Ordinary

Luke 24:36-48

Do you have any favorite sayings of Jesus? Famous words, or ones you turn to?

Like: Be not afraid…Judge not, lest ye be judged…man does not live by bread alone…love your neighbor as yourself…

There are a lot of good ones: truths or instructions that have taken on a life of their own over the centuries since the gospel writers first shared them.

One of my favorite Jesus quotes is a lot more obscure than those - not likely to be in any top ten list - but it’s something we heard him say this morning: “Got anything here to eat?”

It is probably the most banal thing Jesus is ever recorded as saying.  

It’s a family kitchen question, not a church teaching, and it’s bizarrely disruptive. Every time I read or hear this story - a story of the disciples and Jesus in the first day of resurrection - I listen to the shock and doubt and confusion of the disciples, the initial reassuring, “really, it’s me” words of Jesus, and I come up short at the unexpected, oddly commonplace question right in the middle of awe and wonder: “Got anything to eat?”

It makes me laugh, every time, and sometimes it triggers a bit of tears.

Because that bizarrely normal moment is so familiar.

It’s what we do, after death, after the world ends: We eat. And we grapple with normal.

It’s not just that the casserole brigades spring into action around a tragedy. It’s the way life somehow goes on, requires our attention to boring everyday detail, even when going on feels wrong. And that’s grace.

In the face of death and upheaval, the dog still needs to be walked, the kids need to be fed, laundry doesn’t do itself, you still have to bring in the mail and pay the bills…

and that’s grace.

Because it is, in some way, the assurance that life does go on, that you are real, normal, in spite of how dislocated grief can make you feel.

It’s the ordinary that makes the impossible possible, and brings the extraordinary within reach.

Not just in loss, grief, and death, but in any deeply emotional upheaval, including joy - including resurrection.

On that long ago day in Jerusalem, when the recently buried and freshly risen Jesus stood among his friends, trying to reassure them and encourage them, no one actually believes he’s real.

The grief is more real - and it’s still grief even if Jesus is risen; we’ve still lost something tremendous by his death.

The fear is more real - after all, someone you see again after death is a ghost, or a zombie.

And even joy contributes to the sense of unreality, to the below-consciousness conviction that this is a hallucination, a dream, too good to be true, even with Jesus inviting you to touch him and feel the living flesh.

So Jesus asks for lunch. And he eats.

Common, ordinary, broiled fish: for common, ordinary hunger.

And suddenly, finally, he’s real again in the face of his friends’ astonished disbelief.

Has that ever happened to you?
Has Jesus ever been made real in your life by ordinary details?

I’ve been assured of Jesus’ presence by the offer of a midnight snack in a night of grief and turmoil. I’ve been moved from anxiety to trust in God when a stranger, unexpectedly, made me laugh. And I think I began to believe that I would really achieve my longing to be a priest when I realized how much paperwork I was doing for the cause.

It’s the sheer banality of it that works,

that makes it real,

that makes it grace,

that cracks the unbelievability of the extraordinary and anchors the impossible in the possible.

It makes you laugh, breaks the tension,

and lets us cope, even a little,

with death and resurrection.

When Jesus suddenly requested lunch, the atmosphere in that room full of disciples must have gone suddenly from trauma waiting room to family kitchen - and that, after all, is where most of the work gets done, right?

Jesus doesn’t come back just to make his friends feel better, or even to make them believe.

He comes - and eats - because there’s work to be done.

Resurrection needs witnesses. 

People who’ve experienced the reality of Jesus, found it powerful and believable, and will share their stories and do something about that experience.

Two thousand years ago, that’s a handful of recently traumatized disciples, suddenly grappling with the miraculous, made real by the need to grill more fish.

And when the impossible becomes possible to them, they go out and change the world.

Here and now, that’s you and me.

Few of us have to deal with resurrection every day, and if we’re lucky, the times when we have to grapple with death are far between, but our faith makes other demands on us, too, and some of those can be nearly as overwhelming.

We face a world where the news is full of war and oppression, where hunger and homelessness are on our doorstep - and God calls us to change things that can feel far beyond our reach.

Or in our private lives, illness and injury can devastate us. Small injustices happen at work and school, family challenges - “little” things - but they can be overwhelming when they are vivid and fresh in your own life.

So you, too, have probably felt something like the anxiety, doubt, hope, and sense of sheer impossible scope the disciples grappled with at the resurrection.

And when that happens in our lives, perhaps we should start with lunch.

With one action — ordinary, commonplace — one step that makes the impossible possible.

Last spring, Navy Admiral William McRaven spoke to the gradating class of the University of Texas - a speech that’s cropped up in my Facebook feed often - viral and persistent because of one thing he said:
“If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.”

Start with one task. One ordinary, commonplace thing.

Because one accomplishment leads to another.

And if it doesn’t, if nothing goes right and you have a miserable day, “you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

He learned it in Navy SEAL training. Six solid months of the impossible: of strain and doubt, facing challenges that you know are just impossible, but that ultimately become real, and make it possible to change the world.

So make your bed.

Eat lunch.

Make a pot of coffee…

In the Navy, as in the gospel, it’s the sheer banality of it that works, that makes it grace, and makes the impossible possible,

just enough, at least, that we, too, might change the world.