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A Sermon by Lad Anderson
First Congregational United Church of Christ, Bellingham, Washington
The Breakfast Question
Luke 9:51-62
April 29, 2001 -- Easter 3
Stephen Ambrose has written a New York Times best selling book entitled UNDAUNTED COURAGE. It is the record of the Lewis and Clark expedition with the author’s singular focus on Meriwether Lewis’ role on that journey. The Corps of Discovery, as the expedition was called, left St. Louis at 6:00 a.m. on May 22, 1804. It returned to St. Louis on September 22, 1806, having traveled thousands of miles to and back from the Pacific ocean. The journey was an accomplishment of unbelievable human achievement, made possible, in Ambrose estimation, by the undaunted courage of Lewis and Clark. The reader would surely agree.
It is not an oversimplification to say that every morning for those 28 months, Lewis and Clark had to make decisions about the day ahead of them. Everyone of those 850 days required that alternatives be examined and choices made. Breakfast was decision time, and on the results of those decisions hung the success or failure of the journey.
Some 1700 years earlier, around 100 A.D., a group of Jesus followers were struggling to keep alive the story of Jesus in the face of severe persecution. Roman authority had been brutalizing these Jesus people for over a decade. This group were sorting through a collection of records about Jesus, things he had said, things he did, words he had spoken, lives he had changed, events surrounding his death, his resurrection, his appearances to his disciples after his resurrection. These scraps of records were read in their gatherings. They had a way of encouraging these followers, of empowering them to face the persecutions, even their deaths, without defaulting on their commitment to Jesus.
These scraps of records, put together, came to be our Gospel of John. The group selected records that seemed to have the greatest power to fortify these early followers, and give them, for their faith journey, undaunted courage. Among the records, was the one I have just read in our hearing. -2- I invite you to join me in trying to get behind the outward form of the event. Seven of the disciples, have returned from Jerusalem to Galilee, to their former homes by the Sea of Galilee.
Jerusalem was a bad memory, a horrible memory, a week of scary events and conflict, and confusion, and arrests, and for Peter a searing memory of a cock crowing at day break, with a flood of fear, and shame and regret pouring over him. And then that awful death on a cross. Did I say confusion, yes, gut-wrenching confusion, an empty tomb - assaulting their senses, compounding the swirl of events that didn’t fit into anything that life had given them before. And some kind of appearances by Jesus to some of them, but how could that be? Enough! Enough!
So - they leave town. They go back up north. They go home to where life had made some sense before, where there was some order, where they could get on with their living. And they face the inevitable snide comments from those who were smart enough never to have much to do with Jesus in the first place. “What happened to your great adventure with the Carpenter?” they taunt. It is one thing to come home winners - parties, parades, plaques. It is quite another thing to come home when the vision has collapsed, when the dot.com has folded, and you had to sell off the furniture to pay the bills. So there they are. The days go on. Nothing happens. They go back to the “before Christ” days. “I am going fishing” says Peter. “We will go with you” say the others. And off they go, only to return at day break, again failures.
But in typical Hebrew imagery the darkness and despair of the night is followed by a morning of jolting, staggering encounters. The Voice on shore says fish again. They do. They hit pay dirt. They barely make it to shore. Breakfast is ready. They eat. Then over breakfast, the Voice asks Peter the
question, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” -3- Some interpreters believe that the “these” in Jesus question refers to the other disciples. “Peter, at one time you said that even if all the other disciples left, you would stay with me even to death. But that didn’t happen. Do you love me more than these other disciples?” I think Jesus wouldn’t do that, would not make comparisons of any of us to others of us. We each live our own lives of discipleship. And Jesus regards us with respect to who we are and what we are. So I believe Jesus refers not to the other disciples, but to Peter’s boat, the sails, the nets, the oars, the rudder, the ropes. “Do you love me more than all these things that made up your life before I called you to follow me?” Do you want to stay with your fishing, your boat, all that is familiar, or do you want to join the Corps of Discovery, leave St. Louis, and open up a new country for God? This question Jesus asked over breakfast, asked again in 100 A.D. when his followers huddled in persecution fear, and asks us over breakfast when we plan for the day ahead.
So, I invite you to consider three things that Jesus says about our response to his call to discipleship. First, we love the predictable; Jesus offers the unpredictable. “Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, the son of Man has no where to lay his head.” Peter knew all about sailing the boat. He knew how to set the sail, how to cast the net, how to run the business, how to plan the day, and make things work. He was in charge. Jesus followers don’t have that luxury. You and I don’t have that guarantee. All we know is that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come . . . . will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” On the boat, we know. With Jesus - who knows?
Marilyn Christ-Janer was well into her middle years. She had given herself to the Christian nurture of children in the church. She joined our Bible study group which met every Monday night for two years. Then she taught others for another two years. Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer, from which she died. She would say to me “People say, ‘Why me?’” I say, “Why -4- not me? Jesus doesn’t exempt me from the risks of living. Rather he promises to be with me, on the journey, wherever it leads.” “ Foxes have holes.” The boat is predictable. Jesus has no where to lay his head. Which do we choose - at breakfast?
Second. We love to have an assortment of priorities, and be able to pick and choose between them at our convenience. Jesus offers us one priority - himself. “Lord, first let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus replied “Let the dead bury their own dead. You go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” We are repelled by what seems here to be Jesus’ harshness. Shouldn’t a prospective disciple be permitted to bury his father? Of course. We don’t know all the circumstances in which Jesus spoke these words. If we did, his words, I believe, would have been appropriate. Jesus often overstated a truth in order to impress it on the hearts and minds of his hearers.
I think Jesus is warning followers about using a mail order catalog from which to pick and choose what we want as his followers. Some things seems so reasonable and so attractive. They did to Jesus, in a garden, where he prayed. He wanted more time to preach and teach, to train his disciples, to heal the sick and lift up the oppressed. All this was so reasonable. “Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” In some way, at every breakfast, we choose our loyalties by the way we answer Jesus’ question “Do you love me more than the items in your catalog? Is it your boat, or is it me?”
Third. John Bunyon in his book Pilgrim’s Progress has a character called “Mr. Facing-both-ways.” We want to hang on to all the glories of the past, while trying to move into the wonder of a new and different life. Jesus said that wouldn’t work. “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” In one of the churches I served there was a member who had two claims to fame. One, -5- he was a retired Colonel from WWII. Everything about him exuded the fact that he was a retired Colonel. His life never moved much beyond the circumstances of his military days in the past in which evil was defeated and liberty secured. And it was. His second claim to fame was that his grandfather was George William Warren who, in 1892, wrote the music to the hymn tune called National Hymn - 372 and 592 in our hymnal. It is the tune that begins with trumpets sounding on the organ. I was instructed to let him know every time we were to sing that hymn tune in worship, and he would be there, full of glory, bursting with celebrety, and still the Colonel.
Sometime in the not too distant future we are going to leave this sanctuary behind and move into a new one. And all of us who have come to love this sacred place - a place of baptisms, weddings, memorial services, and communion, and weekly worship, and Christmas and Easter celebrations - all of us will have to struggle with what, in church terms is called The Scrapbook Mentality. We may want to remember this place so much that we may have real problems moving into a new place. “No one who puts his and to the plow and looks back . . .”
Every breakfast all of us, in some way, decide whether to get back into our familiar and comfortable boats, or with undaunted courage, stay on the journey to a new land. Amen.
The
Rev. Dr. H. R. Lad Anderson is a minister in the PCUSA, retired, and an
associate member of the First Congregational Church of Bellingham.
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