Sermon
of April 3, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: John 21
“Breakfast with Jesus”
One of the most memorable Garfield cartoons that I
ever remember reading was where in the first frame you find Garfield the cat
standing, walking along, carrying in his arms a couple of bottles of soda, a
dozen doughnuts, a cake, some cookies, some ice cream, and in the second frame
he passes by his owner, Jon, and Jon looks at him…and in the third frame
Garfield says, “What? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”
Well we are told that breakfast is the most
important meal of the day although something other than doughnuts and ice cream
and soda would probably be a better way to start, like fruit and toast and
orange juice and things like that. It
physically helps prepare us for the day ahead.
It helps us to get energy; it helps us to build stamina for our bodies in
the course of the day and all the demands. It even helps with mental acuity. I
just wanted to say that—I’ve never said “mental acuity” before—I think
it means you think straight while you’re working.
It’s also good to start the day with good
emotional material, to have a good emotional experience during breakfast, and
that’s one of my most favorite memories of being a child growing up in
Wethersfield in a house on Boulter Road – where the window in the kitchen
looked out on the street and the goings on in the neighborhood…and we had one
of those kitchen tables that I think now are called “retro”. It
was a metal table with a Formica top (do you remember these?) and the chairs
were metal and they had a vinyl back and seat to them (yellow, bright yellow)
and my parents and I sat there and had breakfast and it was always a very
pleasant experience. It was a good emotional way to start the day besides
physically starting off with good food, having a good emotional experience. The
only part that took away from it was that I wanted to listen to WPOP or WDRC and
my parents overruled me and we had to listen to Bob Steele.
A third way to start the day is to start the day
with a good spiritual foundation. A physical start to the day with a good
breakfast is good, an emotional start to the day that is peaceful is good, and
just as important is having a good spiritual start to the day. So I want to
suggest to you today that a good way to start the day is to have breakfast with
Jesus.
Imagine
Jesus there with you having breakfast.
Last week we heard about the Resurrection and that Jesus had risen from the dead and that Jesus would be alive for all time for all of us in every place. And I think our imaginations provide us with one of the great ways to make the Resurrection very real. Our imaginations are a magnificent gift from God, that we can imagine and create in our minds and in the atmosphere around us an experience that is spiritually good for us and spiritually nourishing. And an easy way to do that is to begin the day, while you’re having breakfast, imagining that Jesus is there with you. Imagine Him standing next to you; imagine Him maybe in a chair that’s empty at the table or if there’s none empty, go get a chair and put it at the table (you won’t be crazy – you might think you look crazy but you’re not!) and say, “That’s Jesus’ chair” and imagine Jesus sitting there beginning the day with you as he began the day with the disciples in those early times after the Resurrection when he had breakfast--fish and bread--with the disciples by the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias.
Imagine Jesus any way you want:
you might imagine him in a long robe and sandals or you might imagine him
more contemporary, maybe in Dockers and a golf shirt—I don’t know. You can
imagine Jesus any way you want--that’s the wonderful thing about imagination.
But think about starting the day that way with Jesus, sitting with you, at
breakfast.
And
the next step is to imagine Jesus sitting there giving you some guidance to
begin the day. The disciples had had a bad
night of fishing. They didn’t catch anything. And when Jesus approached them,
even though they didn’t recognize him right away it was Jesus, they
discovered, and Jesus gave them guidance to begin the day. He said, “Try
throwing the net on the other side, try throwing the net on the right side of
the boat and there you will find fish”. And behold, they did. Now as I read
that the first time this morning at the first service it hit me that John must
have been a real avid fisherman because if you notice how important the fish
were to him as opposed to the people. The people he said, OK, there’s Simon
Peter, Nathanael, Thomas the Twin, a couple of sons of Zebedee, and two other
disciples—he didn’t even remember what their names were. But there were 153
fish. He got that number right. So John must have been a fisherman. Doesn’t
matter as much who the people were as long as I know how many fish I caught.
They caught that many fish because they listened to Jesus’ guidance.
As you begin your day, imagine Jesus there offering
you some guidance. Think ahead what’s coming up in the day. A lot of times we
do that first thing in the morning, we think about a meeting that’s coming up,
a place we have to be, a person we have to see a letter or phone call we have to
return, an errand we have to do--there are all kinds of things that we think
about at the beginning of the day. Imagine Jesus giving you guidance on how to
approach those things. What guidance would Jesus give you? Sometimes it might be
gentle, encouraging guidance; sometimes it might be merciful, compassionate
guidance, telling you to be merciful and compassionate in a certain situation
that awaits you. Sometimes Jesus might guide you to be stern and uncompromising
in something that’s coming up during the day. Sometimes Jesus might guide you
to be loving and tender in something that’s coming up. But as you think about
the day ahead, think how Jesus might guide you to approach those errands, that
task, that meeting, that undone contact you need to make, and let Jesus guide
you.
And
finally, as you sit there with Jesus at your breakfast table imagine Jesus
sending you on a mission for the day. Imagine
that Jesus is telling you, “I need to you do something today beyond the
errands you planned, beyond the meetings you have, the contacts you have to
make, all those other things that you’ve been thinking about, I have a mission
for you”, as He had for Peter. “Peter”, He said, “If you love me, tend
my lambs. Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep. Care about others around you. Do
something to lift the spirit, to care for somebody, to do something that makes a
difference.” Sometimes I think we don’t realize how much power we have to
make a difference in somebody’s life and even beyond that, to the world around
us.
Especially in the past couple of weeks we have been
inundated (if we’ve watched the news) with famous people who have great
authority who are commanding the attention of the world through the media.
Religious leaders speaking about the Terry Schiavo case and now bishops and
cardinals and even rabbis and Muslim leaders speaking about the pope and about
the future of the Roman Catholic Church. We have been inundated really with
people of great authority and great prominence speaking through the media to the
whole world and we think “They’re really doing something”. But the truth
is that each one of us can really do something, too, without commanding the
media, without having national or world attention, we can do something just as
important, sometimes more important.
This past week I did a lot of driving. I had a few
days off and I drove around and went to
When Jesus called Peter to feed his sheep, tend his
lambs, feed his sheep, he was sending a message for us as well that is the same
thing: go see somebody who needs their spirit fed and give them a smile or a
wave to lift them up, and somebody driving by, as long as you’re not
distracting them, just a wave to a stranger or a smile or a nice gesture or
doing something like that in the supermarket or the store or the mall or along
the street; waving and saying “hello” to somebody who looks sullen and weary
and lift their spirit. Offer to help them with something. It could be a
stranger, it could be somebody you know. Step out of your protected shell, and
feed a lamb, tend a sheep as Jesus would tell Peter.
The
good news today is we really do have the power to make a difference in
somebody’s day: to turn that weary frown,
that empty look, into a smile, into something that awakens somebody to
remembering that what they’re doing does
have meaning, and does have purpose
and can be something they’re
passionate about if somebody around them just lifts them out of it. You and I,
we all have that power and the way we find it is by starting by having breakfast
with Jesus, imagining Him there at the table, giving you a little guidance at
the beginning of the day, and listening for Him to tell you, “What is the
mission I’m sending you on today to feed someone’s spirit? What is it you
can do?” and then look for how that mission can be fulfilled throughout the
day.