Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Two Sundays ago we were talking about the sixth Chapter of John’s Gospel. Dick Glassbrook had spoken on the previous Sunday about how Jesus called himself “The Bread of Heaven,” and I was expanding on that image, saying that, among other things, “bread of heaven” suggests the possibility of an intimate and nourishing relationship with Christ. “If any man eat my flesh and drink my blood,” Jesus said, “he will dwell in me and I in him.”

Remember, too, if you will, that when Jesus started calling himself “the Bread of Heaven,” many of his followers left, walked away. It was over the top. Will you look with me this morning at the end of that chapter (John 6) before we tackle the famous passage I just read to you from James (“Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only.”)? Because the two fit together hand in glove.
The crowds are gone. It’s quiet. And it’s all too obvious, now, that Jesus’ is not going to ride into his Kingdom on a wave of popularity. (Never has. Never will.) He turns to the twelve, presumably the only ones left. “Will you, too, leave,” he asks? They stare at him for a moment, in shock at what has happened, and then Peter (God bless Peter!) says, “To whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Sometimes faith is where we go when there’s nowhere else to go. Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of an insane and unspeakably bloody Civil War, asked about his prayer life, said, “I have been driven to my knees a thousand times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go.”

Now here is James, a preacher in the early church. James wants to separate the “tire kickers,” and “window shoppers,” from the true believers – from those who eat the body and drink the blood of Christ and have that burning within them. James knows (as does John) that there is no casual relationship with Christ. The Gospel message, when preached right and heard right, overwhelms. It is the most compelling Word ever spoken. (“But the Father said, ‘Go get the fatted calf and kill it. Put rings on his fingers and shoes on his feet….) If you have heard that, truly heard it, you will do something about it. The crowds in the gospels, the multitudes who seem to follow Jesus everywhere, fold when the stakes get too high. They are the “tire kickers,” don’t you see? “The summer soldiers.” To them, going to hear Jesus preach was a good pastime for a lazy afternoon. Maybe bring a picnic. You know: “a loaf of bread, a glass of wine, and thou, Jesus, beside me in the wilderness…” Don’t feel too good, Jesus, about the numbers of people who show up. There is nothing serious going on with these people. So when begins to talk about himself as “the Bread – the essential food -- of heaven,” and says if you don’t eat this bread you aren’t alive, it’s far more than these casual spectators had bargained for. So the fan club goes home. They wanted just to hear the word. But we can’t just hear the word, James says. We have to do the word. That’s the sword that divides. The driving question which comes along with hearing the Gospel is not one of understanding but one of obedience.

This distinction, between window shoppers and actual buyers, is all through the New Testament (Jesus called for commitment even unto death!), and the question is especially relevant in our time. For today people who make deep, life-long commitments to anything are extremely scarce. We look a lot, and talk a lot, and dance around, but we don’t buy much. We sit in the crowd and listen to Jesus, but when he ask us to take him in and make him part of our very selves, we slip away. “Surely there’s another amusing teacher over the next hill. We’ll take in his act tomorrow.”

This refusal to commit, to “make covenant” as the Bible would say, may reflect the way we were educated. In college, these days, everyone majors in cynicism. It’s always: how to pick apart the beliefs of others, how to find holes in the other man’s argument, how to make a committed person look foolish. It’s seldom who or what should I to entrust my life to. The professors don’t profess anything. Yet any thought that life can be lived in neutral is a fiction. A human life, your life and mine, will be entrusted to something. We all have gods. And it is in our deeds, James wants to say, and in the way we expend our resources, that we give the world a peak at our deities.
Cynicism is one way we avoid commitment. False piety is another. We can dodge the question of personal commitment if we take on the trappings of faith and not the substance. We sit in the crowd, listen to Jesus, look very devout, but turn and walk away when he asks for our hearts. We can attend mass, pray on the street corner, pay our tithes. We can practice all the outward signs of faith and not be truly given over to him. True faith is measured in changed lives. The other famous line from James’ letter is, “Faith without works is dead.” He’s not saying that works are a way to heaven. He’s saying that “faith,” if there is no evidence of it, must be “dead.” That is, must be no faith. And no amount of outward piety can fix that. That is why the greatest religious leaders have often been accused of being atheists. Because they have rejected, or at least de-emphasized, the outward forms of religion – the very things other have come to think of as true religion. Paul said you didn’t have to be circumcised or eat kosher. Luther said you didn’t need a priest to absolve you of your sins. Wesley said you didn’t need to be ordained, or even be standing in a church, to preach the Gospel. Wait a minute, gentleman! Circumcision, dietary laws, confession, ordination, church buildings, are part of faith, aren’t they? They can be, but they are not the heart of faith. James says true religion “is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” Paul understood that. Luther and Wesley understood it. Be doers, not just hearers. Be in the world but not of the world. We’ll judge the tree by its fruit.
There is a wonderful, old Russian proverb about marriage: “When a man takes a bride,” it says, “he is no longer surrounded by men and women but by people.” That man has made a covenant He has accepted certain limitations on his behavior and on the way he may view the world. But there are great rewards in marriage. He gladly accepts the limits. When a man or woman commits himself to Christ, makes Christ his bread, there are limits. Jesus himself warned us about them. But there are unspeakable joys in Christ.

Outside the New Room, in Bristol, England, the first Methodist building ever, there is an arresting statue of Charles Wesley. He is standing, smiling, dressed in his robe, his arm outstretched. And on the pedestal are his own words: "Let me commend to you my Savior.” At the heart of the Wesleyan movement, it was always that simple: one believer commending Jesus to another, and the other choosing to commit or not. In John Wesley’s amazing diary, he tells us what he did and where he preached every day, and he usually ends his daily entry with the words, “I offered them Christ.” That was the Methodist movement: a willingness to witness to one’s faith, an urgent offer, and a choice. And then a willingness to be doers of God’s word and not just hearers. John Wesley and his followers were surely both.

People know they are separated from God. They search for a Savior, someone who will reunite them with their maker and give rest to their wandering souls. In that search they come upon all manner of false saviors, some of which satisfy for a while. But, oddly enough, when the true savior comes, they often refuse to love him and to go with him all the way. You can’t kick tires forever. You can’t keep hearing and not doing. If you’ve never made a commitment to Jesus Christ, and had your life sweetened by his grace, I offer you that opportunity now. Or, if you’ve made that commitment once and would like to make it again, now’s the time. “Let me commend to you my Savoir.”