Fifth Day of Lent

 Monday, February 22, 2021

Hallelujah!  He is risen!

A Lenten Devotional Guide
anonymous

As a result of this, many of His disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore. Jesus said therefore to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?"
John 6:66-67 NAS

Jesus had been talking about blood sacrifice, a practice not uncommon to the Jew to whom he was speaking. The chief priest sacrificed animals on their behalf for redemption from sin, so blood sacrifice did not seem as foreign to them as it does to us today. However, when he spoke of it so personally, explained to them that he was going to die, talked about himself as the "bread of heaven" and his blood as the atoning blood, they actually cried out, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?" (John 6:60)

Many disciples had followed listening to his teaching, but the twelve whom he had specifically called were the ones he was teaching carefully to send out after his death to establish his church, the very church that we love today.

When he saw that many of the greater crowd walked away because his teaching was "too close for comfort," he turned to his little class of twelve learners and asked, "Are you leaving, too?" I think I can almost hear the pain in his voice. He had so little time, and he desperately wanted them to understand what he was saying.

I wonder if he doesn't say that to us today. In this country -- at least in recent years -- we have suffered little. Life has been easy -- perhaps too easy. We have heard much in church and we know a lot about what Jesus has said and about what he expects. But when we really hear Jesus say to love the one who hurts us, to give and not to hoard what he has given us, to study his Word that we might come to know him intimately, do we feel tempted to grumble that this is a "hard teaching?" Do we hear him saying to us, "Do you want to go away also?"

Father, I often take poor care of the wonderful relationship that you have established between us. Forgive me. Even when I must admit with the crowd that your teaching is sometimes difficult, help me not to go away but instead to say, "To whom shall I go? Only you have the words of eternal life." Amen

Hallelujah! He is Risen!
prepared for First United Methodist Church of Homosassa, Florida
Spring 2011
compiled by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator
reproduced and edited by Patience Fort