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The sermon was a flop. Jesus had been invited to preach at the synagogue in Capernaum. No sooner did he finish speaking when the sideways glances began to fly. One person scowled. Another ground his teeth. Others stood shell-shocked by the vivid phrases that lingered in their ears, words like "eat my flesh, drink my blood." Some listeners were utterly confused by what they heard, and chances are, a few people were bored. As one worshiper after another filed out, they shook their heads and murmured, "That sermon was tough to swallow."

His supporters agreed. A number of them huddled outside having one of those conversations that people sometimes have in the parking lot. Quiet complaints and muttering beneath the breath. When Jesus came near, he didn't make things any better. He said, "The words I've spoken to you are spirit and life." That is, "Sorry, folks, but today's sermon is about as good as it gets."

Then John says Jesus gave a little theology lesson. He began to explain the doctrine of divine election. A few people got nervous and began to leave. A few others got confused and walked away scratching their heads. A handful of disciples stood around, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do. Jesus said, "Do you also want to go away?" (I hear a touch of disappointment in his voice, don't you?)

Simon Peter replied, "Lord, where else are we going to go?"

It was a naive thing to say. There are a lot of places for people to go and many reasons to do so. When poet Annie Dillard was a teenager, she left the church. She grew up in Pittsburgh where her parents belonged to Shadyside Presbyterian Church, a church they never attended. Her father dropped her off at the door and kept driving, so no one would see his khaki pants and loafers.

By the time she was a teenager, she writes, "Nothing so inevitably blackened my heart as an obligatory Sunday at Shadyside Presbyterian Church." She was struck by the hypocrisy of it all: a barefoot Jesus depicted in a gold mosaic; "the minister's Britishy accent; the hypocrisy of my parents who forced me to go, though they would not; the hypocrisy of the expensive people who did go... every week I had been getting madder; now I was going to plain quit."

One day her mother took a phone call from the church. A minister wanted to make an appointment to see Annie. After school Mother asked, "Annie, why did he call you?" Annie said, "I wrote him a letter and quit the church."

"You, what?!"

When her father got home, her mother moaned about it.

After supper, Father said, "Annie, you have to understand. People do these things quietly. No fuss. No flamboyant gestures. No uncalled-for letters. Are you doing this to humiliate us?"

Then she went to the meeting with the Rev. Dr. So-and-so. He said, "This is rather early of you, to be quitting the church." Then under his breath he added, "I suppose you'll be back soon."1 Obviously he wondered, "Where else is she going to go?"

It was a naive thing to say, particularly to one of my fellow Baby Boomers. A lot of people leave church and never return. Back in the good old days, young people graduated from Sunday school and stayed away for a dozen years or so. Now they simply stay away. There are a lot of other places to go, a lot of other people to see, and a lot of other things to do. As somebody said to me, "I want to hear you preach sometime, but, you know, my weekends are just too busy."

Where else are they going to go? Any number of places: the beach, the mountains, the lake house, or the brunch table. Sometimes they will turn to the entertainments of our culture hoping that a theme park or music festival will fill a deep, insatiable hunger.

They might tune out with a television remote in their hands. A friend came to visit when resettling after a divorce. He needed a place to land so I said, "Come and spend some time with us." He showed up a few weeks later. We gave him a key and said, "Our place is your place; come and go as you please."

The next night, I heard a noise downstairs and awoke with a start. It must have been a loud noise because I don't wake up easily. I pulled on my housecoat and waddled downstairs. It is three in the morning and my friend is leaning on the couch watching our television. He has a drink in one hand and the remote control in the other hand. Every few seconds, he zaps the television remote and changes channels. I said, "You woke us up."

"Uh-huh. Sorry about that." Zap.

I said, "Are you looking for a particular show?"

He said, "No, just wanted to kill some time." Zap.

I asked, "How long have you been sitting here, doing this?"

He said, "Oh, a couple of hours." Zap.

Then he added, "Back in my apartment, this is how I spend most of my evenings. Sometimes I find something I want to watch; most of the time I keep looking."

I cannot criticize him because I know how it feels. I don't know how many times I open the door of a well-stocked refrigerator, looking for something and never quite finding it. If there is anything that every human being has in common, it is our hunger. We are creatures. We received our lives as an act of creation and that means we are, by definition, incomplete. We cannot finish by ourselves what our Creator alone has started. We simply don't have the capacity.

Frederick Buechner is right when he says, "We do not live by bread alone, but we also do not live long without it. To eat is to acknowledge our dependence -- both on food and on each other. It also reminds us of other kinds of emptiness that not even the Blue Plate Special can touch."2

The question is: Where will we go to satisfy our appetites? Where can we go to fill our common human emptiness? Our culture provides a catalog to meet every possible need. Our desires are marketed as commodities. It is hard to wade through the heaps of empty words and the false promises.

I know it is difficult in the church. We struggle to dig down to the bedrock, to get in touch with reality, to deal with essentials. Other things get in the way.

Horace Greeley once received a letter from a woman whose church was in financial trouble. She wrote about the steps that had been taken to ease the difficulty. The church had a strawberry festival, an oyster supper, a donkey party, a turkey dinner, and a myriad of other events. "Will you please tell us, Dr. Greeley, how to keep a struggling church from disbanding?" Greeley wrote back and said, "Try Christianity."3

The core of Christianity is paying attention to Jesus Christ: worshiping him, praying in his name, serving in his footsteps, but most of all, listening to what he says and taking it seriously. Sooner or later we have to contend with Jesus Christ in concrete ways. That is what he means when he says quite literally, "Chew my flesh, and sip my blood." It doesn't get more material than that. Jesus is not merely talking about taking communion. He is talking about taking him in. He is talking about receiving his presence as the gift of God. Jesus is the One who reveals God, the Holy One who keeps us, fills us, and satisfies our greatest hungers.

Even so, do we really want that? Some people want all kinds of things from their church, except for the one thing that matters most.

One time I was stopped on the sidewalk by a neighbor who was also a church member. "I'm concerned about my grandson," he said. "He's in trouble." What was it, I wondered: drugs? Fast crowd? Slippery morals?

"No," said Grandpa, "it is far worse. The kid reads his Bible all the time. He prays constantly even in the middle of the day. He always talks to God and about God."

"So what's the problem?" I asked.

"Reverend," he said, "I want you to talk to him. Tell him not to take his beliefs so seriously."

Jesus asked, "Do my words offend you?" Sometimes they do, especially if they're written in a Bible. The Bible is a large book, a tough book, an imposing book, a difficult book. It is bigger than any one of us. Yet the testimony of the church is that Jesus still speaks through the pages of this book. That is the issue. Is he alive? Is he risen? Does he still speak? That is the question.

You see, there is something more important than believing in the Bible. Believing may help but it is not the point of Christian faith. What matters is that we believe in Jesus: the living and risen Jesus. If Jesus is alive, he can speak through the words of scripture, as God opens our ears, as the Holy Spirit breathes upon an old printed page. That is what matters. That alone will nourish us.

Does Jesus Christ have anything to say today to you and me? If the answer is "yes," he is "the one Word of God that we have to hear and that we have to trust and obey in life and death."4

In the church where I grew up, the minister went on vacation one Sunday. Maybe he was unable to get a substitute, or the Session was feeling thrifty, but the week before he left someone announced that, "Next week will be Laity Sunday." An elder from our church was going to preach. On Wednesday that elder came down with an undisclosed illness. I think it was an act of self-defense. She had to back out.

With the minister out of town and in a moment of panic, the other elders ganged up against the nicest member of the church. He had a pleasant speaking voice. Most of all, he was incapable of saying no. No one cared that he never preached before, and in the rush of the week, nobody gave him much guidance.

Sunday arrived on schedule. We sang the hymn, prayed a prayer, and passed the plate. Soon it was sermon time. There was a nervous rustle in the congregation. We wondered, "What's this man going to say?" He stood and said, "I don't know what to say this morning. It is the first time I've stood in a pulpit. I feel uncomfortable. So I'm doing something different. I'm going to read you some words from the gospel of John. They're the words of Jesus. I'll read them to you for a while and then I'll sit down."

Our speaker began: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (3:16).

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life (8:12).

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (8:31-32).

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me... and I lay down my life for the sheep (10:14-15).

I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die (11:25-26).

If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you (13:14-15).

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. I go to prepare a place for you (14:1-2).

I am the way, and the truth, and the life... If you know me, you will know my Father also (14:6-7).

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives (14:27).

I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me, and I in you (15:5).

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you (15:12-14).

He went on like that, reading out of his red-letter Bible. Then he sat down. Nobody moved for a minute or two. We sat in a silence that nobody had to fill and maybe for the first time in my life, I realized that through those words I had heard Jesus speak. To me, to us. That is the main reason why we went to church that morning. Not to hear a preacher or a lay preacher but to hear Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God.

"Lord, where else are we going to go?" Spiritually speaking, I suppose there are a lot of places we could go. Some are helpful, some not. There are a lot of other voices we could listen to. Some are helpful, some are not. We have the freedom to do whatever we want. We can go wherever we want. We can listen to whoever we want.

Sooner or later, every last one of us must deal with Jesus Christ, for he says, "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."

You know something? We can take him at his word and chew on what he says or we can turn away, go somewhere else, and stay hungry. Amen.

__________

1. Annie Dillard, An American Childhood (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 227-228.

2. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972), 12.

3. Quote in Donald Macleod, "Wonderful Words of Life," Best Sermons 1, James Cox, editor (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988), 346.

4. Theological Declaration of Barmen, 8.11.