Acts 9:1-19a
Revelation 5:6-14
John 21:1-14
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
So, now what? Just what do you do after a resurrection? Some of the disciples seem to think the answer is to go fishing.
I can understand that. Sometimes after a wedding or a funeral or a baptism service, I wash dishes. Now, as some of you know, I hate washing dishes. But those profoundly personal worship times – the weddings, the funerals, the baptisms – are an intense spiritual workout with an overwhelming sense of God's presence. And if, as is most often the case, the people involved are people I know and love the emotions are running rather high too. I'm so overcharged with the Spirt or with adrenalin or with both, and at the same time so drained and exhausted, that I long for something familiar, comfortable, and ordinary. Like scrubbing dishes or sweeping floors.
Peter, having been through one hell of a week, followed by the incredible and overwhelming miracle of resurrection, sits stunned beside the lake, then announces simply, "I'm goin'fishin'." So the disciples go back to business as usual.
But the good therapy of familiar, hard work gets old pretty fast. They fish all night and catch nothing.
"Hey, kids, you haven't got any fish, do you?" The voice from the beach says they have nothing to eat. No fish. No success. No food. Out of the morning haze, the voice tells them where to find what they need. And it is then that they realize who it is. It is the Lord who knows where to find what we need.
Peter in his excitement jumps from the boat to go ashore. The others obediently cast the net as directed and drag in 153 fish. They each answer the voice in their own way.
Jesus is on the shore making breakfast. Not a miraculous, blinding light as he appeared to Paul, but the friendly camp cook grilling fish. Ordinary, familiar actions. Not what we expect from someone who has recently been declared, "Our Lord and our God."
We remember the mystery of the Last Supper. We remember the mystery of the appearances in the upper room. And now here's the Last Breakfast, a cookout on the beach.
The cook asks for some of the newly caught fish to add to the meal. The meal is not complete without the guest's offering. Bread and fish. Take and eat.
Ordinary, familiar actions. But this is not business as usual. The disciples are in awe, because they know this is the Lord.
The resurrection will not be ignored. We cannot go back to the way things were before. The resurrected Lord would not stay put in the tomb; Christ will not stay put in Jerusalem or by the seaside.
The resurrected Lord will show up in our lives. In the ordinary moments when we least expect him. The miracle of new life is right here and now in the middle of our ordinary, business-as-usual lives. We just need to open our eyes to see it.
The sacraments do that for us: they open our eyes to the miracle of God's presence with us. In those stunning moments of great life changes – baptism, marriage, ordination, and funerals – the power of God's love for us changes our lives. We are changed and our whole world changes too. Like the resurrection, after those changes nothing is ever the same again.
The changes may leave us stunned, sitting like Peter on the beach after the Resurrection, overwhelmed by the miracle of God's love. And we long for something ordinary and familiar – dishes to wash or fish to catch.
And when those ordinary, human things turn up hollow and meaningless, in those times when our nets and our lives are empty, Christ comes along and shows us where to find what we need.
God's presence is not only in those wonder-filled moments of great life transitions. God is present in the ordinary things of our lives: grilled fish by the lakeside, bread and wine, lilac blossoms in the spring, the touch of a loving hand.
These too are sacramental signs of God's presence with us. Communion, reconciliation, confirmation, healing – sacraments that can touch our lives over and over again with God's presence. Ordinary daily things, like a good friend who has made a fire to warm us and cooks breakfast for us on the shore.
What to do after the resurrection? Come and have breakfast.