Breakfast, Anyone?

John 21:1-19
Third Sunday of Easter 2010

Nutritionists tell us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Not “breaking” your overnight “fast” but continuing it into your work day or your school day or your day off is a recipe for mental and physical disaster. Breaking your fast with a healthy breakfast—or not—affects your energy level, your concentration, your focus, your thinking, your problem-solving and your mood, not only until lunch but for the entire day. Would you believe that people who skip breakfast are more susceptible to weight gain than people who eat a healthy breakfast regularly? Studies have shown that “children who regularly ate breakfast had better standardized test scores, better behavior, and were less hyperactive than children who skipped breakfast” (http://nutrition.about.com/od/nutritionforchildren/a/dietandlearning.htm). If you feel yourself going like this right about now, chances are, you skipped breakfast—or you did the donut thing and the “sugar high” is wearing off. It turns out that Jesus’ words in John 21:12, “Come and have breakfast,” have been empirically validated as among the wisest words in all of Scripture. Breakfast, anyone?

It was only ten days ago that several hundred of us gathered in this room on Maundy Thursday to commemorate the Last Supper and the entirety of Jesus’ passion. This morning we commemorate the “last breakfast.” It was a simple affair. Some fish, fresh from the night’s catch, and bread freshly baked by an open fire. One of the favorite cookbooks in our house was published in 1984 in Jackson, MS. In August of that year, Presidential nominee Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman candidate for vice president, paid a visit to a farm in rural Hinds County, MS. Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Jim Buck Ross was talking with Ferraro about new crops in the state, and he mentioned blueberries. Ferraro said, “I grow those.” Ross responded, “Do you? Can you make a blueberry muffin?” “Sure can. Can you?” Ferraro answered. To which Ross responded in a sentence heard round the campaign world, “Down here, men don’t cook.” Thanks to the brouhaha in the press created by that conversation, we have the Down Here, Men Don’t Cook cookbook full of wonderful recipes by Mississippi men. And can the men of Mississippi ever cook! At least some of them can.

We don’t have Jesus’ recipe for the bread or for the fish, either one; but there he is in John 21, cooking on an open fire early in the morning and calling to his errant disciples, “Come and have breakfast!” But what I’d like you to see in this morning’s gospel lesson that is at least as important as the wisdom of good nutrition and the folly of gender stereotyping is the invitation of the Risen Lord to you to break your fast. The disciples to whom Jesus called that morning as dawn was breaking had been called away from their boats and their nets years before. “Come, follow me,” Jesus had said to them, “and I will make you fishers for people” (Mark 1:17; Matthew 4:19). And so they left their boats and their nets and their homes and their families, and they followed. But things had not turned out as they expected. None of them could have known the road that was ahead of them when they responded in faith to Jesus’ call. None of us ever does. So when their expectations were confounded and their hopes were dashed and their faith was confused and their trust became doubt, they did the only thing they knew to do, and that was to go back to what they were doing before they ever met Jesus, before they ever heard his call.

It happens to all of us sooner or later. Expectations are confounded. Hopes are dashed. Faith is confused. Trust becomes doubt. All of us have our own spiritual equivalent of chucking it all and going fishing. That’s when we find ourselves in a spiritual fast, a spiritual desert, a spiritual no-man’s land, lost and alone and alienated from God and from our calling to be who God has created us to be. When you find yourself “at sea,” fishing around in your spiritual life and catching nothing, keep your eye on the shoreline. Because sooner or later, dawn will break, and you will see on the shore the glow of a small fire and the movement of a figure there whom you will not even recognize but who will call you to breakfast nevertheless. Because even when you are running from Christ and running from Christ’s call, Christ keeps coming to you and inviting you to break your fast, inviting you to fill your emptiness and satisfy your hunger. “Come and have breakfast,” Jesus says.

As it was in this morning’s gospel lesson, the breakfast table is set for Jesus’ followers again, albeit in a very different place in a very different way. But the invitation and the message of the Risen Christ this morning is the same as it was that morning long ago: “Break your fast!” Whenever your expectations are confounded, your hopes are dashed, your faith is confused, and your trust becomes doubt, you are always invited to fill your emptiness and satisfy your deepest hunger at the table that Christ has provided. Breakfast, anyone?


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers10@bellsouth.net.