Believe it or not, this ‘Follow’ series we’re in started on Easter morning … and today will be the last message of this series. But before I get into today’s message, let me take a couple minutes and review some highlights & insights into what it means to be a FOLLOWER of Jesus…

• Everybody is invited to follow—no one is excluded for any reason…
• It’s an invitation not to a religious tradition, but to a relationship…
• Being a sinner is a prerequisite … and having doubts is a prerequisite too…
• Following results in overwhelming faith—where we’re going, where Jesus is leading us, to that end…
• Followers dress alike: PG CHK FLK—characteristics we should be known by…
• Following will eventually cost you something; that’s the fine print…
• Followers are to be great leaders, wherever they’re at in this life…

If you’ve missed some of these messages and are curious about what’s been said, you can always check these out online at dodgevilleumc.org and hit the sermons button. So that’s where we’ve been to date…

Today, what I want to do is to end this series with an extraordinarily important question. In fact, the younger you are, the more important this question is … because every single person in their journey to follow Jesus at some point along the way is going to be tempted to hit the ‘unfollow’ button. But, before you un-follow Jesus, you need to ask this one question and the question actually comes from a conversation Jesus was having with his closest followers. Let me set up today’s story, then we’re going to be turning to the Gospel of John, Chapter 6. So, here’s what’s going on…

Jesus had just recently fed five-thousand (more like 10,000 with women & children); do you remember that story with the baskets of loaves of bread & fish? So, well over 5,000 people had participated in a miracle … and now they’re going crazy! They want to make Jesus the king and, of course, Jesus’ closest followers (Apostles) wanted to follow suit and do the same. The reason? Well, I think we’ve said before that if you’re one who hangs out with someone who’s really, really popular, then you will be too … and they kind of like that. So, instead of Jesus allowing folks to proclaim him King of the Jews, he hops on a boat and heads out across the Sea of Galilee to a little town called Capernaum—right on the North Central coast of the Sea of Galilee. Then, some people who’d participated in ‘The Feeding Miracle’ show up in Capernaum. Word gets out that Jesus is going to be teaching in the synagogue there, so everyone crowds in and they begin to goad Jesus just a bit. They shout out to Jesus and say, “Hey Jesus, show us another sign!” (Apparently they’d enjoyed the last one so much, they weren’t ready for the show to end.) And so they start trying to taunt Jesus, or heckle Jesus, into doing another miracle. And Jesus recognizes these people as some of those who were at the Feeding of the 5,000…

So, Jesus decides this is a creative teaching moment; just as he fed them literal bread, he now begins to use the analogy of himself as the Bread of Life. He’s basically telling them, “Hey, I fed you literal bread, but now you’re hungry again. But did you know that God can provide something for your soul, for your spirit, that will fill you up forever?” So, he begins to compare himself to bread and he tells them he’s the Bread of Life that comes from Heaven… And the audience says, ‘No, you’re not! We know your daddy, Joseph, and your mama, Mary. You didn’t come from Heaven. You come from Nazareth!’ And suddenly, there’s a little tension in the room… (Kind of like confronting a professor and acting like you know more about the topic of lecture than they do…) So, Jesus decides to stir things up even more and here’s what he says:

54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood…

…at which point the parents are ushering the children out of the room. ‘It’s like what, Jesus?’ He’s got their attention now, doesn’t he? And he basically says, “Yeah, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” And they’re all wondering if he’s just lost it—seriously… Then he says, “And I will raise them up on the last day for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink,” and then he goes on and it just gets stranger and stranger. And the crowd is wondering at this point, “Isn’t that sacrilegious? He’s talking about cannibalism. Isn’t that just weird?” So, meanwhile, the Apostles are sitting there watching all this and thinking to themselves, “Don’t lose the crowd! Don’t lose the crowd! You’re so close to being proclaimed king! Don’t lose the crowd!” But John tells us that, on hearing this kind of strange sermon, many of his disciples (the general group who followed him) began murmuring. Listen…

60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

In other words, who can go along with this? And the crowd is kind of turning on Jesus just a bit … and the Apostles recognize this. And if you remember last week, you remember James and John pulling Jesus aside to ask if they could be his ‘right guy’ and ‘left guy’ and so they’re thinking to themselves, ‘Man, if Jesus blows this … and he’s not made king … then we’re not going to have a shot at the left and right hand seats!’ So, I can just imagine they wanted to stand up and walk out at this point… Get Matthew to fill in and tell some tax collector jokes or something; just don’t let Jesus continue… What’s all this ‘eat my flesh’ and ‘drink my blood’ stuff?

Now, they didn’t really do any of that; but I’m sure they were thinking something similar at the time. That’s what you and I would’ve been thinking, right? Jesus goes on and on and on for several more verses, then look at what happens…

61 Aware that his disciples [the general group following Jesus] were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you?

Does this offend you? Or, does this make you wonder? Is this too heavy for you? Too hard? Too serious? And then John tells us this…

66 From this time [this was a transition point in their relationship] many of his disciples turned back and [unfollowed] no longer followed him.

The disciples saw the crowd thinning at this point and were probably thinking to themselves about un-following as well… The word on the street was this: Jesus has lost his mind … and his favor. The only thing keeping the Pharisees at bay was the crowd who always surrounded and favored Jesus. But the crowd was thinning … and the Apostles were afraid of losing more than just the crowd at this point. And Jesus—as usual—knows what they’re thinking. Listen to what comes next…

67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

They were caught off guard; Jesus had read their minds (or their faces). Seconds passed … and no one knew what to say. They were a bit embarrassed, I’m sure—definitely no eye contact with Jesus…

Now, let me pause to say this: You’ve been there and I’ve been there too. Anyone who’s ever been a follower of Jesus has been there … when following becomes inconvenient, and embarrassing, and costly…

…And no one knows what this is all about better than a P.K. (Preacher’s Kid)! Can you imagine what it was like growing up in a house with a pastor for a father? It was like Jesus was living right there in the parsonage with you … and I’m O.K. with that now, but not when you’re a teenager!

• Everyone else is going to the party, but my parents don’t approve! So how is this faith stuff helping me out? What’s the benefit?
• If it wasn’t for this Jesus thing, I could be one of the popular kids; he’s just not helping me out in that department…
• It was also sooooo embarrassing that every event we went to as a family, MY dad had to pray; that definitely wasn’t helping my teenage reputation…

So, by golly, when I got to college and could do whatever I wanted to do, guess what? I hit the ‘unfollow’ button … for a while! What I found out later was that there were more benefits to being a Jesus Follower … than there were hardships; the School of Hard Knocks taught me that. But we’ve all been there, haven’t we? People rarely quit following Jesus because they don’t think it’s true; they quit following Jesus because … it’s too hard, it’s inconvenient, it leaves me feeling isolated at times … or because it just doesn’t seem to matter here! That’s what happened when I went to college at 18 years old; it didn’t seem to matter to anyone else, so why should it matter to me? After all, I was committing my one shot at life to someone I’d never actually seen, to a book written 2,000 years ago, full of stories that were outlandish, in a culture that had written God off as outdated…But as I look back at this time, and even where I’m at right now, it’s comforting to me to know that the guys who were eyewitnesses to Jesus felt just like you and I do. Peter—of all people—asks the question that brought them all back to their senses…

68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?

If not you, who? If not this, what? Peter realized what the others overlooked: to walk away from Jesus is to walk toward someone or something else… And two things support this: Listen…

68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life [the first support].

‘Nobody else is offering that! I guess that’s what the eat/drink/blood thing was all about. But before you, there was just fishing, marriage, children, and death. You invited us into something much bigger—something mere religion never offered before.’ And here’s the second support to what Peter said…

69 We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

‘Jesus, you are confusing … to say the least. But, we think you are from God. We’ve seen too much not to. And one thing we do know is this; we’d regret it if we walked away.’ Folks, would you say this with me? TO WHOM SHALL WE GO? When you doubt, you’ve got to ask yourself: If not him, who? If not Christianity, what?

Questions tend to complicate things. Considering options simplifies them. And these are the things that create the questions in the first place:

TRANSITION. These can be relational transitions (i.e. death, divorce, etc.), or organizational transitions (i.e. switching pastors, switching jobs, switching homes); this is the college thing I was talking about—a real time of questioning, so make sure you also consider the options. If not Jesus, who? If not Christianity, what? Just because you don’t have an answer to a question doesn’t mean there is no answer; don’t abandon your roots while you question, because the answer you’re looking for may very well be in them…

TROUBLE. When we go through those times where God doesn’t seem to be coming through, we doubt. It’s O.K. to doubt; some of Jesus best disciples did … but don’t walk away until you’ve determined where you’re walking…

TEMPTATION. This is all of our story, isn’t it? Many of us grew up in Christian homes—homes where Christianity was at least assumed the norm, but when we went to college or out on our own … we drifted away from Jesus with no thought of who we were going to follow then or in which direction we were going to go in our life of faith. Don’t drift; make a decision, but don’t drift (take if from someone who’s already tried that; it’s miserable)…

So, folks, when the questions in your life arise … whether it be in a time of transition, or trouble, or temptation … ask yourself: To whom shall I go? If not Jesus, who? If not Christianity, what? After you consider the questions, also consider the options, would you? And when you do, know this: the fog will begin to lift. You’ll find the courage and the strength to believe. And on the other side of your doubt, what you’ll experience is the faithfulness of God…

Say it with me one more time, would you? TO WHOM SHALL I GO? It’s a question we’ll all need to consider at some time in our lives…