Christ the King-Epiphany, Wilbraham

The Rev. Martha S. Sipe

August 25, 2024 / Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost / Lectionary 21B

John 6:56-69

Finally this week we come to the end of the 6th chapter of John, where we’ve been lingering for this five weeks.  And it’s worth noting that the circumstances have changed a bit.  At the beginning of chapter 6, Jesus had a huge crowd of 5,000 people following him, attracted by the miracles they had seen him doing among the sick.  That same crowd had followed him from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other, so enthralled were they by the signs he was doing and the food he was providing them.  But when Jesus started inviting them to focus on eternal things, when he began to talk about spiritual hunger rather than just physical hunger, the crowd waffled a bit.  When he began to speak of himself as the Bread of Life, the crowd became restless, arguing about knowing his parents, and who did this guy think he was, anyway?  And when Jesus started talking about eating his flesh . . . well, it was just too much for the casually curious.  Even many of his disciples, those who had committed to following him, began to murmur among themselves about how difficult Jesus’ teaching was.  In fact, many left Jesus, so that the only ones who remained were his inner circle.  Think about that for a minute:  Jesus’ audience had dropped from 5,000 . . . to 12.  And of those 12, Jesus asked a question:  “Do you also wish to go away?”  It was decision time.  Time to make a choice.  Is this just too hard?  Or do we keep going?  Peter spoke for his compatriots – and unlike some other times when Peter puts his foot in his mouth, this time, Peter’s words are beautiful and true:  “Lord, where else could we go?  You, Jesus – you have the words and the power and the promise of eternal life!”

There are situations and seasons in all of our lives where we come up against the question:  Is this just too hard?  Or do I keep going?  Is this relationship – with my parent, with my child, with my significant other – is it just too much work?  Or do I keep working at it?  Is this cause that I have committed to costing me more than I have to give?  Or do I dig deeper?  Is living a Christ-like life of forgiveness and compassion and mercy and grace more than I can handle?  Or do I keep praying for help?  Is this just too hard?  Or do we keep going?

Three times this week, before I began working on my sermon, before I had even read this week’s gospel lesson, I experienced an example of the choice to keep going.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit is subtle.  Sometimes she hits us over the head with a 2 x 4!  This was definitely the latter kind of week for me. 

Experience number one.  As you may know, there is a group of church and community members here at CTKE who are pursuing the work of antiracism.  We’re using this book:  Do the Work:  An Antiracist Activity Book.  There are five chapters in the workbook, and we’ve been individually working through one chapter at a time, and then getting together monthly to talk about what the journey’s been like for each of us.  We started in May, which means that this month, August, we’re in chapter 4.  Chapter 4, which is entitled, “What Do I Dooooo?” – Chapter 4 is where, for me, the work got real.  Because now our discussion has moved beyond just understanding and acknowledging our racism (and, for some of us, our white privilege); now it’s about personal accountability, about the way we take action to end racism.  Doing the work is much harder than learning about it.  And it seems that the authors knew that this is where the rubber hits the road because one of the exercises in chapter 4 asks the readers to discern what message they would like to give to themselves about the antiracism journey.  I thought and prayed about the question for a while, reflected upon how challenging this work really is, and what came to me was this message:  keep going.  Fighting something as entrenched and intractable as racism, including realizing how I as a white person have benefitted from my skin color, is messy and painful – working to end racism is hard, and there are days when I’d rather just stick my head in the sand.  But that’s not the choice that the Spirit moved within me.  The Spirit said:  keep going.

That was my first experience this week.  The second came on Monday evening listening to Hillary Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention.  No matter what your party affiliation, no matter your personal opinion of Secretary Clinton, I would hope that we could all agree that she deserves respect, not just as a human being, which of course we all deserve that respect, but also as a pioneer:  the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for the presidency.  Whether or not you voted for her in 2016, you can acknowledge that her struggle to get to where she did was real.  And in her speech, when she spoke about the struggle to break the glass ceiling that has prevented a woman from getting to the White House, she said, “I wish my mother and [the vice president’s] mother could see us.  They would say, ‘Keep going.’”  Let me be clear.  This is not a plug for the Democratic Party.  It’s a reminder that sometimes we have to struggle to break barriers.  And as tempting as it may be to turn back from the struggle, there’s also the choice to keep going.  

That was Monday evening, my second “Keep going” revelation.  Then on Tuesday evening at Drum Circle, I had my third.  We were drumming and praying with Psalm 121:1:  “I lift up my eyes to the hills.  From where is my help to come?”  A regular part of our prayer time during drum circle includes sharing our reflections.  One of our group members shared that while she was drumming the verse, she was remembering a hiking trip she took in Slovenia.  The trail through the Alps was extremely steep and winding, and she was afraid that she would fall.  She wanted very much to turn back, but they were through-hiking from one hostel to the next, making turning around impossible.  She discovered, however, that she could keep going if she kept looking up, not down . . . familiar advice for those who have a problem with heights . . . and, she said, she did a lot of praying!  She kept repeating to herself, over and over, “Keep going.”  And, she said, just as Psalm 121 indicates, by lifting up her eyes (both actually looking up and looking up to God in prayer), she found the strength and the courage to keep going.

Three times, in short succession, I experienced examples of the message:  keep going.  And so when I read our gospel lesson, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see this same message shining through.  Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”  Said a little differently, “Do you want to follow everyone else in turning back?  Is my teaching, my mission, too hard?  Or will you keep going?”  Peter’s reply says it all.  “Where else can we go, Jesus?   You’ve got everything we need.”  He does, you know.  He’s got everything we need.  So why would we turn back from following him.  And when we keep pressing forward in our journey with Jesus, he will guide us along the way.  When we keep going in our efforts to do what he would do, he will supply us with what we need.  When we keep going, he is with us.  So when you feel like the road of faithfulness and forgiveness and mercy and love is too hard:  KEEP GOING.  For like Peter, we have come to believe and know that he is the Holy One of God.