Welcome to Whispers of Grace. As an artist and scholar of religion, I hope to bring something unique and worthwhile. These reflections, devotions, or whatever you choose to call them, are personal. These are my thoughts as I struggle to live in the same world and serve the same God as you. I pray that they bring value when you read them, as they do to me when I write them.
-Rondall Reynoso
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The Beauty and Simplicity of Faith: Loving God and Others Like Jesus (John 6:60)
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“When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?””
John 6:60 NRSVue
Reflection
This verse comes from a passage in scripture that I have thought about a lot.
There was a time in my life when I was in the middle of enduring tremendous injustice at the hands of a church owned institution. A former student of mine asked me why I even continued with the church. I pointed to this passage as the reason.
The short version is that after Jesus fed the five thousand, He left town only to be followed by the masses. When they approached, He knew that they were not truly seeking Him, but only the food He offered. At that point, Jesus said that to follow Him, they would need to eat His body and drink His blood. The disciples (not just the twelve but the larger group of followers) found this teaching incredibly difficult, and many of them left.
Jesus then turned to the twelve and asked if they were going to leave. Peter answered, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
I am convinced that Jesus is True. He certainly teaches things that are hard. One of those hard things is that we are to emulate Him in His love for the church. I choose to love the church not because it is always good, not because it has never hurt me, but because Christ loves it, and I love Him, and I seek to love what He loves.
Jesus teaches us to eschew power, to love those who seek to harm us, and to see the image of God in those who are undesirable by whatever measure. He teaches a way of living that stands in contrast to every priority the “world” says we should have.
I don’t believe that what was hard about Jesus’ teaching was the idea of cannibalism. I believe that those who heard Him knew he wasn’t calling them to tear apart His body. What was hard was that He was saying that His bread nourished more than the manna God provided in the wilderness. He was saying something that ran counter to the very heart of their culture.
It is easy to follow a faith that emulates our familiar culture, but hard to accept teachings that contradict it.
