Willing to Learn?

Murmur not among yourselves!
(John 6: 28-67)

Jesus was a very remarkable Man. 
He spent the greater part of His 
ministry just talking to people. 
He was always talking, teaching, 
performing miracles and all that. 
There was almost always a crowd 
with Him, following Him everywhere 
He went. 
Even when He would want to take a rest, 
the crowd would throng Him. 
So he devised a way to steal away to 
pray and rest once in a while.
Now, in the passage above, there was 
an incident that I learnt a very good 
lesson from: 
Jesus was with the crowd as He always 
was and He started making some 
declarations. 
He was being asked questions and 
He was responding to them with these 
declarations.
They asked, “What shall we do that we 
might work the works of God?” (verse28)
He responded, “This is the work of God- 
that you believe on Him whom He hath 
sent” (verse 29)
They asked again, “Can you show us a 
sign that we may believe you? 
Our fathers ate manna in the dessert- 
the manna was a sign to them! 
You show us yours!” (verse 30,31)
He responded again, “Moses did not 
give you that manna from Heaven, 
but My Father gives you the True Bread 
from Heaven. 
This Bread of God is He who comes 
down from Heaven and gives life to 
the world.” (verse 32,33)
Then the people said, “Give us this 
Bread!” (verse 34)
Jesus answered, “I am the Bread of Life! 
He who comes to me shall never hunger 
and he that believes in me shall never
 thirst!” (verse 35)
Now, confusion sets in. they could not 
understand Him. 
They started discussing among themselves, 
trying to grasp what Jesus was saying.
This is the major problem with humanity: 
we seek wisdom and knowledge among 
like-minded people.
About 25 years ago, my sister lived with me. 
She was about 21 years old. 
One Saturday morning, five of her friends 
came visiting and one of them, 
Lola complained about her boyfriend. 
These six young ladies aged between 
20-22 put heads together to counsel their 
friend what to do about the boyfriend problem. 
I heard the discussion and I interjected. 
I told them, “You are all within the same 
age range. Your counsel cannot be any 
different from what Lola already knows. 
On issues like this, you need counsel from 
other (older) people with better experience.” 
I told them the story of King Rehoboam,
 the son of Solomon who took over the 
kingdom after Solomon died. 
He was given counsel by his friends and 
his father’s advisers. 
He took the counsel of his friends and 
lost the kingdom.
These folks Jesus was talking to fell 
into the same trap: they reasoned among 
themselves, trying to understand Jesus. 
Then Jesus said, “Don’t murmur among 
yourselves!” (verse 43). 
In other words, seek counsel! 
You are not as smart as you think! 
You need someone who will make you 
see and understand things differently! 
You need a paradigm shift! 
You need to un-learn and re-learn! 
You need to do away with your old way 
of thinking, your old way of processing 
things, your old way of comprehension!
Jesus added to their confusion: 
“I am the Living Bread that came down
from Heaven: If any man eats of this Bread, 
he shall live forever, and the Bread that 
I will give is my flesh…” (verse 51)
And what did the people do after 
hearing this? 
They argued among themselves- the 
very thing Jesus just asked them NOT to do! 
“How can this Man give us his flesh to eat? 
They were trying to understand Him, 
but it was way beyond their ken. 
Now, why did they not just ask Him? 
“What do you mean? We don’t understand- 
Can you please explain it to us?” 
That was what Nicodemus did when 
Jesus told him “Unless a man be Born Again, 
he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” 
He practically asked, “What do you mean?” 
(John 3:3-4) 
That would have made more sense than 
trying to decide what they assumed 
He meant and adopting it as true. 
But then, that is human nature. 
What we don’t understand, we either 
mystify it or brush it off as nonsense.
Jesus continued, “Unless you eat My 
Flesh and drink My Blood, you have 
no life in you. Whoever eats My Flesh 
and drinks My Blood has eternal life. 
He who eats My Flesh and drinks 
My Blood dwells in me and I in him.” 
(verses 53-56)
When they people heard this, said, 
“This is a very difficult thing! 
Who can understand it?” 
And many of them stopped following Him!
Why? Because they concluded 
He wasn’t worth following anymore. 
They came to a wrong conclusion! 
Now, how many times have we also 
come to wrong conclusions in our lives? 
How many times have we taken decisions 
based on these wrong decisions, only to 
discover we were wrong later in life?
The irony here is; Jesus did not attempt 
to explain things to them! He let them go. 
He even asked the 12 disciples, 
“Do you want to go too?” (verse 67) 
I imagine if they had said, “Yes! 
We don’t understand what you’re saying!” 
Jesus would have told them, “Ok”.
But when Nicodemus asked for explanation, 
Jesus obliged him. 
The lesson here is; we need to purge 
ourselves from whatever we think we know.
 We have all been conditioned to think and 
reason in a particular way. 
We are all victims of manipulations and 
control to a certain degree and it is 
affecting the way we process and 
comprehend things. 
We have all been wired in a certain way 
and we need to break out of that mold 
to be more useful to ourselves, 
our society and our God.
We need to understand that we don’t 
understand. 
Paul wrote, “If any man thinks he knows 
anything, he doesn’t really know as he 
ought to” (1st Corinthians 8:2).
We all need a paradigm shift and learn 
to process things differently. 
And when we don’t understand anything, 
rather than jump into conclusions based 
on our flawed reasoning process, 
let’s ask for clarification like Nicodemus did.
Unless we have another motivation: PRIDE.
Let us kill it before it kills us.
Shalom.
Haruna Daniels.