BOTH LORD AND CHRIST 

“From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.’You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.’ Then Jesus replied, ‘Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!’ (He meant Judas Iscariot who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray Him).” John 6:66-71 (NIV)

Good old Peter! For once he got it right!

For all their blundering, misunderstandings, prejudices and misperceptions, of one thing the Twelve had become convinced, that Jesus was the Son of God. They did not fully understand all the implications and they certainly clung tenaciously to the hope that He would deliver them from Rome, but they never abandoned their conviction that He was someone far more than human.

John was careful to identify and isolate Judas Iscariot as the traitor, but that did not mean that Judas was not also convinced of His identity. Why he betrayed Jesus is not absolutely clear. It could have been purely for money or it could have been his way of trying to force Jesus to do what he thought He would do — move supernaturally against the Romans during the Passover when Jerusalem was filled with Jews from in and outside Israel.

John made a clear distinction between two groups of disciples — the ones who were following Him for opportunistic reasons and the Twelve whom He had chosen. The first group was obvious fascinated by and drawn to Him because of the possibilities of what He could do for them. He healed them; He got rid of tormenting demons and He even fed them supernaturally from very little. If they could have a king like that, their troubles would be over.

The problem with this kind of faith is that it places false expectations on Jesus which He is under no obligation to fulfil. It is unfortunate that He is often presented to people as the solution to all their problems. Prayer and faith are a way to get what we want. When He does not meet to our expectations and capitulate to our demands, we either do what we can to appease Him, as though He were some pagan idol, or we become disillusioned and walk away like these fickle “disciples” did.

The Twelve followed Jesus because they were chosen. He selected ordinary men from many walks of life; fishermen, tax collectors, political activists, nobodies who were not already fashioned by the religious system to have fixed ideas about God and His Messiah.

When He began to speak about things they could not understand; about suffering and dying, which made no sense to them, they were sufficiently convinced about His identity to wait it out. Their expectations might have differed, even from one another’s but they were prepared to give Him a hearing because they had bonded with Him as a person even if they did not understand everything He said.

Peter voiced the thoughts of the group, and they agreed with him by sticking with Jesus when the others left. It must have heartened Jesus to know that He had a loyal group, even if it was only His intimate group of disciples whom He had personally invited to be His followers. They were not part of the “anyone” and the “whoever”. He called them by name and that meant a lot to them.

The fact that He lost only Judas from the Twelve is also surprising, given the harshness of His words. They may have trembled with fear, abandoned Him and run for cover, hidden in the Upper Room and lost all hope when He died, but that was only part of the process. Resurrection day changed all that. His words, falling on deaf ears then, took on explosive meaning when the implications burst on their understanding.

No doubt, they must have remembered Peter’s expression of their collective faith: ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ How glad they must have been to have stuck with Him then! Their faith had paid off. It was not about what He could do for them. It was all about who He was — both Lord and Christ to whom every knee shall bow.

Have you bowed to Him?