Belief AND Fidelity (Faithfulness 1)
Seeking to live within the faithfulness of Jesus in both his teachings and his example.
Today we begin three days on the fruit of the Spirit that is faithfulness.
Sorry to get into some Greek (something I try to avoid in these reflections), but it’s pretty important. Paul, in what we usually receive as the word faithfulness, is the exact same word in the New Testament that is simply faith (it’s all over the place). In English, we have these two words - faith and faithfulness. But in the Greek, it is the same word. It is both belief and fidelity.
The word isn’t used in the gospel passage I selected today. But fidelity sure is. John chapter 6 is a tough chapter. And by the end, what Jesus is saying is no longer appealing to many of those who had been following. It’s quite a demarcation point that should receive more attention than it does. Prior to this, the crowd was amazed and attracted to Jesus thanks to miraculous signs of food multiplication and healing. But as he begins to teach about the heart of his teaching - fidelity to God through the sacrificial Christ - many are no longer interested.
Goodness…how I wish such delineation were present in today’s Church in the United States. The melding between US culture and this mushy kind of feelings-Christianity is so far from a cruciform Christ that the vast majority of people cannot see it.
There has always been a distinction between crowds who admire Jesus and disciples who follow him. Admiration never costs anything. Following does. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” This doesn’t necessarily mean martyrdom, but it does mean cruciformity. It means a life patterned after the suffering, self-giving love of Jesus Christ. The Church is meant to live as a peculiar people whose habits, loyalties, and ethics don’t simply blend into the patterns of the wider culture. The story of Jesus must form us more deeply than any national myth, political stream, or sentimental spirituality. Faithfulness is consummated with costly grace, not cheap belief. It is fidelity not just to Jesus’ ideas, but to his way, his story, and his cross. We don’t go out to kill, destroy, and eliminate, but to live in the belief and fidelity of Jesus, within it all, as a beaming, shining example of the truth and life of God.
Peter’s question - Where else would we go? - comes in the face of a tough question from Jesus. It’s a question for a maturity through daily discipleship formed by the present Spirit of God. It is indeed a fruit of the Spirit.
John 6:66-69
At this, many of his disciples turned away and no longer accompanied him.
Jesus asked the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered, “Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are God’s holy one.”
Prayer
God,
Make us faithful that all who come after us would understand what faithfulness is by seeing how we lived.
By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.
Amen and Amen!
A challenging and helpful word for today. Thank you.