Meeting the Lord Halfway

Recently, I was talking with a friend who is also a priest. We haven’t seen each other in several years, and we discussed trying to find a time to meet up. The problem is both of our schedules are pretty busy, and neither of us have time to travel all the way to where the other lives. So, I suggested, “Okay, what if we tried to meet in the middle?” Meeting halfway might be a compromise that could work for both of us.

Life, in many ways, is all about compromise, about making adjustments when what you want and what someone else wants aren’t both possible. Whether it’s in business, or in social settings, or even in handling our own expectations of ourselves, the ability to compromise, to meet someone halfway, is an important skill to have.

But is compromise always good? Aren’t there some things for which compromising might actually lead us away from what is good? Today’s readings point us in this direction. In the first reading, Joshua tells the people of Israel that there can be no compromise in their worship of the Lord God; to worship the idols of the country they found themselves in was necessarily to betray the worship of the true God who brought them out of slavery in Egypt. And in the second reading, St. Paul encourages husbands and wives to not give up in striving to love each other in the fullest possible way: in fidelity, in self-sacrifice, in mutual respect. Compromising any of those goals is to betray is promised in marriage, and indeed, to fall short of the ideal of married love, the love that Christ has for the Church.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is also unwilling to compromise. The sixth chapter of John began with the passage we heard four weeks ago: when Jesus multiplies the loaves and the fish to feed the five thousand. But it ends with today’s passage, when many people walk away from Jesus – even many of his disciples, we are told, stop following him because they found his teaching too hard to accept. Perhaps we might think: Why couldn’t Jesus soften his teaching a bit? Maybe compromise a little on what he was asking of his followers? Surely, that would seem to be a better way to maximize the number of his disciples? But Jesus, it seems, isn’t interested in merely winning people over. He has come to lead them to the Truth, and just like in worship and in the goods of marriage, the Truth is not something that can be compromised. Jesus himself *is* the Truth, as we know from another part of John’s Gospel: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” If we want to receive the fullness of He who is Truth and Life, we can’t be satisfied with half measures.

Gustave Brion, Jesus and Peter on the Water (1863)

For that reason, in our own path of discipleship, it is important to understand that eventually we will all be tempted to compromise our faith. At some point or another, we will run up against something that challenges us, that seems hard to accept, and we will feel the inclination to walk away. For some people, it is believing in the truth of the Scriptures themselves: can the Gospels really give us an accurate portrayal of the life and death of this man who lived two millennia ago? Or maybe, it is the authority of the Church: does the Catholic Church really speak with the Lord’s spiritual and moral authority? Most often, though, especially for those of us in the pews on Sunday, it is something more subtle. Maybe we are willing to come to Mass each week, but when the Lord invites us to deepen our prayer life, or study his Word in the Scriptures, or meet him in the sacrament of reconciliation, we are hesitant. Maybe we are proud to call ourselves Catholic, unless it means risking the esteem of others or accepting those teachings of the Church that we find difficult. Maybe we are glad to believe in everything Jesus commanded us to do, except for those bits about loving and praying for our enemies, or forgiving from our hearts those who hurt us, or renouncing our possessions, or cutting out of our lives whatever causes us to sin.

As I said, at some point or another, we will find that something about ourselves – some belief or behavior or attitude – is opposed to the One who is Truth and Life. The question then will be: are we willing to change, to adapt to what Jesus calls us to, or will we walk away? Can we accept what the Lord offers, even when it is hard, or will we let our faith be compromised? What we need in those difficult moments is the humility that Peter showed. Maybe, like him, we don’t understand everything right then, maybe we struggle to believe what Jesus or the Church teaches, but it’s right there in that moment that our Father in heaven can give us the grace to say what Peter said: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” To hold on to our faith in the hard moments, to resist the urge to walk away, is to take one step further in the path of discipleship, one step closer to heaven.

Friends, maybe at times we wish God would meet us halfway – and in truth, he has. Jesus himself is our Mediator with the Father, the gift God has given to us to meet us halfway. By his life on earth, by his Presence still among us, he comes to meet us – especially in the reality of the Eucharist, the celebration of the very sacrament which many found difficult to accept. When we meet the Lord here, in the humility of faith, then we trust that he will lead us the rest of the way: to eternal life.