Continuing with John 6's bread discourse this is based on the text from John 6: 35, 41-51
Growing up my siblings and I had two favorite ways of making sure our siblings knew what they were doing was wrong. The first and most popular was “I’m telling Mom!” This phrase was extremely effective if the offender was personally calling you a name, hitting you or someone else, or doing something that was dangerous and therefore get them into trouble. The threat of being told on and therefore punished was normally enough to get them to stop. The other phrase was the age old “You’re going to Hell for that?!”
As good Lutherans (we did go to a Lutheran elementary school even) we knew about hell, or at least we knew enough that hell was the opposite of heaven and it was a place that bad people ended up after they died. We had seen the Far Side cartoons of people in a flame filled cave with devils and pitchforks and even those cartoons did not make hell seem like a place that we wanted to go.
Telling a sibling or friend that they were going to hell for name calling, hitting, stealing a stick of gum or killing a bug was a great way of getting someone to stop doing what they were doing. It was a great threat…yes they might not get in trouble with parents or a teacher, but they were in trouble with God and their eternal life was in danger.
Because even as young children, there is a natural thought progression that if believers have eternal life than non-believers must then not have eternal life and therefore must be condemned to hell. We had sung the Sunday School song, I am a C which talks about having eternal life. We knew we must have eternal life and therefore others must not. It becomes a believers verses non-believers situation, us verse them, those going to heave verse those going to hell.
But really that is not true. When in our text today does it talk about hell? Where does Jesus talk about non-believers? He doesn’t.
Jesus instead focused his attention on believers, on how one comes to believe it him. He discusses the how we as believers and non-believers alike are drawn towards, pulled towards, him by God the Father. Some of us go willingly towards Jesus, towards our faith, we are like a car being towed by God to Jesus the repair shop. But some of us are like fish being towed into the net. We swim against the net, we fight, we resist and sometimes we even get away.
But for those who do give in, who turn to Jesus we are given eternal life. This is not a futuristic present but one we have already be given. For Jesus says: “Very Truly I tell you whoever believes has eternal life.” Whoever believes HAS eternal life. Not will be given, not someday will receive, not it will come some day, but has, as in has now, as in it is here.
Eternal life has been given to us. It is a gift that was given to us before we were even born, it is a gift that was given to us at our baptism, it is a gift that is given to us every week when we receive the bread and wine of communion, it is a gift we receive each morning when we wake up, in every breath we take, it is a gift that we will receive at our death and it is a gift we will receive even after we are dead. Eternal life is not about this physical life, our flesh and blood, for our bodies deteriorate and they die.
Eternal life is about our faith, our soul, our spirit. It is about living with Christ someday in Heaven but also about living with him in our lives today. For Christ lives in us, each and everyone of us. And Christ is with us in everything that we do, Christ is with us in both the good times of life and the bad, in the times of glorious happiness and in times of deep despair. We have the gift of eternal life. We have Christ in our hearts today and all days.
And what about those who do not believe or those who once did and now have turned their hearts against Christ? Well eternal life is also a gift that can not be returned, or taken back. We have been marked with the cross of Christ forever. So even those who have turned from God in moments of despair and have not found their way back, they still have the gift of eternal life.
And just like a fisher who has to try multiple times to catch a certain fish because it keeps getting away, so too does God continue to draw us to Christ. This is not a one shot and your eternity is decided deal, no instead God continues to draw people to Christ, hoping that this time their hearts and minds will be changed and they will believe. God does not give up on us, any of us. For the hope is that one day, we will all have eternal life. And regardless of what their siblings may say about them, no one will go to hell.
This is such a hard thing to believe, especially when most of us were raised in a society that praises good behavior and good works and condemns those with bad behavior and bad works. But this is God’s grace and it is poured out upon all of us, each and ever human who has and who will ever live. However we are still humans who have free will and it is up to us to choose to accept and to see God’s grace in our lives. But the hope is that someday we will all be willing to sing that Sunday School song… I am a C….I am a CH….I am a CHRISTIAN
And I have CHRIST in my HEART and I will LIVE ETERNALLY
For we have all been given the gift of eternal life.
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