Experimenting on the Word: November 2009

It must have been exciting to be in Galilee during the beginning of the Savior’s ministry. You really get a sense of that in the opening chapters of John. First, after centuries of silence, a prophet walks out of the wilderness of Israel, preaching repentance and baptizing all who would believe. As his following grows, the Jewish leaders send representatives to ask him whether he is one they have been seeking for so long—the Christ, or Elias, or that prophet spoken of by Moses. As he always did, John the Baptist pointed their attention away from himself, and toward the man whose path he was sent to prepare.[1]

As John bore his witness of the Christ, his disciples listened, and began to inquire for themselves. And so the fire spread, as it always does, by brother telling brother, and friend telling friend. Andrew, hearing John’s witness, took the Lord’s invitation to come and see for himself.[2] Andrew in turn told his brother, Simon, who came to the Lord and had his name—and his life—changed forever.[3] The Lord sought out Phillip, who in turn told his friend Nathanael, and the Savior’s following grew.[4] It grew further after the Lord went to Jerusalem for the Passover and performed mighty miracles.[5] It reached fever pitch after the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, when the crowd, thinking they’d found an end to life’s struggles, sought to “take [Jesus] by force, to make him a king.”[6]

But Christ was already a king, and the people’s misperception—of who he was and what it meant to follow him—had to change.[7] So Jesus taught the Bread of Life sermon, explaining that his role as Messiah was spiritual rather than temporal,[8] and that to follow him would require them to give up all of themselves to receive all of Himself in return.[9]

For most of the crowd, the price was too high to pay. Many, even of the disciples, “when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?”[10] And “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”[11] Certainly Jesus was not surprised by this, “he knew what was in man”[12] and knew “from the beginning” those who did not believe him and those who would betray him.[13] And yet, you can sense the sadness that must have been in his voice as he turned to his closest disciples—the Twelve—and asked “will ye also go away?”[14]

This is the challenge that faces all of the disciples of Christ, ancient and modern, who are faced by “hard sayings”—those situations where the demands of discipleship clash with the demands of the world or the desires of our own hearts. True Christian discipleship requires us to give all that we have and all that we are to follow him[15] and abide in him.[16] So when we are faced with our own “hard sayings,” there really are only two choices: We can, as many disciples did at the time and as many have done since then, turn back and “walk no more with him.” Or we can, as Peter did, respond to the Lord’s question with love and determination: “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”[17]