Jesus doesn't make it easy. The "hard teaching" from which many of his disciples turned away sounded like cannibalism: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." And when he heard them grumbling amongst themselves, he almost taunted them, "You think that's hard? Well, how about this?"
In many ways, the central tenets of Christianity are not sensible and reasonable: a teenage virgin became pregnant without having sex and gave birth to the Son of God, who was both 100 percent God and 100 percent man; this baby, who grew to a man in the normal way and was made of flesh and bone, walked on water, turned water into wine, multiplied one boy's lunch into a feast that fed 5,000 people; by being nailed to a cross, dying and then rising from the dead, this same God-Man paid the price for the sins I am going to commit today -- 2,000 years later; and when I eat the store-bought bread cut into tiny pieces and drink grape juice poured into doll-size cups set aside on Communion Sunday, I am in some way eating his flesh and drinking his blood -- something he commanded me to do in his words which were written down by ordinary men. These fundamentals of our faith are no more reasonable than sticking needles into a doll with the intention of causing a person pain. If I were creating a religion with the hope of gaining followers, I would leave out most of these bits without which we would have no faith.
"This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him" -- Jesus in John 6:65.
Today, Jesus, help me not to be so sensible and reasonable but rather to be outlandish in my pursuit of you.
No comments:
Post a Comment