John 6:60-69 Why am I following?
12 Pentecost

If you have kids, grandkids, or for that matter if you happen to know kids in general, you also know that most kids have a packed schedule of school, homework, some form of music lesson, swimming, art class, and a whole array of after-school and weekend lessons that you and I never even knew existed. However, by the time they are into middle school, most of them have dropped their music lesson, and by the time they are in high school most of the music, art or sports lessons learnt in younger years are altogether erased from their memory. For all the effort, money and time spent trying to pick up some form of art or the other, often we find that there are actually very few kids who land up pursuing and loving music, art, or sport as their career. Along with what we see and from personal experience, we know it is just too much work to become a true disciple of anything. There is always a certain winnowing that takes place with anything that we choose to get involved in.

Over the course of almost three years, Jesus had managed to gather up quite an impressive number of followers. In the beginning of chapter six we are told that there were five thousand men, not counting women and children who gathered around Jesus to listen to him. And of course we expect crowds to disperse at some point, and they did leave Jesus and go home. But from amongst the thousands there were some who were more than just part of the crowd.  They not only came to listen to Jesus, they in all likelihood traveled with him every now and then. They were also the ones who engaged in deeper conversations with Jesus, and they probably even planned some of Jesus’ itinerary. They were seen by others as disciples of Jesus, and they of course thought of themselves as Jesus’ disciples. But as we read the Gospel of John we find out that being around Jesus for a considerable length of time or knowing him does not necessarily qualify one to be called a disciple by Jesus. John writes that many of the so-called disciples began to murmur about the difficulties of believing and accepting Jesus’ teachings and his true identity, in fact, they leave Jesus.  At which point Jesus turns to the twelve and asks them, "Do you also wish to go away?" To which Simon Peter answered, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

“The Holy One of God.” At the end of the long discourse on the bread from heaven, we find that there were only a handful of disciples that truly saw Jesus for who he was or is. It is in Simon Peter’s confession of belief in Jesus as the one who is from heaven, or “The Holy One of God” that we find the core message of the Gospel. The thing that defines a disciple is his or her unshakable belief in Jesus as the Son of God. It is only in that acknowledgement of Jesus’ divine identity that we will begin to understand what it means to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ.