John 6:35, 41-51[1]
I still remember the
feeling of being “drawn to Jesus” for the first time. It was at a “revival”
service at the First Methodist Church of Kaufman, Texas (a town about 30 miles
Southeast of Dallas). All I remember is that we were singing “Just as I am, I come”
and I felt an unmistakable sense that I “had” to go. I stood up and made my way
through the pew and down the aisle. I was baptized and people shook my hand
afterwards. I don’t remember much else, but my mother told me that I had said I
was going to “get saved.” Evidently, whatever I told the preacher was enough to
be counted as a public profession of faith and qualified me to be baptized. I
was 6 years old.
Our Gospel lesson for
today raises some questions about how we “come to Jesus” in faith. The language
Jesus uses may seem strange to us: “No one can come to me unless drawn by the
Father who sent me” (Jn 6:44). Taken on its own, that can sound like a pretty
“restrictive” perspective on who gets to come to Jesus and who doesn’t. It’s
always important to hear the Scriptures in context, and in this lesson Jesus is
dealing with a crowd of people who are more interested in debating with him
than believing in him. They just can’t seem to make the connection that Jesus
could actually be the “bread” that comes from God and gives life to the world.
It is true that this
language reflects one side of salvation in John’s Gospel: our salvation is,
from start to finish, the work of God. It is something that only God can do, we
cannot do it for ourselves. And so here Jesus speaks about those who come to
him in faith as those whom God has “given” him. The idea is that the new kind
of living that Jesus calls “eternal life” can only come from “above” as a gift
from God. That’s why we say that we are “saved by grace”; when it comes down to
it, we all recognize that if we come to Jesus in faith at all it is because God
has “drawn” us.
But there is another
side to this whole experience: the part where we choose to come to Jesus. All
that God does in our lives to draw us to faith points us in the right
direction, but it’s up to us to take that step of faith. We find that
perspective on salvation also in our lesson for today: “anyone who comes to me
I will never drive away” (Jn 6:37). While it’s true that Jesus speaks more in John’s
Gospel about what God does for us to be able to come to him and experience
“eternal life,” he also says that “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry”
(Jn 6:35) and “whoever believes has eternal life” (Jn 6:47). I think that
stands as an open invitation to anyone who is hungry or thirsty to come to
Jesus.
The “balancing act”
between these two dimensions of faith—that it is the work of God from start to
finish, and that we choose to come to Jesus—has not only provoked a great deal
of theological debate, it has divided whole segments of the church into
different denominations. Some insist that God and only God can save us. They
use the language of God’s “sovereignty,” which means that God is the one who
controls all things. Others insist that everything God has done for us is for
nothing if we don’t choose to respond. That’s the language of “free will.” For
my part, I would say that while God’s part in all of this is far more important,
I think we have to hold both sides together.
I also think it’s more
important to focus on the experience of our faith than on how it all fits
together in our theology. We all have times in our lives when we have taken a
step of faith. And while the choice to take that step was ours, I would also
say that if we look really closely at how that all played out for us, we have
to recognize that we took those steps because we felt “drawn” to do so. There
was something, or perhaps it’s better to say that there was someone who was
drawing us toward faith. We all experience that “tug” on our hearts in
different ways: through Scripture, through worship, through the influence of
someone important in our lives, through the love of family and friends, through
the support of a community of faith. But behind it all, God is the one who
doing the tugging.
This kind of
self-awareness about faith is an important part of our spiritual growth. Coming
to faith is not something that happens once for all and then you’re done with
it. It’s a life-long journey! We continually experience God’s grace, mercy, and
love drawing us toward a deeper faith. But in order to keep growing it’s up to
us to keep taking the next step of faith, and the next one, and the next one.
That doesn’t just happen automatically. It happens as we open ourselves to the
means that God uses to draw us deeper into faith and into new life.
At
the ripe old age of six years old, I didn’t understand much of what I was doing
that evening when I took my first step of faith. I didn’t know much about God,
or Jesus, or the Bible. All I knew was that I needed to come to Jesus. But that
was enough. As a wise mentor of mine once put it, “Salvation is entrusting all
you know yourself to be to all you know Jesus to be.” But if I had stayed where
I was in my experience of faith, I think my life would have looked very
different. At times I’ve been more “intentional” about my faith journey, and at
other time less. To me, it is comforting to know that behind all of those
experiences of faith, God was the one who was at work, patiently but
persistently drawing me to Jesus. And I think this is a message we can all take
comfort in, because God is constantly drawing all of us to Jesus.
[1] ©
2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Ph. D. on 8/8/2021 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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