Sunday
April 10
Breakfast With Peter
By Marsh Chapel
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In pastoral work, day by day, we come back to a familiar story.
One man asked another, ‘Tell me, in just one word, how is your life?”
His friend replied, slowly, “In one word? In one word, my life is, well…good”.
Sensing something, the man asked again, “Then tell me, in just two words, how is your life?”
His friend replied, slowly, “My life, in two words? In two words, my life is, well…not good”.
Both the brevity of life and the strange estrangements of our experience in life, place us, if we are honest, come Sunday, somewhere between the first and second replies, between good and not good.
We know the thrill of victory and the agony of betrayal. We know the joy of birth and the pain of death. We know the exuberance of growth and the hurt of departure.
The Gospel of John ended last week, with its concluding sentence, ‘These things are written that you may believe that Jesus in the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” Jesus: Lord and God, doorway both to allegiance and to reverence. Jesus: word incarnate, good shepherd, feeder of thousands, alchemist of water and wine, healer of the blind, raiser of the dead, doorway to grace, freedom, love, spirit, community, and friendship. Only believe, only believe. Live in tune with the universe.
Startling then, today’s lesson, added ten or twenty years after the Gospel’s original conclusion. A simple meal, of 153 fish, breakfast with Peter. Different language and imagery here. A different, now heroic role, for the robbing and disrobing Peter, here. A different voice for the beloved disciple here. A different reflection on death and life here. A different prediction of Peter’s martyrdom here. What is the meaning of this strange breakfast?
Just this: for all the grace, freedom and love, all the spirit, community and friendship rightly trumpeted in the Fourth Gospel, people are still people. This chapter is about fishing and farming, about catching and tending, about boats and fields, fishermen and shepherds. In church language, that is, 21 is about evangelism and pastoral care.
You are leading a Christian life, you are committed to the way of discipleship, the path of love. Then, and so, you will need to receive and give invitation and comfort.
Life
In a word, resurrection. In two words, evangelism and pastoral care, work and structure, laity and clergy, world and church.
Breakfast is a simple meal. The worst hour of the day, the worst food of the day, the worst attitude of the day, everything and everyone more human than not. Carried by resurrection, we re-enter the world of invitation and compassion, the world of the preacher and the pastor. Every week, you are encouraged to make one invitation to another about what you find lastingly good. Come to worship with me. Every week, you are encouraged to offer one compassionate word to another from the source of lasting compassion. I will pray for you.
Public worship places us in the necessary presence of others who are not our own kith, kin and kindred. With the child behind us, the student beside us, the professor ahead of us, the widow across from us, we worship God. We perceive again the utter variety and actual need of others. It is a cautionary move against the prevailing winds about us, including tornadoes, including dehumanizing techno-communication and distance drone aerial bombardment. A woman will receive that email. I might have seen her, or her kith, kin and kindred, in church. A child could be harmed by that weapon. I might have seen his kith, kin and kindred, in church. Public worship places us in the necessary presence of others who are not our own kith, kin and kindred. So crucial, saving, significant, then the simple invitation: join me for worship.
Compassionate pastoral care, personal kindness, a willingness to listen—feed, tend, sheep to sheep—connects us to the deeper dimensions, those for which life is given. Fifty years ago M L King sat writing in a prison cell in Birmingham Alabama. He wrote the famous Letter, which bears your re-reading this afternoon, addressed to pastors, fellow clergy, who could not or did not or would not hear: “when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness”. While most of us will not regularly write such a momentous letter, in our pastoral that is personal correspondence, we will write. You know of another’s inattention, another’s pain. You can sit down, put pen to paper, and select some caring words—sorry, condolence, hope, help, prayer. You can imagine another opening the mailbox, holding the letter, seeing the penmanship, removing the page, reading the card. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.
It is not that the Fourth Gospel diminishes or discounts invitation and compassion, evangelism and pastoral care, laity and clergy. It is just that the writer(s) had bigger fish to fry and sheep to tend of another fold. So along came—someone—who wrote 21 for us, to remind us. In a word—good. In two words—not good. Your life in Christ requires invitation and compassion, beginning again every day at breakfast. The good news is that a restored Peter is there at breakfast with you.
Jesus
Jesus speaks to us today from the edge of the shoreline. His voice, although we often mistake or mishear or misunderstand it, carries over from shore to sea, from heaven to earth. For the souls gathered here today, that voice—His voice—makes life worth living. Within earshot of His voice there are no merely ordinary nights or days or catches of fish or meals or questions or answers or friendships or loves or losses. Within earshot of His voice there are no merely ordinary moments. When the Master calls from the shoreline, “children…have you…cast the net…bring some fish…have breakfast”, no one who hears will dare ask, “And who are you?”. We dare not. For we know. Jesus speaks to us today from the edge of the shoreline.
His disciples stumble through all the magic and grit of a fishing expedition. Many of us still find some magic in fishing, though few of us have had to depend on this sport for sustenance. Still—we know the thrill of it! And the disappointment. The roll of the boat with each passing wave. The smell of the water and the wind. The feel of the fish, the sounds of cleaning, the sky, a scent of rain: this is our life, too. All night long, dropping the nets, trawling, lifting the nets with a heave. And catching nothing. The magic comes with the connection of time and space—being at the right place at the right time. How every fisherman would like to know the right place and the right time. It’s magic! The tug on the line! The jolt to the pole! The humming of the reel! A catch. And woe to the sandy-haired, freckle faced girl or boy (age 12 or 90) who cannot feel the thrill of being at the right place at the right time!
John Stewart Mill once wrote that understanding the chemistry of a pink sunset did not diminish at all his profound sense of wonder at sunset beauty. In fact, we might add, real understanding heightens true apprehension.
Easter is a season of new beginnings. The promise of resurrection is upon us. Resurrection disarms fear. Resurrection ignores defeat. Resurrection displaces and replaces loneliness. Resurrection will not abide the voice that whispers, “There’s nothing extraordinary here. There’s no reason for gaiety, excitement, sobriety or wonder.” Resurrection will not abide the easy and the cheap. Resurrection takes a day-break catch, a charcoal fire, a dawn mist, fish, bread, and hungry, weary travelers, and reveals the Lord present, and Peter at the table.
The failing of this world, whether we see it more clearly in the superstition of religion, the idolatry of politics, or the hypocrisy of social life, has its root in blindness to the extraordinary. Because we are unholy, we think God must be, too. But hear—and today taste—the good news! The King of love his table spreads. And the humblest meal becomes—Breakfast with Peter!
Therefore Christian people, as we work and fight, play and pray this week, let us resist with joy all that cheapens life, all that dishonors God, all that mistakes our ordinary sin for the extraordinary love, power, mercy and grace of God.
New Beginnings
Real change is real hard but it happens in real time when real people in real ways really work at it. Or, at least, that is the good news of John 21, a late addition to a late edition of the fourth gospel, and its menu of freedom over Breakfast with Peter.
Take a look at the soteriology next door. You may be at a point where a different chapter or a different verse may bring healing. You have been raised Roman Catholic and left the church, but now seek elsewhere a measure of meaning, belonging and community as your faith develops. You are looking toward a soteriology next door, a way of salvation next door, a religious perspective and posture next door, a healing next door. You may have been raised an evangelical and left that church, but now seek elsewhere a measure of meaning, belonging and community as your faith develops. You are looking toward a soteriology next door, a way of salvation next door, a religious perspective and posture next door, a healing next door. You may have been raised in a mainline church but having left that fold now seek elsewhere a measure of meaning, belonging and community as your faith develops. You are looking toward a soteriology next door, a way of salvation next door, a religious perspective and posture next door, a healing next door. Good for you. Find your way forward. Sometimes a new look at salvation, for a new need in life, is the very gospel. John 21, if nothing else, gives biblical currency to such courageous change on your part. We are with you, and we are for you, as you walk up the steps to another house within the lasting, loving neighborhood of salvation. There are many faithful ways of keeping faith.
Hear the good news that forgiveness is about the future, not the past. Stephen Bauman reminded me of this last week. The past is finished, and unchangeable. There is no changing what has happened. We may revisit, by memory travel, and we may relearn by historical excavation, but the past is what it is. Done. Forgiveness is not about the past. That is what the church discovered at Easter. Easter is not about Mary’s misunderstanding, nor about Thomas’s doubt, nor about the disciples’ fear, nor about the worst of horror, the cross. All that is set, forever, in the past. Forgiveness opens the future. Forgiveness does not change the past, but opens up a new future, a free future, a joyful future, in spite of the past. That is what makes Easter such a miracle. That is what makes Peter fit company at breakfast. He is good company over the fish. He has a new life, a new open future. He has a new future, in spite of, in spite of, in spite of, the past. Hear the good news that forgiveness is about the future, not about the past.
Reclaim the power of conversation in a cyber held world. Would that we could, including breakfast, understand the power and lasting meaning of fellowship at tables. Our bodily nourishment requires this pause, this consumption, this energy. Our spiritual nourishment requires the words spoken and heard during this pause, this consumption, this energy. If you have been recently, around a convivial meal, around a conversational table, around a gathered companionship—well, you know. Friendship is conversation. Love is conversation. Marriage is conversation. Community, real communion, community, real consanguinity, is mightily and in some ways totally conversation. So the disciples are around a fire, charcoal fire, eating breakfast, 153 fish, with a restored leader, Peter. If you are not indulging in at least one decent conversational meal a day you are missing the mark. Fast food is real, but not fast conversation. Reclaim the power of conversation in a cyber held world.
Feel free to shake the dust from your employment feet and find another job. You know, now that the economy is a little better, at least for some, it is a little easier to say what needs saying in any case at any time. You have one life to live. You need to make a living, but you need to make a living in a way that makes a life. If what you are doing with your body is killing your soul, it is time to quit. There are sixty ways to leave your employer, as Paul Simon said, sort of. Make a little plan, Stan. Easter breakfast with Peter is just the time to converse about this, in a forgiving mode, in light of the soteriology next door.
Real change is real hard but it happens in real time when real people in real ways really work at it. Or, at least, that is the good news of John 21, a late addition to a late edition of the fourth gospel, and its menu of freedom over Breakfast with Peter.
– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.
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