Doing things that we don’t particularly want to do is one of the markers of a civilised society I think, and the lack of doing so is one of the signs of the fragmentation of society which we now witness. Trying to be nice to people who, for one reason or another, seem to enjoy being unpleasant to us is maybe one example, giving away the things we value, be it time, money or possessions is another. Many of these small things, once accomplished, peculiarly can make us feel better, or even good, about the whole thing, like leaving the Dentists or landing gently and easily after a parachute jump – there is always the fear things may not go the way we hope, but on the whole, our fears are unfounded, and we might even begin to look forward to the next time – or in some cases, maybe we learn that some people, places and things are simply toxic to us and are best avoided, which is a perfectly reasonable outcome as well. We move forward or backward, but we move, because we have the ability to do so.
Our faith, as we have it now, and as we hope to pass it on in the future, is the product of those who have come before us and what we are doing right now, and our faith story is often about having to make a decision to go forward, or backward and I think this movement is beautifully described in the readings today.
In the first reading, Joshua gathered all the tribes together at Shechem: he had led them in a military campaign which had been strikingly successful and he had divided up the land among the different tribes, and now he gathers them to make the biggest decision which they will ever make. This reading is most certainly uncomfortable for us who have learned about Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Cambodia and Srebrenica and who are troubled by the situation of Palestinians in the Holy Land today; we have learned sensitivity to The Other, to those who are maybe not us but to whom we have at least some ancient family ties, from the same scriptures which contains this reading, and we now hear how the people of Israel were challenged to renew their commitment to God. We have won, you have bene given your land, now you must choose. And the choice is: were they going to move into the future with the God who had brought them out of Egypt and into the promised land, or were they going to choose the old gods of their ancestors or maybe the local gods of the land they had conquered? Were they going to be comfortable with their ethnic gods or the local gods, or were they willing to follow the uncomfortable, challenging but loving God who had disturbed their peace as slaves in Egypt, who had travelled with them through the desert, who had given them a new identity as landowners in Shechem? The rest of the Old Testament is the story of their response to that question; and so is our own life as Christians today, as these people chose in such a way that we also follow. The temptation is always to make ourselves a comfortable god who will bolster our own ideas; the challenge and the offer of the gospel is to follow the living, disturbing God of life into a future we cannot control. We have our land, our inheritance, now we must decide how to use it, and decide to purge it of idols.
Jesus upset many of his followers by the language he had used about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and about offering a food which was better than anything Moses could offer. It was too intimate an offer, and too challenging to the inherited ideas of Jesus’ Jewish listeners who had chosen with Joshua to follow the God who signally did not say these things. Their inheritance and idols of status and power rejects the word of the Son. Their temptation was to see God as the ethnic God of a particular people their God, who had given them land and power, and they could not accept that this God might be present among them here and now, in dusty Galilee; it seemed too close, not spiritual enough, not distant enough – because though we want a comfortable god who fits in with our ideas, we want this god to be a decent distance away; in the temple, safe and secure.
But we are told; It is the spirit that gives life, The flesh has nothing to offer.The flesh, in the sense of the human mind, cannot accept that God gives us his flesh to eat; the truly spiritual person discovers in this earth the presence of the intimate and disturbing God who takes us beyond our limited, comfortable and distant picture of God; the spiritual person we are called to be meets this God in the here and now, in the challenges and disappointments and hopes of our humanity, in life and death, in sickness and health, in times of plenty and times of want, which is maybe why the faith is harder to transmit to a society which keeps themselves fed and warm while others starve and freeze.
Peter recognizes that this is the only way: this challenging, disappointing and hope-bearing person, whom he and his friends are following, is the way to life. He may not make life comfortable or easily understandable; he may be the death of us; but there’s nowhere else to go. He has the message of eternal life, and it is hard to hear.
