John 21.9-19
I wonder what breakfast is like in your household. Is it a leisurely affair with coffee, bacon and the newspapers? A noisy tangle of bodies grabbing for the Coco Pops? A quick cereal bar snatched from the cupboard as you race out of the door? Often, the way we start our day sets the tone for what follows.
Today’s reading describes Jesus’ approach to breakfast. It’s one of the handful of times that he appeared to his disciples between his death and ascension. In these precious moments, Jesus has important things to say to them. But not before they’ve eaten. Ever the servant king, he prepares a fire and cooks them some fish to eat. As he has shown with several culinary miracles already, Jesus provides his followers with their daily bread physically as well as spiritually.
Here, when he meets them on the beach, he wants to make sure that they’re ready for what is coming next – and no one is at their best on an empty stomach. Spurgeon puts it like this: ‘Much had to be said and done; but they must breakfast first. They were to be questioned, rebuked, instructed, commissioned, warned; but they must first be fed. […] Things that were of prime importance must yet be kept back a little while, until they could bear them and profit by them.’
So the first thing Jesus says to his dearest friends is, ‘Come and eat.’ So it is with us. Jesus wants us to recline at the table with him, to be nourished and filled. To taste and see that he is good (Psalm 34.8). This is the crucial starting point, both for the disciplines and for us. Spurgeon continues, ‘Many things call for your earnest attention; but it will be poor haste if you rush to work without refreshing the inner man. Pause a while, and feast with your Lord, in order that you may be able to attend to your pressing duties.’
It is only once they have eaten that Jesus moves on to the serious business. Peter, once again warming himself before a fire, may already have been recalling his triple denial of his friend and rabbi. So when Jesus himself asks him the same question three times, it stings. But notice that the question is not, ‘Do you repent?’ It is, ‘Do you love me?’
This, too, is the most important question that faces us as Christians. Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind? This is not the same thing as loving him perfectly. Peter knows this only too well. It means loving him ‘with the best love of which he, a sinful human being, is capable’ (James Boice). But it is only from this love that obedience flows. This is what allows Peter to stop looking backwards at his past failures and instead to look forward to the task that Jesus has for him.
And it is once Peter has declared his love that Jesus reveals what this task is: ‘Feed my sheep.’ Just as I have fed you, says the Shepherd King, go and do the same for my flock. Love others as you love yourselves. This is, after all, how people will know that you are my disciples (John 13.34-35).
N. T. Wright explains that Jesus’ words of commissioning to Peter are also words to us. ‘Here is the secret of all Christian ministry […] If you are going to do any single solitary thing as a follower and servant of Jesus, this is what it’s built on. Somewhere, deep down inside, there is a love for Jesus, and though (goodness knows) you’ve let him down enough times, he wants to find that love, to give you a chance to express it, to heal the hurts and failures of the past, and give you new work to do.’
This meal on the beach, then, comes at the start of a new day for Peter. He must learn what it means to be the disciple of a resurrected Lord. Jesus shows him that it starts with something as ordinary as breakfast. ‘Come and eat,’ he says, and be filled. ‘Do you love me?’ he asks, for that is all I require of you. ‘Feed my sheep,’ he instructs, for this is the overflow of our love for each other. ‘Follow me,’ he summarises – a call that we too can hear as we reach for our toast and marmalade.
Risen Lord Jesus,
We love you. Thank you that you welcome sinners such as us to sit and eat with you. Help us to remember amid the rush of our busy lives to take the time to feast with you and be refreshed. Thank you that your grace is new every morning – that even when we fail you, you offer us forgiveness and continue to trust us to act as your hands and feet in the world. Fill us with your love that we might follow you in caring for your sheep.
Amen