Come and Have Breakfast

Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

The [risen Christ] said to the disciples, “Come and have breakfast.”

It’s easy to think of the resurrection of Jesus as good news for Jesus – yes, he suffered for a time, but then God fixed everything. And perhaps we hope for a similar resurrection for ourselves – yes, we suffer here for a time, but in the hope that one day God will fix everything and we will be all right.

But what is it like for us, on this side of death, to experience the presence of someone who has already been raised from the dead? What is it like for us, already, even now, to be touched by resurrection? Not as a future hope – one day it will all work out and everything will be great – but as a present reality?

Our reading today from the book of Revelation gives us a picture of what resurrection life will look like one day – all of creation full of life and joy singing songs of praise to the One whose life and joy makes creation possible.  But our other two readings tell us stories of people who met the risen Christ and what that experience was like, and how it changed them.  First, the story of Saul who meets the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and becomes Paul.  Then, the story of Simon son of John, also known as Peter the Rock, who with six of his friends encountered Jesus at breakfast one morning on the beach.

For Paul, his initial experience of the resurrected Jesus was as a blinding light that knocked him to the ground and left him helpless and blind. For Peter, his initial experience of the resurrected Jesus was in the net full of an enormous number of fish, more than he and his friends could handle. So we might think that meeting the risen Christ is to hear his words of judgment – You have been persecuting me – or to discover blessings beyond our wildest expectations – and there is some truth to both. But both stories go on to tell us a lot more about what experiencing resurrection really looks like.

For Paul, when he was still Saul, the early Jesus movement was a dangerous and threatening heresy. He’s already participated in the killing of at least one disciple of Jesus, the deacon Stephen, and now he is going from town to town looking for followers of Jesus, to arrest them and send them to Jerusalem, presumably to meet the same fate as Stephen. Saul is, so he thinks, on a mission from God to purify the community by getting rid of all the misguided people who think Jesus is risen from the dead. This Saul would have been very much at home in the days of the Crusades or the religious wars, and maybe even in a lot of churches today.

The followers of Jesus in these towns had heard Saul was coming and they were hiding from Saul, and for good reason. Then Jesus comes to Saul, but Jesus also comes to Ananias, a Christian in Damascus, part of the community that’s hiding from Saul. I want you to go to Saul and lay hands on him. To which Ananias says, Um, Lord, is that really a good idea? I’ve heard about this guy, and why he’s here, and I’m really trying to avoid meeting him, if you know what I mean. But if you have come to believe in a God who raises the dead, then you know anything is possible.

Saul is sitting there, stunned, blind, trying to understand the voice that he had heard and what had happened to him. With way more questions than answers. And in walks Ananias, one of the names on his list. And Ananias calls him Brother. Ananias and Saul both know that Saul came to Damascus to arrest and kill Ananias, but Ananias says, Jesus told me to help you, and that makes you my brother. And I think that’s when Saul really experiences resurrection. Not just as a judgment on what he used to think was his mission from God, but as the possibility of an entirely different way of life. Scales fall from his eyes. And then Ananias gives Saul food. Come on, you need to get back your strength. And as they share breakfast together, resurrection becomes a reality in the connection being made over two former enemies breaking bread together.

And then Saul becomes Paul. Paul who will teach the Christians of Rome, and Corinth, and Galatia, and through his letters to those churches continues to teach us today, that if you have risen from the dead with Jesus, then you have been reconciled to God and to each other. No matter what differences there may be (Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, gay and straight, Democrat and Republican, we could go on), no matter what offenses you have given to each other, your life together in community now, the bread and cup you share together at the table, your community with each other is the presence of resurrection where anything is possible.

The risen Jesus also comes to Peter, and part of the message Peter hears is a silent word of judgment against Peter’s denial. He finds Jesus cooking breakfast on a charcoal fire – and Peter remembers, as John 18:18 attests, that when he had denied Jesus and loudly proclaimed that there was no way he was a follower of Jesus, he had been standing outside the building where Jesus was on trial, warming himself beside, a charcoal fire. Jesus asks Peter Do you live me, three times, and Jesus doesn’t have to say why he asks three times – Peter gets it, and he’s wounded, he feels his shame.

Yet Jesus does not come there to shame Peter, but to cook him breakfast. Then Jesus calls Peter to do what Jesus did … to tend the sheep, the way the Good Shepherd does; to let himself be led away as Jesus himself was led away; to live as Jesus did with confidence in the reality of resurrection.

Ultimately, this is what resurrection looks like on this side of heaven: not so much the blinding light, but the welcome of a stranger willing to risk everything to feed you. Not so much the net full of fish, but the host who cooks it for you and calls you to stand up to the powers of fear and death and tend to the sheep just as he does.

And it’s no coincidence that, in both stories, resurrection is found in a shared meal. In a community of people that would not have chosen to be with each other except for our common faith in the One who invites us here. From this table where we gather this morning, may we be changed as Saul was changed into Paul, as Simon the son of John was changed into Peter, may we learn to live resurrection life.