John 6:60-71

1. I've been trying to put together my testimony for MDG, and man I'm too verbose. I feel like everything is interlinked and required but if I touch on everything, it'll be like a 30 minute blabfest. And no one wants that...

2. Wasn't actively trying to prayer-walk this morning, but with the folks I always see where I eat my breakfast, I found something endearing about just about everyone. For the most part, they're people I don't normally have any conversation with. I think I felt a little bit of how God feels for those guys.

Anyways...

I felt like today's devotional sort of jumped in half-ways to a program already in progress. It starts off with the disciples saying, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" I imagine them scratching their heads and kinda just milling around looking at each other.

Eh, need to rewind to the actual the hard teaching part... So I jumped back and saw this:

53 Jesus said to them, “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. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum

OK, I see how this could be hard.
If you're not really savvy to what Jesus is talking about, it sounds kinda...gross. Cannibalistic and...I dunno. A weird way to phrase things in church?

If you did know exactly what Jesus was talking about, if you had regarded him before as "a wise rabbi" well, now the line is unambiguously in the sand and it's not just about Jesus the teacher anymore. Do you believe he is divine? The One everyone's been waiting for? That's a much bigger leap.

Two other things that stuck out:
1. Verse 65: Is Jesus talking about God's Elect/predestination thing? Existential mobius strips give me nosebleeds.
2. Verse 70: John doesn't mince words when it comes to Judas. Not that he wasn't like, maybe the worst guy ever. But compared to the Matthew, Mark and Luke, John definitely has the most scathing characterizations of Judas.