We all have a difficult decision to make; Jesus says 'The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.'

John 6: 41- 71 Part 1

John 6: 63

⁶³It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 

Humans are complex beings. Since the time of the European Enlightenment, from around the late 17^th century there has been an attempt to use reason, individualism and the scientific method to understand and gain meaning regarding the complexity about life and the cosmos. This method uses manageable parts of disciplined investigation and analysis to produce understanding and meaning. It is an approach that has brought many benefits to our life and culture along with disasters through its misuse and application. Gaps in knowledge can provisionally be sketched or predicted in an attempt to achieve a more complete story of life using the story of scientific investigation. From time to time the story of science has to be re-written because of some new discovery and gradually over time the scientific story of life unfolds and our understanding of ourselves and the universe in which we live grows and develops. The explaining of the complexity of life and the world around us through the telling of stories is a very human approach to the production of knowledge. It is as old as human beings; telling stories is how we make sense of the world and ourselves. Biology, chemistry and physics tell the story of the physical world; philosophy and psychology tell the story of ideas and mental events; sociology, politics and economics tell the story of the world of relationships, how to get things done culturally and the production and distribution of wealth. There are other genres  for producing meaning with very long histories for example the: arts, music and in literature. These too are very powerful means in providing sources of meaning about life and how we live and should live together.  The bible is literature; a story of the revelation of the creative, sustaining and redemptive power and consciousness known as God. The bible uses the story of the revelation of God to answer the questions of life and does so through the use of many different types of literature: ancient historical narrative, poetry, wisdom literature, prophetic writings, biography and letters. It is a story that has travelled through many different cultures and engaged with many different ways of understanding the world. It is a story that has also like science been abused and used in destructive and oppressive ways.  The biblical story has met with other ways of telling the story of life at historical cultural crossroads where there has been a mutual exchange of meanings. In Scotland we currently live at the crossroads between the post enlightenment story and the story of the creative, sustaining and redemptive God. We will consider this much more in other series. In our biblical story today we are witnessing one such crossroad interaction. Competing ways of understanding human needs and how they should be met are interacting before us; stories are being told to answer questions and answers are being interrogated by participants; symbols are being deployed and challenged; new understanding and meaning is emerging from the interaction and people are coming to conclusions and taking action based on the encounter.  This is the process that continues today. We are invited by Jesus to interact; to bring ourselves and our story to the crossroads of participation and decision. If we will come and participate we will be offered an alternative way of meeting our needs; of understanding who we are and how we got here; we will be offered the hope of a new life free from the threats and experience of oppression and death. The words that Jesus is speaking in our story are ‘spirit and life’; Jesus words are powerfully symbolic; His words, His story offer us life at the crossroads of decision. It,s time to decide.