Scripture: John 6:56-69; Ephesians 6:10-20; Luke 14:26; 1 Thessalonians 5:8; Matthew 11:28-30 Series: After Pentecost
Preaching from John 6:56-69 and Ephesians 6:10-20, Wilson argues that the teachings of Jesus are genuinely difficult and that it is honest to admit so. Opening with how protective gear (lab goggles, X-ray shielding, football helmets, military gear) always signals danger, he frames the armor of God as the protective equipment for facing the hard demands of faith: believing bread and juice are Christ’s body and blood, loving enemies, and following Jesus when many disciples turn back. Surveying denominational views of communion and Wesley’s Duty of Constant Communion, he affirms that difficulty doesn’t mean avoidance. Peter’s confession (‘Lord, to whom can we go?’) models faithful perseverance. The armor of God, especially the belt of truth (God’s love for you), guards against the world’s deceptions, and the sermon closes with the invitation that even hard discipleship finds rest in Christ’s easy yoke.
Illustrations: xray-protective-gear, ephraim-flag-football-helmet, ut-football-championship, military-law-enforcement-gear, wesley-duty-constant-communion, just-bread-from-heb, enemy-you-avoid-at-heb, rich-young-ruler, john-outruns-peter, find-your-crystals
August 25
This Teaching is Difficult
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power; put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on the evil day and, having prevailed against everything, to stand firm. Stand, therefore, and belt your waist with truth and put on the breastplate of righteousness and lace up your sandals in preparation for the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak. Ephesians 6:10-20
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. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in a synagogue at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who were the ones who did not believe and who was the one who would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”
Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “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.” - John 6:56-69
If you have to wear protective gear of any kind, your activity is probably not easy. Even in school science labs, you may have to wear gloves. You get into science or engineering and you may need to have a full body suit covering you. You go to the doctor and get an X-ray, you have to cover some of your body. As well, everybody else leaves the room except you. Those are the moments that seem fishy. It comes off like, “I’m gonna take a picture of you, but it’s so toxic that I can’t be here.” “Wait, you can’t be here, but I’m here?” “Yes, you stay in the loud metal tube for an hour that is just throwing radiation into you as if you’re flying out of the atmosphere. I will be over here in this cool, little protected room. Try not to panic and go insane!”
There is also protective gear in many sports. You know things aren’t perfectly safe when people wear extra gear.
Ephraim, our youngest son, his flag football season just started. He started practice and they have helmets now, these soft helmets for flag football, which is great. It’s not all the gear that is going on as we get ready for UT football and our national championship run to start this year, but it’s something.
In law enforcement or the military, it’s not an easy thing if you have to spend time putting the gear on. Imagine if you’re in law enforcement and you have to go to a situation where you need to wear some extra gear. It’s not an easy situation. Those of you who have been in the military have served, whether in in Air Force or the Navy or the Army, have been in situations where either you wore the gear or you knew somebody who was wearing gear.
The one underlying current in all forms of protective equipment is that they’re protecting you from something. In chemistry, the goggles, the gloves protect you from the chemical reactions that could burn or splatter. They could affect your eyes in a different way than they would affect the rest of your body and football protective gear to protect you from the other team smashing into you in specific ways. In the military or law enforcement, the gear protects you from an antagonist, an enemy of sorts.
Ephesians
At the end of the letter to the Ephesians, Paul lays out fully this concept of the armor of God. He briefly touched on it in an earlier letter in the end of First Thessalonians. We recently finished that letter in my Bible study on the letters of Paul, and it was really fascinating to go through the text super slowly and intentionally and see how Paul’s argument was being developed and the ending in this crescendo of sorts, this, he is getting louder and more powerful. He’s going from writing to preaching, to singing words of praise. Near the very end of 1 Thessalonians, Paul describes putting on the breastplate of justice, but here in Ephesians, he lays out the different levels of the armor of God. Shield of faith. Breastplate of justice or righteousness. Belt of truth.
The passage from Ephesians is super connected to the end of John six that I read for the gospel reading because in the end of John six, Jesus is laying out his understanding of communion, of offering his body and blood to people. It’s scandalous, it’s literally scandalous. Scandal is the Greek word here. It is scandalous is offering his body and blood and if you eat his body and blood, you will have eternal life. There is a lot of grumbling going on and the disciples say, “People are saying, Jesus, this is difficult.” This is difficult. It’s a difficult teaching. It’s hard. There’s a challenge to it. We may need to put some other armor on, some protective gear, in order to really face the challenge on our own. In this world, it is sometimes too hard to face the difficulties of the teachings of Jesus on our own. Just you, by yourself, in this world, it’s hard to love your enemy as yourself. First of all, you have to admit you have enemies. This is something we don’t like to do today, and I define enemies in a lot of, in broad way, but I think it’s important to define it. The enemy is the person whom you don’t want to see at HEB. The person you don’t want to see at your front door. The number you don’t want to pick up when they call, it may not be someone you’re intentionally trying to tear down, but someone you’re trying to avoid. Someone whom you feel, if you never saw them again for the rest of your life, your life would improve. It is a difficult teaching to love them, yet this is what Jesus commands us to do. It is a difficult teaching to see bread and juice as the body of Christ. Different denominations emphasize communion in different ways. The Catholics and the Orthodox have an understanding of the real presence of Jesus that is articulated in a specific way. For Catholics, it’s specifically articulated using the language the philosophical language of Aristotle, and so they talk about substance and accidents. If you grew Catholic, you may remember some of this.
So Catholics think that it’s all Jesus. Lutherans have this under kind of understanding that the bread is both Jesus and bread, Calvinists, reformed Presbyterians have a different understanding of communion. That has to do with the presence of Jesus at the table and in the world. Methodist theology of the table is a little less precise than these other traditions. That doesn’t mean it’s unintentional. John Wesley has this sermon called the Duty of constant communion. He answers the question: why do we do communion? First, because Jesus tells us to. Do this in remembrance of me. Second, because it’s good, and so why should we keep ourselves from gifts? Why should we keep ourselves from good things?
But all those things are difficult. They are not easy. In the modern world, people may think or say to a Christian about communion: “you guys are weird superstitious tools to say that bread is something other than bread. It’s just bread, man. You just bought it at a HEB, it’s a grape juice. Why are you saying it’s wine when it’s, when it’s grape juice, it’s not blood. I’ve seen blood, blood is kind of salty. It has a metallic aftertaste. That is juice.
This teaching is difficult. I think it is okay to admit that the teachings of Jesus can be difficult. They are not easy. They are not simple.
The easy life the world tells us is a life of pure pleasure. Seek out your own good. Find it wherever you can. Define your own good, define your own truth, define it wherever you can. If something challenges that, change your definition, move on. Manifest your will into the world. Find your crystals. Find your real you.
That’s not the message of Jesus. It’s really not. This teaching is difficult. As Jesus says in Luke, Anyone who does not hate mother and father, brother and sister, even like himself cannot be my disciple. This teaching is difficult. When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus says, what must I do? Have you followed the law? I said, yes, go sell all that you have and give to the poor and then come and follow me, and he doesn’t sell everything, he simply walks away because the teaching is too difficult. In the face of these challenges, Jesus asks the disciples this question, well, what do you want to do then? Yeah, it’s difficult. What do you wanna do? Do you wanna go away? And they say, 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. This is an incredible act of faith that Peter exhibits in this moment. John usually doesn’t give Peter a lot of good lines. There is that race after the resurrection where John kind of gloats about how he is faster than Peter, but John gives Peter this really good line, Lord, to whom can we go? Where else are we gonna go from here?
Peter understands that saying something is difficult doesn’t mean we should avoid it.
Just because things are difficult though doesn’t mean that they’re not worth doing. In fact, I don’t know about you, but at least in my own life, I’ve found that the things in life that aren’t difficult are the ones that are not worth doing. A challenge gives us purpose and demands some kind of overcoming. A life without challenge is a life of lies. This is where the armor of God comes in. The armor of God is there for us to face the challenges of this world and the challenges of this faith, fully remembering that we are not alone, and that despite it being difficult, it is not impossible because we have been given these tools to face the challenges of faith and of this world. What makes living faithfully difficult is specifically the deceptions of the world.
We have been given tools to face the deceptions of this world, which are the cause of our challenges, the deceptions, the lies, the lies around us, the lies that tell us we’re not good enough. The lies that tell us that you are what you do, the lies that tell us that you are what you’re able to do, and if you’re not able to do something, you’re a failure. Those lies, the armor of God helps us to face those lies that tell us that the words of Jesus are difficult. Those lies that tell us that loving our enemies is difficult. It really is a lie. We can face that with the armor of God. It is the protective gear of faith. It is the gloves and goggles. It is the helmet and pads. We put them on by doing the things of God. By praying, by serving, by giving, by letting go of our worries. Put on the belt of truth which protects you from lies. The belt of truth is God’s love for you. You are loved. No one can take that away.
You have protective gear on. You have been offered it by God. You are protected. You are loved. So serve. Give. Believe. Come to Jesus, even when it seems hard. Love your enemies. Forgive. Let go. Don’t hold on to anger. Let go. Hear the call of Jesus. Come to me all who are weary and d heavy laden and I will give rest. Even when it seems hard, there is rest for you in Jesus. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.