“As a result of this, many of His disciples returned to their former way of life, and no longer walked with Him.” John 6:66

20 April 2024   John 6:60-69

It is important to remember how the Bread of Life Discourse (John 6:22-59) began.

It started with the Feeding of the 5000 (6:1-15), which caused many people to start seeking Jesus out, and following Him around. Jesus was not in any doubt about their motivation – they wanted more food: “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (6:26). Jesus told them that in fact He had more food, the kind that would take care of their hunger forever, the true Bread from Heaven (6:33).The people thought they were about to see the Bread Trick again, only better, and they shouted, “Sir, give us this bread always!” (6:34).

They thought Jesus was the Fixer. He could take care of all their food problems, all their health problems. He could make their lives in this world comfortable and worry-free.

But Jesus did not come to be the Fixer. He came to be the Savior. He was not interested in comfort for this world, but salvation for the next. He was not interested in a better mortal life, but a perfect heavenly life. So He told them he was not the Fixer, He was God. He told them that the life He offered was not their better life but His Perfect Life. He said to them not, “I improve life,” but “I Am Life.”

That’s the part that was too hard. That’s the part they could not accept. That’s the part that made them walk away.

We still want the Fixer. We want the Jesus who will endorse our political ideology. We want the Jesus who will make our anxiety go away. We want the Jesus who will make us attractive to others, powerful over others, prosperous in spite of others. We want a Jesus who will improve this life, and don’t care very much about the next.

And so people still walk away.

Funny, then, that so many people get all the money they want, all the power, health and comfort they want, and they are still unhappy. It is one of the most familiar stories in the world – people spend their entire lives acquiring what they think they want more than anything, only to find that all of that doesn’t make them happy. They don’t have any real friends, but only acquaintances who want something from them. Their lives don’t have any meaning beyond what can be counted, entered on a ledger, and grow at a reasonable rate of interest. Ebeneezer Scrooge, Thomas Gradgrind, Silas Marner, Shylock, Midas, Crassus, Croesus – literature and history abound with people who have learned the hard way that this world simply doesn’t have enough to make people ultimately happy. All of the gains and goods of this world point toward something greater that many don’t discover until it is far too late.

We don’t need a Fixer. We need a Savior. Heaven is not a metaphor for joy in the world. Joy in this world is a metaphor for Heaven.

When all the Fixer-fixated people had walked away, Jesus asked the twelve who remained, “Do you also want to leave?” (6:67), and Peter in a moment of complete clarity (a little unusual for him), said, “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” (6:68-9). He got completely what C.S. Lewis later described when he wrote, “I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, a region in Hell; and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself” (The Great Divorce, p. ix).

Fixers give us earth. Only a Savior gives us Heaven.