John 6:56-69

For years, doctors have told me I should do weight-bearing exercise, or resistance training. Resistance training has a number of health benefits. It strengthens your heart and reduces risk of stroke. It strengthens ligaments and improves balance. It shifts fat to muscle and increases your mental health. But for me the salient benefit is strengthening my bones, preventing osteoporosis. So when I am in yoga class, muscles straining, holding a pose way too long, I can smile and be grateful: I’m resistance training, and it’s good for me.

But there are some forms of resistance that are not so good. We encounter one in our gospel lesson today, what I’d call “spiritual resistance.” Jesus is wrapping up his teaching in the synagogue after feeding the 5,000. He’s gone on at some length, starting with the observation that the people following him were seeking more bread rather than his teaching. He urges the crowd to work for the food that satisfies—spiritual food—and then tells them that he is the Bread of Life. He is like the manna that God gave in the wilderness. But unlike the people in the wilderness who eventually died, the life he gives is eternal.

If I were in the crowd, I would have still been with Jesus at this point. I am all about Jesus as my spiritual food. But then Jesus starts getting a little creepy, talking about eating his flesh and blood–eww. By the time we encounter Jesus finishing his teaching in today’s lesson, the crowd has thinned. Even some of his disciples, people who have been studying with him regularly, are defecting. Jesus comments, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” And then John editorializes, “For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him.”

To me, this is a description of spiritual resistance. Belief in the gospel of John is always phrased in the Greek as “believe into”—in other words, belief is about where we put our trust. Belief is a spiritual assent, saying yes to God. Spiritual resistance, on the other hand, is an expression of a lack of trust. Spiritual resistance is about saying NO to God.

Spiritual resistance can take all kinds of forms: the need to be in control; believing we are unforgivable; addiction or busyness; thinking we know better than God and forging ahead without the humility to stop to pray for God’s guidance. Spiritual resistance turns us in on ourselves and away from God. That’s actually a classic definition of sin—to be “curved in on oneself.” Whatever the form, spiritual resistance is resisting God’s love for us. It’s resisting God’s unique purpose for our lives. It’s resisting the ways God wants to flow through us to others.

I have had ample opportunity to reflect on spiritual resistance in my own life. I’m going to share with you just one story as an example. Some of you know I was a stay-at-home parent for five years when my kids were small. It was a gift to spend the time being their primary caregiver. But about two years into the five-year journey, I started getting restless. I needed a place to put my creative energies beyond my kids. I started organizing neighborhood events, volunteering at the local school, getting involved in justice efforts. And it was all good.

Except when it wasn’t. I kept getting frustrated at how hard the work was without the support of an institution like the church. I missed the special relationship I had with people as their pastor. I missed having a sense of purpose greater than the basics of our household. I felt my skills were getting rusty. And worst of all, I started to doubt my gifts for ministry.

Then I got a call from the bishop’s office. There was a part-time call an hour away that needed someone short term. Could I commit to Sunday worship, council meetings, and pastoral care for 6 months? I said I’d think about it.

My husband encouraged me to try it out. He could see better than I could how I was ready for something new. But I had all kinds of reasons why this was a bad idea. The children were still small, and my husband was a church musician. Who would sit with them in church and teach them to worship? What about the community work I am doing? The PTA? I need to see those through. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take up my pastoring again. I had tried so hard as a young pastor to live an exemplary Christian life that I had begun to feel like a professional Christian, hired to “do faith” for others. I’d kind of burned myself out. There was no way I was going to go back to doing THAT again.

While I was thinking about the decision, I filled in for six weeks at an Episcopal church nearby, and a crazy thing happened: I found myself enjoying writing the sermons. I got interested in the Prayer Book and leading worship in a new setting. I started putting my clergy clothes out on Saturday night. It was surprisingly easy to get back into the pulpit, like riding a bike. I realized: this is what I am good at. This is what I am called to do. So I called up the synod office and I said yes. Looking back on it, I see that I was also saying yes to God’s loving purposes for me.

God’s call to us is to be all of who God created us to be. My resistance was that I didn’t believe I could be more or bring back the joy and fulfillment in my ministry. I didn’t believe God could take care of the details of childrearing in my absence.
I didn’t trust that God knew what God was doing. Like the people who left Jesus in our Gospel lesson, I didn’t believe.

But there’s also Peter in our Gospel lesson. When the people turned away from Jesus to leave, Jesus asked the twelve: “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter answered, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

These are words of spiritual surrender. They acknowledge basic truths that Peter had come to know: Jesus is Lord, who embodies the life and love of God. Jesus has invited Peter and all who listen into the deepest intimacy: to abide him, to take Jesus’ love as nutrition, his presence as sustenance and to be united with him as he is with God.

That’s Jesus’ invitation to us, too—to get beyond our fears and embrace God’s call beyond what we already know, beyond what is comfortable and familiar. God calls us into new territory where we go out on a limb and learn again that God is trustworthy. God wants us to know fully all the love and life that God has for us. Jesus lived his life as the fullest example of that life and love, and through him, God offers that fullness of life to us.

You know, sometimes I think that God is sneaky: I took that half-time call an hour away because it was temporary. I thought, in six months I can quit. But as God knew would happen, I ended up loving being in ministry again. When God couldn’t get me through the front door, God got me through the backdoor. I am so grateful for God’s persistence with me in helping me to stop resisting, to help me see the ways in which God has been faithful when I thought otherwise; to trust that God loves me, and that God knows what God is doing.

We may at times be like the disciples who turned away that day in the synagogue, and other times like Peter who embraced Jesus as Lord and source of life. But whether we resist or surrender, Jesus’ invitation is there for each of us: Abide in me. Live in me. Receive the words of eternal life.