Lenten Musings - Tutu

John 6
This is one of my favourite chapters in the whole Bible. I'm just gonna ramble a bit and tell you why.
The part that everyone remembers, is the first part. This is where Jesus feeds the 5,000. It's an interesting miracle. Actually, it's initiated by Jesus. He's the one who brings up the subject... at least in this version. In Mark, the disciples come to Jesus to suggest that He dismiss the crowd to get something to eat. Interesting. Which is it? Is it significant that the two versions differ? One thing that's always stuck out to me, is that in both Mark 6:39 and John 6:10, the authors go out of their way to mention the grass. It's just always struck me as odd, but again it could be one of those recollections that people have from an event they were at. Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent.
After the people ate, Jesus withdrew, because He knew they'd start pushing Him to be their king. During the night, is the other memorable part of this chapter, the walking on water. The next morning, the people realized that Jesus and His disciples were gone, so they tracked them down on the other side of the lake. Here's where it gets interesting. The people ask Jesus, "what must we do?" Jesus replies, "believe in me". They respond with, "well, what are you gonna do to prove yourself to us? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert... hint, hint." Jesus doesn't play their game, however. "I gave you supper yesterday, and now you're only interested in breakfast", He tells them. Then He goes on to tell them that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. This is crazy talk, and the people know it. They start to grumble and complain. They start to take off, partly as a result of these weird teachings Jesus is spouting, but I also think partly because they realized he wasn't going to be multiplying the pancakes and sausages they were hoping for that day. In some ways, I don't blame them. They didn't have a really good reference for what Jesus was talking about. He hadn't been crucified yet. There wasn't that reference point that we have the benefit of. I think it must not have made much sense to people, so they decided to move on.
But here's the important part. Jesus' turned to his closest disciples and asked, "are you gonna go, too?" The implication was that they were. But good old Simon Peter comes through with an extremely helpful insight that has aided me greatly in my walk with God. Peter says in effect, "Sure, you're not making a lot of sense right now, but where else could we go? We know who you are, we know that you have the words of life, and we believe that you are the Holy One of God." Even though there was probably some confusion and questions running through their minds, the disciples trusted in Jesus enough to wait for things to become clear. This has been immensely helpful for me over the years. Some things may not make sense at the moment, but they will. Eventually, all this talk of eating flesh and drinking blood made sense, but not for quite a while. Peter and the others had the confidence in Jesus to wait it out and to give Him the benefit of the doubt. For me, when things don't make sense, I try to remember that eventually God will bring some clarity. Of the difficult things I've had to face in my own life, I know that there have been reasons, not fully apparent at the time (or possibly even now), but I know that I can trust God to work things out in the end.