Come and Have Breakfast
Sermon by Seminarian Adam Groenke on the Fourth Sunday in Easter + Sunday, May 4, 2025
Come and have breakfast. Christ is Risen! I remember when I was younger Easter was a little bit confusing. As Lent would progress, it seemed like we were waiting for something big to happen, something that would change the way we live our lives forever. It almost felt like we were little caterpillars in our cocoons, waiting to transform. And Easter was always this big turning point, a huge celebration, the culmination of even more than we ever could have hoped for. Jesus did die on Good Friday, but then he rose again on Resurrection Sunday. Alleluia! But now what? After a few years of actually paying attention in church I realized that Jesus was gonna die and rise again next year too, and we would await and mourn and celebrate just the same. As the years went on it didn’t always feel like this amazing transformation. I always had to go back to school later that week. Seemed to me like things just went back to normal.
Turns out the disciples had a similar experience after the OG resurrection. For days the disciples locked themselves in a room, mourning and grieving the brutal death of their friend and teacher at the hands of an unjust, oppressive empire. Then their friend appears to them in flesh and blood, not dead but living and breathing, breathing the Holy Spirit upon them, and greets them: “Peace be with you” Can you imagine what the disciples must have felt in their bodies at that moment? What would that have been like? I imagine it was something akin to what I felt when the lights came on and the music began playing at our Easter Vigil service this year. It was like Wow! Christ is here! And He is Risen! A powerful moment indeed. So after this very powerful and transformative event, guess what the disciples did next?
They went back to their jobs. Nobody gave them Easter Monday off, so they grabbed their fishing nets and got back into the boats. There’s still fish to catch, and they still have to make a living. So now they find themselves right where they were when Jesus first found them, years ago. And the Empire that oppresses them and killed Jesus? It’s still there, too. It seems like nothing changed.
So… Jesus shows up one more time. Why? To have brunch with them. That’s it, that’s the story. Jesus comes back from the dead to help them catch some fish after a long night’s work, then they cook the food, eat it together, and hang out on the beach. This is actually one of my favorite scenes in the Bible because it gives us a feeling of God’s love in a very real, embodied way. God loved creation so much that God became flesh in Jesus Christ, became a human just like you and me, and in living in and among us you know what Jesus discovered he loved to do? He loved cooking and eating a meal with his friends. And on the night of the Last Supper, he knew that he would die soon, that this would be his last meal with his friends; I bet he cherished it so much.
I’m so grateful to have gotten to cherish that same meal with you all every week in these last 8 months, to at this table share in the body and blood of our friend and our redeemer Jesus Christ, who even after his friends denied, betrayed, and left him to die at the hands of empire, he still comes back to them saying “Come and have breakfast”. Jesus loves us so much that he rises again just so he can have one more meal with us. That meal, our communion, our breakfasts, are where we build relationships, where we build community. They are liberative. They are resistance. Empire did not defeat Christ, and it won’t defeat us. Christ’s resurrection proves that wherever oppression and injustice is, Christ is there to resist it, to liberate the oppressed. We are the body of Christ, and Christ is alive and well in each and every one of us, when we come together to eat, to hang out, to love, and to resist, to be the living communal embodiment of that resistance wherever there is oppression. That is how the resurrection transforms us all into Easter People, that is how our lives are changed forever by the power of God’s liberative love.
This story ends with Jesus telling Peter 3 times “feed my lambs”. Remember Peter was the one who denied Jesus 3 times, the night he was betrayed, the night of his last meal with his friends before his death. Now Jesus is back, sharing just one more meal with his friends, and he charges Peter to do what Jesus has done throughout his whole life, his whole ministry: go out and feed people, build relationships, build community, resist empire and liberate the oppressed. We are charged with the same. There are bodies who do not have homes to cook food in, and bodies who have been fighting to keep their homes for a long time. Bodies who don’t have a community to cook and eat with, and bodies who are too lonely or afraid to go out seeking that community. Bodies who desperately want to be in relationship but do not feel safe or welcome at the table. Bodies who are denied a job, a way to make a living. There are bodies who have never known that joy that comes in the morning, as our psalm today says. Bodies that have forgotten or have never known what its like to eat breakfast with their friends. These are our bodies, Christ’s body. The body of Christ is vast, and yet always intimately connected, feeling deeply one another’s sorrows and joys, our Good Fridays and our Resurrection Sundays, if only we pause and pay attention. People’s bodies are hungry for food, hungry for justice, hungry for love. Jesus tells us what to say to them: “Come and Have Breakfast”