Friends,
in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the crowd, which he just fed, to believe
in him and relate to him personally. Why is this so hard? Well, it is
intellectually counter-intuitive. Why would this one figure, this Jesus,
be the one and only? Why should I choose to relate to him and not the
numerous other religious leaders and philosophers? Are all other
religious people just lost or misguided? Wouldn’t it just be easier to
relate to Jesus’ ideas and principles, to imitate his style of life?
Yes, indeed it would, but that’s not what he says.
Perhaps
we could look at it from Jesus’ side. Jesus wants to be friends: “‘I no
longer call you servants, but friends,’ says the Lord.” What if there
were someone who wanted to be friends with you, and you were to say, “Oh
sure! I admire you and would like to imitate your form of life, but I
don’t want to spend a lot of time with you.” How would that strike your
prospective friend?
What
is unique to
Christianity is that God is offering us friendship. You don’t mess
around with friendship; you don’t turn it into something abstract; you
don’t compromise with it. You enter into it fully.
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