Gospel Reflection on John 6:37-40

November 2, 2025

All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

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Today we remember all those we knew and loved in life who have died. But death is not just the death of our physical body. Death is all the times we hit bottom and had to let go of how we thought life should be. So all of us go through many deaths in our lifetime. These deaths are the small tipping points opportunities to choose transformation early.

And we have to choose transformation. We have to choose to let go.

Sadly often when we come to these low points it's tempting to look for someone to blame and we can easily become angry or bitter. So death is indeed death because we close down to growth.

But if we do choose to walk through those depths even the depths of our own mistakes we will come out the other side knowing we've been taken there by a power larger than ourselves. Isn't that what it means to be saved? Being saved doesn't mean you're better than anyone or that you're going to be whisked off to heaven. It means you've allowed the mystery of transformation to take place in your life now. The most miraculous thing is that God uses the very thing that would destroy us, the tragedy, the sorrowful, the painful, to transform us. And once that has happened in a way we become indestructible.

That's what we mean when we say we're saved by the death and resurrection of Christ. This is not a one-time cosmic event but the constant pattern of growth.

Jesus is saving the world by guiding us through all our would-be deaths to a life that's bigger than death. The resurrection of Christ tells us it's a great storyline of history: in the mind of God is that the end has already happened and it's nothing we need to be afraid of. If we were to imagine the effect of Jesus' resurrection it would be like lava erupting suddenly from like dry rocky lifeless ground exposing the truth that there is something happening out of sight and it is so powerful it's changing the very world we stand on.

His resurrection is the declaration that God has the last word. There are no dead ends.

Our lives and human history are not going to end in a tragic list of human crucifixions. But when we look at life in its daily moments this is hard to see. We can only see in small frames yet over and over again a kind of cosmic hope breaks through for those who are willing to see. Resurrection is saying more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. This can't be proven logically or rationally and yet this is the mystery upon which we stake our life. That nothing dies forever and all that has died will be reborn.

Jesus invited the onlookers when he went to the tomb of Lazarus to help him. Move the stone away he says unbind him. Let him go free. We've a part to play in creating a culture of resurrection. We have to unbind one another from our fears and doubts about the last enemy death. The stone to be moved away is always our fear of death. It keeps us from seeing that death is part of a larger mystery called life. It doesn't have the final word.

Cemetery's are not the place where we find people who have passed away but are now alive in a new way. Good as it is to visit graves and visible angels sit there and send us back into life to seek for them in other places. We will meet the ones we can no longer touch when we put ourselves in situations where their souls once flourished by entering into life in terms of love and faith in ways that were most distinctive to them when we pour ourselves into life as they did. If we believe that the ones we love are alive in Christ then we must seek them where we can find them and where they flourish.

Each person shapes not only his or her own life and those around them but the very presence of God for others. The word becoming flesh. We are Christ for those around us. That is both our call and our gift as people of God's Word.