There comes a point in all of our lives when following Jesus gets hard. It could be that we’ve done all the right things, and despite this, tragedy has found us. We might recognize that Jesus is asking us to change something about ourselves, something that we feel is core to who we are. Maybe it’s just that we get to a point where we just don’t see what the point is anymore.
Regardless of how we get to that crossroad, we always have a choice. We can turn away, or we can continue to follow, despite our lack of understanding. Peter and the disciples face this choice in John chapter 6. Peter’s response tells us a lot about faith and should be an encouragement to us.
The Setting of John 6
John chapter 6 starts off with a well-known story about Jesus: the feeding of the 5,000. The crowd that is following Jesus doesn’t have the best motives. They want to make Jesus king. He miraculously provides food for them and they want more. They want more food and they want Jesus to do what they want. Their ideas of Jesus differ vastly from the reality of his message and mission.
Jesus knows all this. After he feeds them, when they come looking for more, he shares a less than appetizing message with them. Seven times in seven verses Jesus tells the crowd to eat his flesh and drink his blood. There’s no explanation given. No obvious indication that this is a parable or spiritualization or that he’s talking about anything other than them actually eating him. Not an appealing message.
It’s for this reason that many in the crowd leave and even some of the disciples say, “This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?” (John 6:60) If you were there, you probably would have thought the same thing. Anyone who encourages cannibalism is not looked fondly upon at any time or place.
Peter’s Response
Then Jesus turns to his closest followers and asks if they’re going to leave too. Peter, who is always making bold (and often unwise) statements, emphatically says no. He says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Those are bold words. I’m not doubting that Peter meant what he said. Right before this, the disciples had an amazing encounter with Jesus where he miraculously walked on water and calmed a storm. That is still fresh in Peter’s mind. He knows that Jesus is no ordinary person.
However, I do doubt that Peter understood what Jesus was really saying by talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Peter never was the sharpest knife in the drawer. I’m sure he understood later than Jesus was talking about spiritual things, not actually committing cannibalism, but at the time, I’m guessing he was as confused as we can be reading these strange words.
Despite This…
Despite this, Peter follows anyway because he knows and trusts Jesus, not because he understands everything.
Peter probably doesn’t get it, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t still follow Jesus. He trusts Jesus, not because he understands everything he says, but because he knows Jesus. He’s seen Jesus’ power. He is confident that Jesus is trustworthy, even if his words are sometimes cryptic.
Things We Can Learn from Peter
We often find ourselves in Peter’s place. There are a few things we can learn from him.
What God does and says might not always make sense to us, and that’s okay.
This is far from the only passage where Jesus said something his disciples didn’t understand. They were constantly asking him to explain things to them. We should find this encouraging because it means that even those that were closest to him didn’t always get, but they were still able to follow him. The same is true for us.
There are going to be commands that don’t make sense to us. There may even be pieces of the Bible that we find offensive or hard to swallow, but that shouldn’t keep us from following God. We don’t need all the answers to walk in faith. That’s kind of the point of faith, believing in and acting on something we can’t always see clearly or fully understand. You can do all of that while still doubting and not understanding. Don’t ever let doubts or questions make you feel like a second class Christian.
You don’t have to have all the answers, but you do need a personal encounter.
Peter is able to confidently say what he does because he knows Jesus. He might not understand everything Jesus says, but he trusts who he is as a person. He’s seen Jesus at work. He knows what Jesus is capable of. It’s not Jesus’ words that make him confident. It’s his character. It’s the power he’s displayed in the past. It’s the friend that he has been to Peter.
The same is true for us. We can know about Jesus and what he says, but unless we’ve had a personal encounter with him, we’re not going to be able to stick it out when things get tough or weird. Though Jesus may not be with us physically, we can still encounter him by looking back at our life and seeing where God has provided for us in the past when we’ve needed him most. We can encounter him through the stories of others, either those we know or those in history. We can meet him in his word as we get to know him through the Gospels. He’s also promised to be with us in the Person of the Spirit.
You Always Have a Choice.
Everyone who heard Jesus that day had a choice. They could choose to stay with Jesus, despite their confusion, or they could choose to walk away. We don’t know what happened to those in the crowd and those disciples who walked away. We do know that they didn’t choose that one moment and then it was all over for them. There’s a good chance that some in the crowd that day were also in Jerusalem during Pentecost when Peter preached the good news of Jesus and many accepted him and were baptized.
As long as we are still breathing, we still have a choice. It doesn’t matter what we chose yesterday, the same choice is still before us today and it will be there tomorrow. We can choose to follow Jesus or we can choose to walk away. Jesus’ door is always open for you, doubts and all.
Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash