Lord, to Whom Shall We Go?

It was a hard thing he said, and they could barely digest it. It upended things they thought they knew, and moreover—it just didn’t make sense. “Who can listen to it?” they grumbled, and he heard. It was ironic. He made the ears that wouldn’t hear him; he perfectly discerned their offended mumbles.

Many of those who’d previously followed closely stopped following that day. Maybe it was too much. Too intense, too confusing, too overwhelming, too rattling to their sense of comfort and stability. Why look to this guy for truth when there were options that clashed less with their sensibilities, that asked them to uproot less of their thinking, that asked them to give less of themselves?

He looked at the ones who remained and asked, “Do you want to go away as well?” (I wonder what his voice sounded like when he asked it.)

What could they say? They’d heard his words and were likely jarred, too. He was always saying things that startled them, always asking them to do things that unsettled them. And yet?

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

Peter knew it—and I pray you know it, too. When the world invites you to stay as you are, to dig in your heels, to avoid the rattling—remember that the world’s wisdom only offers hopelessness and death. It will attempt to comfort you by giving you permission to shape things for your immediate comfort, to choose blame instead of repentance, to pick indulgence rather than conviction, to lounge cozily on the ugly thing rather than get your hands dirty dismantling it.

But Jesus? Jesus will shake you, ask you to surrender every morsel of yourself, flip your systems of thought upside down, and invite you to do precisely what makes you uncomfortable. He’ll hold up every bit of pride and covetousness and hatred and injustice and idolatry and self-obsession and manufactured righteousness within yourself—every big of ugly you’ve been avoiding—and he’ll invite you to confess it, to grieve it. 

But then? He’ll show you how he spilled his own blood for it, how he bore the whip and the mocking and the nails and the spectacle and the deep loneliness of his own Father looking away so that you would not have to endure it. He’ll invite you to eat his flesh and drink his blood (that’s the hard teaching that turned his followers away) because he knows his sacrifice is your only path to life, and he knows how you need to taste and see how very good this sacrifice is for you. When you taste, when you see, when you hear his words of life, doesn’t it open your ears to the hiss snaking around the ugly things the world asks you to kiss? Do not fear it! Jesus’s blood covers them eternally and will quiet their whispers as you cling to the words of life. Every day, he will partner with you to dismantle the ugly things, and as you sweat, you will know you are not alone. You will know he’s empowering you to keep going. You will know he is leading you in the path of life. 

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

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For deeper understanding, read John 6:22-71 and pay close attention to everything Jesus says that makes people grumble, and ask yourself, “Why did this bother them?” Then, consider why his true disciples considered his words “words of eternal life.” For a fuller understanding of why Jesus’s strange teaching in John 6 is fantastically good news, read the full book of John.