Where else can we go?

Joel Virgo (from CCK) spoke at Sussex CU on Monday night about John 6 - Jesus' bizarre saying 'I am the bread of life'. It was fab! Nice to be taught by a Virgo again - although Joel is different from both Terry and Simon, the brilliant Virgo traits are still there - not least a passionate love of Jesus and of his Word (as well as a few hand gestures!!) It was great to be reminded that stuff that we find difficult to understnnd in the bible, for example Jesus saying: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." was as shocking and crazy to the people Jesus was talking to as it is to us now - 'what, he wants us to eat him? what is he going on about?' Many people thought that Jesus was crazy - and they turned away, they would not follow him. But when Jesus asks Peter if he always wants to leave his reply is 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life' - Jesus teaching may be hard at time - people may think that he is crazy, or that we are crazy for believing in him and following - but he has the words of eternal life - where else can we go? He has the truth, he is the only way to God - to who else could we go to?

I saw one of my old lecturers last week. It was good to see him (the 1st time in 2 years), but he did make me feel about 2" tall (I mean to be fair, he always did mock everyone mercilessly for anything anyway) - but he asekd me what I was doing now - when I told him I was working for a church he laughed in my face and said something along the lines of 'Going to convert us all are you? Haha, what are you really doing? Weren't you going to do a PGCE..?' And I felt rubbish. I felt like I was wasting my life, bumming around teaching the Bible - what am I doing? I have a physics degree for goodness sake. But that is so wrong - I was letting someone who thinks the idea of Jesus is crazy, and who thinks I'm crazy for following him affect my thinking - in his mind I am crazy 0 in his mind God doesn't exist and I'm wasting my life. But that is not true. Jesus is real, and he has the words of eternal life - where else can I go? I went to a conference on Preaching Eternity at All Souls yesterday, and one of the things that struck me was the Jesus is coming back. Fact. We don't need to apologise for it or feel embarrased about it - it will happen. And we need to be telling people that. They may think we're crazy - but they thought Jesus was crazy - it doesn't change the truth. The new creation will be a reality, so too, horrifically is hell. Telling people about reality is not wasting your life, its an awesome privilege and a great responsiblity.