August 27, 2000

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Joshua 24:1-2,14-18 John 6: 56-69

Making decisions can be hard. Choices can be difficult. As a mother watching two sons in two consecutive years having to decide on which one of the 8,000 colleges in the United States they want to attend I can tell you that making choices can be difficult. Where will I be comfortable? Where will I fit in? In what place will I be challenged, but not too challenged. Even deciding what things are important in making decisions can be difficult. Do I care what the dorm looks like, does it matter if the buildings are so old they're falling down? What matters?

I talked to someone this week who is considering a job change. How do I make this decision, they wondered. It's a move up for me, to something more challenging and interesting. How much do I want challenging and interesting just now. It means a move. I'm not sure that I want to go to that place or that I'll even like it. Decisions, Decisions! What's important, what matters and then how much does it matter?
Our lessons this morning are about making choices.

In what is probably the depiction of the covenant ceremony of the tribes of Israel into a confederacy, Joshua brings the heads of the clans together and says to them "Choose this day who you will serve." "Choose this day who you will serve." There are options, he points out. There's the gods of your ancestors, there's the gods of the Amorites and then there is Yahweh. Make up your mind. Decide. Choose!

The crowd that had started to follow Jesus was drifting away. More than five thousand had been around when he fed them all. Fewer when he moved on and he wasn't providing lunch any more. When his teachings began to challenge the establishment and the Pharisees began to get a little squeamish there were fewer people showing up. And then there were just enough to fill the synagogue in Capernaum. "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." Many of those in the synagogue hearing this said," This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?""And because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him." Jesus is down to twelve. Only twelve haven't yet made their decision. And Jesus says, "Do you also wish to go away?" Decide now. Make your choice.

"The teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" How many of us have thought, " That's just where I am. Sometimes the things Jesus says go right over my head. Sometimes the whole religious thing just doesn't make sense." There are probably those of you out there who wonder how it is that it is so much easier for everybody else. You think , " How is it that my husband can be so committed?" " What is it that my wife finds so comforting in all this religious stuff?" Many people believe that their trouble with understanding is uniquely theirs. Nothing could be further from the truth, We are more alike in our inability to accept the difficult teachings of Christ than perhaps in any other way. Even the most faithful among us is still challenged by the difficulty of the teaching of Christ. All of us are unable to create ourselves. All of us are in the vulnerable position of needing to receive our lives from the hand of God. We cannot conjure or create a self-made person. We must rely instead on the graciousness of God.

Noone easily comes to belief. No one easily accepts the truth of the gospel. It comes to one over time, in bits and pieces, in flashes and glimpses. The readily available delusion that we can secure our own future seduces us daily. The truthful confession that it is only through God that life and life eternal is ours does not come easily,
In the movie "Tender Mercies," the character played by Robert Duvall returns from a church service in which he and his stepson have just been baptized. The stepson turns and asks: "Do you feel any different?" Duvall's response is: "Not yet." The response is true to our experience. Acceptance of the truth of the gospel may not come all at once, in a flash; it may instead come a little at a time, over a lifetime. William Willimon catches just this sentiment when he relays this experience from his seminary days:
In a church history course in my last year at Yale Divinity School, the professor invited an Orthodox priest to lecture. He gave a rather dry talk on the development of the creed. At the end of the lecture an earnest student asked, "Father Theodore, what can one do when one finds it impossible to affirm certain tenets of the creed?"
The priest looked confused. "Well, you just say it. It's not that hard to master. With a little effort, most can quickly learn it by heart."
"No, you don't understand," continued the student, "what am I to do when I have difficulty affirming parts of the creed; like the Virgin Birth?"
The priest continued to look confused. "You just say it. Particularly when you have difficulty believing it, you just keep saying it. It will come to you eventually,"
Exasperatedly, the student and a representative of the 60's, pleaded, "How can I with integrity affirm a creed I do not believe?"

"It's not your creed young man!" said the priest. "It's our creed. Keep saying it for heaven's sake! Eventually, it may come to you. For some, it takes longer than for others. How old are you? Twenty-three? Don't be so hard on yourself. There are lots of things one doesn't know at twenty-three. Eventually it may come to you. Even if it doesn't, don't worry. It's not your creed."1
"Who can accept it [the difficult teaching of Christ]? The church can accept it, week after week, eucharist after eucharist, year after year, in the sure and certain hope that the teaching is true and can be trusted."

Professing without being fully convinced. Committing and then being convinced comes not all at once but in dribs and drabs. A glimpse, a hope We become won over first by one little thing and then another. A Mexican American women was interviewed on public radio the day before thanksgiving. She told about her fears upon arriving in the United States. The pace was so strange. She feared for her children. One day in Nov. her husband brought home a turkey, a huge turkey given to him by his boss as a Thanksgiving present. "it looked so ugly and white." Said the woman. "I refused to cook it."
"But it's American!" said the husband. "Everyone in America eats like this. This is what they call Thanksgiving."
"But I don't know if we want to be Americans," she said. "I think we need to be careful. We need to wait and find out what all this means."
"It's just a turkey" said the husband. "What harm can eating a turkey do to us?"
"I cooked the turkey," the woman said. "The next day we all sat around the table with that huge bird. My husband ate some, the children nibbled a bit at it, but I refused to eat a bite."
She knew in her heart of hearts, that something large was at stake in how we eat. She knew enough to be wary of this new culture. First it's a nibble of turkey here, and a nibble there, the next thing you know your son is in banking. The world has got you.
Jesus said "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them."
At some point we choose, though our wisdom is incomplete, though we have questions or doubts-we choose.

Jesus asks his closest disciples what their choice is. Peter speaks for them all: "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know..." (vs. 68-69) God has not only given us freedom, but also deep longings. We long to be in communion with something eternal, we long for a sense of purpose, and we long to be loved.

It takes courage to follow the words of eternal life. Anne Sexton, in her book of poems, The Awful Rowing After God, has one poem entitled "Courage." She describes the courage of a child's first steps, or an older child facing for the first time someone calling her or him names, or a young soldier facing war, or later in life facing a deep personal anguish. The final act of courage she describes is "Later,/when you face old age and its natural conclusion/your courage will still be shown in the little ways..." and at the last moment when death opens the back door/you'll put on your carpet slippers/and stride out."

Peter's cry of faith was a mixture of both despair and hope, an act of courage.
Sheldon Vanauken tells of his decision, in the book A Severe Mercy, of how he chose to follow words of eternal life. In a letter to C. S. Lewis he wrote, "I choose to believe in...Christ, my Lord and my God. By (Christianity) life is made full instead of empty, meaningful instead of meaningless...A choice was necessary: And there is no certainty...Choosing to believe is believing. It's all I can do: choose (p. 99)." When we choose, like Peter "we have come to believe," and it makes all the difference.

Amen.