Do you also wish to go away? – February 5, 2017 Rev. Monika Bereczki-Farkas
Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 84; John 6:56-69

‘Do you also wish to go away?’ 68Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Have you ever felt as lonely you could possibly be? When you have to go through the desert and no one goes with you. When you wish somebody was with you, but there is nobody around you. You want to say a word as loudly as possible but there is no answer. Just a bleak desert. Loneliness.
One of my high school teachers taught me that God created man to be his conversation partner. I always imagined how God was waiting for us every day. It was so unbelievable to me that God was so big, he could create whatever he wanted and he created me to speak with Him. Sometimes this recognition is painful, since God has to wait for me. What a shame when I realized that my Loving God is the one who has always time for me, but I do not have time for Him. Brothers and sisters, how many times is God the one, sometimes the only one, who is waiting for you?
Of course, we all know that God doesn’t depend on time. It was amazing me when I started to learn English that how many tenses you have. In my mother tongue we have only three: present, past and future. But you have 12. That was why I found it wonderful that the New Testament Greek also has different words for time. Most amazingly there is time for God, which we cannot imagine. We were born one day and will die one day. It is hard to understand with our finite minds that God is everlasting. That is why the incarnation, when Jesus Christ was born, was the best gift from God, who gave himself to us. And we love how Jesus Christ speaks about His Father.
I’d like to share a story with you:

A woman's 3-year-old daughter asked several times over a period of months if she might be left alone with her new baby brother. Afraid of the possibility of sibling rivalry, the parents of the two children consulted a therapist. Should they acquiesce to the child's request?
After being assured that the 3-year-old was a nonaggressive and well-adjusted child, the therapist indicated that she thought the little girl should be given the chance to be alone with her brother. She did, however, suggest that the parent might want to listen on the intercom in the baby's room, aware that they could go to the baby in a second if there were any difficulty. So the parents left their 3-year-old daughter with the new baby and went to their own bedroom to listen on the speaker.
They heard the 3-year-old close the door to the nursery and walk over to the crib. Then, after a moment, they heard her say, "Baby, baby, tell me about God. I think I'm forgetting"

Sometimes we are in the same boat as this little girl. We need somebody who can speak about God to us. That’s why we love Jesus speaking about his Father because through Jesus, God is our Father too.
But our readings today have a heavy atmosphere which reminds me of my childhood imagination that God was so lonely because we didn’t have time for conversation with Him.
Have you ever been in the situation when you felt that somebody wanted to leave you? When your stomach got smaller and smaller because loneliness was in the air.
The Bible uses the desert to express loneliness many times. When we are sitting in this beautiful church, and we are close to the Word, the Bible, when we are singing beautiful songs, we feel that we are close to God. But what about in the desert? The beginning of the gospels tells us that after Jesus had been filled with the Holy Spirit during his baptism at the River Jordan the Spirit immediately led him out into the wilderness of Judaea– a lonely place of solitude and silence far away from the cities and villages with their busy market places and noisy crowds. Jesus was alone for forty days – no contact with family or friends.
Later when Jesus taught the disciples he knew very well what loneliness meant. And when people didn’t understand his teachings he was sad. He saw the disciples’ confusion. They were the ones who were with him, saw his miracles, listened his teachings but it didn’t mean they understood why Jesus spoke about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. And he asked them:
“Do you also wish to go away?”
This is a heartbreaking question which really touched me. Jesus, who comes to save us, who wants to give us eternal life, who loves us with the purest love in the world, has to ask this question.
And the question is still the same today: Do you also wish to go away?
Because sometimes we are the same as his disciples. We love Jesus when we feel his love, when his loving hands hold our lives, but there are times when we do not understand his ways. When we want to follow him but in our own way.

A missionary in Brazil visited a market town on a religious holiday, and saw a sale sign in a store's window advertising "Cheap crosses for sale" We may look for cheap crosses – no sacrifice, no commitment, no cost, no pain – but there is no such thing. Jesus' disciples have to follow the way of the cross. /Katherine Fagerburg/

Can I ask you today how many of you believe that Jesus Christ is really the bread of life? Is bread an important food on your table? We are so fortunate because there are several kinds of bread waiting for us in the store. You can choose your favourite one or you can choose something else instead of the bread. But in other countries if you have bread you have life.
Jesus knows that we desperately need the bread of life; without it there is no life. And he came to give us the bread of life, he is in fact the bread of life. It is your choice if you wish to live with it or not.
Do you also wish to go away? I wonder sometimes how I would have responded to this question. Because sometimes the truth is I do wish to go away. I am not a perfect person. I am standing here because once I ate from that bread, from the best bread ever and it keeps me close to Jesus. It means life to me.
One of my pastoral professors told me that being a pastor, a minister is one of the most beautiful jobs in the world, but sometimes it is the hardest one. If I am honest, in those hard situations, I wish I could go away. And what a blessing that I cannot. If you have ever tasted the bread of life it keeps you in Jesus and we can answer with Peter:
Lord, to whom can we go?
When you are lonely remember that you have Jesus waiting for you. He is the one who really knows what loneliness means.
The world’s loneliest and most painful cry is: Eli Eli lamma sabactani. My God, My God why have you forsaken me? This is one of the darkest moment in the life of our Saviour. On the cruel cross Jesus was alone, and he knew and felt that loneliness. He did this for us. For me and you. That you will never be alone or when you feel alone you know that He is the One who is always with you.
Jesus is offering what he really has, his own precious life. He is doing what he can, all he can, to reach out to us.
May we be willing to receive eternal life, when it is being offered to us without price by one who loves us and laid down his life for us.
Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ, eternal life and love incarnate.
Amen.