Where else can we go?

After a busy day exploring new plans and ideas for our lives, my husband and I came home with our minds full and curiosity satisfied. However, a sudden and unexpected emotion fell on me. Our plans will involve good things, but some losses. I realized that my strong emotion was grief.

This stayed with me all night. As I read the following passage of Scripture today, I wonder if God was using this emotion to help me identify with the losses felt by Jesus.

In the following passage, the Lord offers eternal life to those who will believe in Him. He tells them that the intimacy of this belief will include participation in His very life. Most of them don’t get it. They were following Him, but this was too much for them. Because they did not believe, they turned away and were lost.

Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 

Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” 

But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:47–65)

Jesus offers life and they grumbled? He offers them intimacy and they thought this was a hard saying? As I read Jesus’ next words, a wave of emotion hit me, like grief. Is this what Jesus felt?

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”  (John 6:66–67)

He’d offered them eternal life, even His very self. He would be their source of strength, their very sustenance as they walked with Him. And they didn’t get it, or didn’t want it, so they walked. I can hear the sorrow in His voice as He turns to the twelve, knowing that one of them would betray Him. “Do you want to go away as well?”

Is there a worse feeling than being abandoned and left entirely alone? He offered them His eternal presence and they walked away, as if to leave Him abandoned and alone. Of course He was never alone as He Himself had that eternal life and intimacy with His Father that He now offered them. Yet there is such great sorrow in His question.

But then Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68–69)

Peter had reached that place in his spiritual journey where he realized there is nothing else or no one else who can offer and deliver eternal life. He knew that Jesus was no mere teacher or prophet. He knew that he had no other options. He would stay, even though he didn’t fully understand what Jesus was talking about.

Jesus’ must have smiled, not for His own sake (as I would have in that same situation), but for delight that Peter, using “we” and speaking for the others, would accept the offer even though it was a hard saying and he did not really get it. His acceptance was not about knowing everything, but about knowing Jesus. He knew this blessed and Holy man was of God and from God. He trusted Jesus because of who He is, not because he could wrap his mind around all that Jesus said.

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Lord, I feel the pathos in Your question. Yet I also feel the delight in Peter’s statement of faith. This describes how I often think when faced with perplexities and questions about You that I do not understand. If I cannot figure out life, I’m faced with the same dilemma; to whom shall I go? Only You have the words of eternal life. No one else can guarantee that. No matter how strange Your words seem, I know who You are and have experienced You as the Bread of Life. Whatever else life brings, I can find all the sustenance that I need — in You, even when I don’t understand.