The Only Way

The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, August 28, 2022.  The Bible verses used are John 6:53-71.

            There are several times in the gospels in which Jesus says that salvation can only be found through faith in Him.  In John Fourteen, verse six, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  In John Three, verse eighteen, He says, “Whoever believes in [the Son] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the one and only Son.”

            We have another example of it in our Bible reading for today.  Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

            This is one of the things that can put some people off of Christianity.  It sounds discriminatory.  It sound self-righteous.  Its sounds arrogant.  How can you Christians say that your faith is the only one that leads to heaven?  How can you act like you’re the only ones who have it right, and everybody else is wrong?  What an elitist, sanctimonious thing to say.

            A lot of people have a hard time with what Jesus said.  Even people who claim to be Christians have a hard time with it.  A poll taken last year showed that nearly seventy percent of people who described themselves as born-again Christians did not believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven.  I’ve known pastors who don’t believe it.

            Now, a part of this may be well-intentioned.  I mean, I know people who don’t believe Jesus Christ is the Savior.  I suspect you do, too.  And the thing is, some of them are what we would call “good people”.  I don’t want to believe they won’t be in heaven.  I want there to be some loophole, some way that they can get to heaven without believing in Jesus Christ.

            The problem with that is that Jesus does not give us that loophole.  Jesus did not say, “No one comes to the Father except through Me, unless you’re a really good person, then you can get in anyway.”  He did not say, “I am the way, but if you’re a really good person there are other ways.”  Jesus said belief in Him is the only way to heaven.  Period.  End of sentence.  End of paragraph.

            It’s a hard teaching.  A lot of people don’t want to accept it.  A lot of people don’t accept it.  But the thing about God’s truth is that it remains true whether we accept it or not.  Our opinions about it really don’t matter.  I can wish that the sun rose in the west, but it’s going to keep rising in the east.  I can wish that people did not have to age, but we’re all going to keep aging.  And I can wish that people I know who don’t believe in Jesus would go to heaven, but they’re not going to.  Not because I say so, but because Jesus himself said so.

            It’s a hard teaching.  But it was a hard teaching in Jesus’ time, too.  In fact, some of Jesus’ disciples said those exact words, in verse sixty of our Bible reading for today.  The main disciples, the twelve, did not say it, but other people who were also following Jesus did.  

And many of them left Jesus because of it, just as many people do not believe today because of it.  But those who left Jesus ran into the problem Peter pointed out.  “To whom shall we go?”  

There are places to go, of course.  We can always find places to go.  We can go to other faiths, faiths that don’t sound so “exclusive”.  We can do what the nearly seventy percent did in the poll I cited earlier–continue to claim to be Christians, but come up with our own form of Christianity, a Christianity that adds in some loopholes and exceptions that Jesus did not grant.  Or, we can go nowhere.  We can believe in nothing in particular, or have just some sort of generalized belief in God that does not particularly impact our lives in any meaningful way.

            There are lots of places to go.  But Peter also pointed out the problem with all of those places.  He said of Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life.”  

            Those words of eternal life cannot come from any other place.  They cannot come from any other place.  They cannot come from any other religion.  They cannot come from any other prophet or so-called prophet.  They cannot come from a politician.  They cannot come from a celebrity.  They cannot come from within ourselves.  The words of eternal life can only come from Jesus Christ.  No other words, no matter how good they may sound, can bring eternal life.  Only the words of Jesus Christ.  Only faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.

            But if this is such a “hard teaching”, why was it so easy for Peter and the rest of the twelve?  Well, of course, we don’t know if it was easy.  Maybe some of them struggled with it themselves.  One of the twelve, Judas, obviously struggled with it.  But whether it was easy for them or not, they were able to accept it.  Why?  Because, again quoting Peter, “We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

            That’s what it really comes down to.  Do we believe that Jesus is the Holy One of God?  Because if we do, then we have no choice but accept the things he said as true.  We have no choice but to accept those “hard teachings”, whether we like them or not.  The Holy One of God would not lie to us.  The Holy One of God would not make things up.  The Holy One of God would not make claims about himself that were not true.  Jesus said that belief in Him is the only way to salvation and eternal life.  So the question is whether we, like Peter, believe and know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

            We don’t have to, of course.  As our reading for today says, many of the people who heard Jesus say these things turned away.  When that happened, Jesus turned to Peter and asked him, and the rest of the twelve, whether they were going to leave, too.  

            I wonder if He thought they might.  Maybe not–after all, He was Jesus, the Holy One of God.  He may have known they would not leave.  But even if He did, it was still their choice.  They could have left, if they’d chosen to.  But they stayed.

            And it’s our choice, too.  We can choose to leave.  We can choose to not accept Jesus’ hard teachings.  We can do what so many people do.  We can do what so many people who call themselves Christians do.  We can be “tolerant” and “inclusive”.  We can say that faith in Jesus is just one of many ways to heaven.  We can say that all religions have truth in them, and that one is just as valid as another.  We can say that–but if we do, we’re not saying what Jesus said.  And, whether we realize it or not, we are turning away from Jesus.  We are no longer following Him.  We no longer believe that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

            Maybe that sounds judgmental.  Maybe it is judgmental.  But here’s the thing:  it’s not my judgment.  My judgment does not matter.  But as I said earlier, the words of the Lord remain true no matter what I think about them.  And these are the words of the Lord.  The Lord is the one who makes that judgment, and the Lord’s judgment is the only one that matters.

            So, two things.  One, we need to make up our own minds about this.  Are we going to go along with the Twelve, with the ones who stayed with Jesus, with the ones who believe and know that Jesus is the Holy One of God?  Or, are we going to along with the other disciples, the ones who found this to be a “hard teaching” and could not accept it?  I hope, and pray, that we will all go along with the Twelve.  But it’s a choice each of us has to make.

            If we do go along with the Twelve, then here’s the second thing.  Think about those people you know who don’t believe in Jesus as the Savior.  Is there something you could do to lead them to believe?  Is there something you could do that might move them a little closer to believing?

            Maybe not.  I mean, lots of people heard the words of Jesus Himself and turned away.  If even Jesus could not lead everyone to believe, you and I cannot expect to do it.  Again, each person has to make their own choice.

            But is there a way we can try?  Is there something we could do, something we could say, any possible thing that might lead them to accept this “hard teaching” and stay with Jesus?  

            If there is, we need to try it.  Even if it’s a longshot, we need to try it.  Because, again, Jesus said belief in Him is the only way to eternal life.  If we want those people we know to be in heaven, we need to do whatever we can to bring them to that belief.

            Jesus has the words of eternal life.  He is, indeed the Holy One of God.  If we believe that, we need to do whatever we can to lead others to believe it, too.  Because, when it comes to salvation, there is nowhere else to go.