or two. No reason to give money to the church when you can find any number of ways to spend that money on yourself. No reason to even think about God or Jesus or living a Christian life because – let’s face it – the world tells us that we’re all good people deep down inside and it really doesn’t matter what you believe as long as it makes you feel good. Just as the pastor of that non-denominational church said in his invitation, “many folks view religion as a few people getting together and using God to spoil their fun.”
And yet, God draws us to Him. He sends the Holy Spirit to pull us, to drag us, to haul us in – to bring us to faith. God feeds us with the bread of life, the true bread of life – Jesus. He feeds us with each and every word of Holy Scripture. He washes us in the waters of Baptism and gives us the life-giving body and blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper. Jesus told the Jews, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” My brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus is talking here about us! We have been brought to faith. We are His – and he will never let us go. And on the last day he will, most assuredly, raise us up.
I often think about that young man at the Harrisburg Youth Facility, that troubled young man who honestly wanted to believe that Jesus is true God and true man, who wanted – but couldn’t force himself – to believe that Jesus is his Savior just as He is yours and mine. I know that I won’t see him again, but I do pray for him. I pray that he will quit trying to reason his way to faith – and will let the Holy Spirit do the work that only He can do. For as Jesus said, “this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life.”
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