The long coda to the Gospel of John—the “barbeque on the beach” story—strikes me as a strange and lovely denouement after all the excitement of Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearances. The disciples’ risen teacher has appeared to them, suddenly and mysteriously, a couple times. But now … what?
Now the disciples are living in a bewildering in-between time. After Jesus’ appearances, they are left with only the vaguest instructions and no particular timeline—the world must have seemed surreal to them, off-kilter.
So Peter decides to do something he knows, something familiar: he goes fishing. A few of the others, probably stumped for what else to do, go along. They fish all night and catch nothing. They’re tired, hungry. Dawn is breaking. They head in.
And then someone appears, shouting from the shore, with fishing advice: Throw your nets on the other side! Well, why not? One more try. And they find: overwhelming abundance. Then the figure says: Come, have some breakfast!
The disciples know immediately who this person must be.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst.
It seems like a joyful story—and it is—but I don’t want to rush over that point just before they catch the fish and sit down to eat. After the whirlwind three years, the nightmare of the crucifixion, the thrilling appearances, what did it feel like to go back to fishing? Had the world changed or not? They were left with emptiness again. Hunger. Futility. What did that feel like?
I wonder what you are hungering and thirsting and longing for right now. Are you feeling a sense of futility? Yes, we believe in a risen Lord. But we are also living in a time of polycrisis, both chronic and acute. The world seems in-between, bewildering, surreal.
Are you feeling your longings keenly, as I am?
I am hungering for truth-speakers amid a swirl of lies.
I am thirsting for justice and for the rule of law to stand in defense of constitutional and basic human rights.
I am hungering for integrity, kindness, safety, and care for the common good.
I am thirsting for beauty and gentleness in a world of ugly evil.
I am longing for the healing of the earth amid the growing reality of the climate crisis.
I am longing for relief and peace, for that vision of shalom at the heart of God’s redemption plan for this whole creation.
But when it comes to satisfying such longings, do you feel as if you cannot muster whatever is required to create the peace and healing we need? It’s all just too big and too difficult. Even when our own day-to-day life might be more or less OK, when it comes to fixing the world, we are small, and we are broke. Jesus is risen, but we have been fishing all night, and… nothing. At least it sometimes seems that way.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
The Bible is, from one angle, a book of longing. So many images of hunger and thirst and God’s provision in answer to them: manna in the wilderness, water from the rock, the green pastures and still waters, the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus as Living Water and Bread of Life.
But amazingly, we poor creatures are not the only ones filled with longing. Evidently, God is longing, too. You know the passage from Isaiah 55: “Come, everyone who thirsts. Come to the waters, come buy without money and eat.” The passage is packed with imperative verb forms: come, listen, give ear, seek the Lord. The imperatives are not so much demands as love songs. God is longing for Israel to return to the God who loves them. God calls, ardently, for reunion. He promises abundant and delightful provision: for free. Even amid their exile. That is the whole story of salvation.
In light of this, I wonder why Jesus shows up on the beach that morning at dawn. Perhaps Jesus is longing for fellowship with his friends, with these often clueless fellas who tramped around with him for years. And Jesus is apparently hungry, too. I love the little detail that Jesus already has breakfast cooking on the beach. He’s got some fish and bread ready, but he invites the disciples to contribute to the menu out of their miraculous, enormous catch of precisely 153 fish. What they don’t eat now they can sell, presumably, for cash money. They have received sudden, surprise abundance.
Jesus shows up, then, in answer to the frustrations and hungers of the disciples. He satisfies their needs in ways they could not engineer or pay for or even imagine. Only after this does Jesus invite Peter into that tender ritual of reconciliation. Peter had betrayed Jesus, but now Jesus asks: “Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? OK, feed my lambs, take care of my sheep, feed my sheep.” You have been fed by me; now feed others who also hunger and thirst.
Jesus’ instructions to Peter have always been taken as a call to the church: go out there and feed lambs now, people. As Dan Meeter reminded us recently, this does not mean “build the kingdom.” We don’t build the kingdom. Instead, all we can do is respond, hungry and thirsty and frustrated, to the kind invitation of Jesus. We receive fellowship and sustenance, free of charge. Enough to keep us going for a bit so that we can offer fellowship and sustenance to others. In this way, we witness to the kingdom—or kin-dom, if you like—that Christ has promised to bring to fulfillment. Christ is reconciling all things to himself.
Even if we build various systems and institutions to help us do that lamb-feeding work, every day is still, in essence, an exercise in coming to the beach needy and longing and empty, and finding that Jesus is already there, coals ready, showing us how to find abundance in ways we could not possibly rustle up ourselves. We have no strength to feed others until Jesus feeds us first.
I wish it were easier. I wish I didn’t wonder so often why, even after Jesus has risen, we still feel stuck in frustration and longing. Evil still seems so powerful and overwhelming. Has the world begun anew or not? If Jesus provides abundantly more than we can ask or imagine, then why does it feel as if we still have so far to go?
I don’t know. All I know how to do is look for that daily sustenance and try to stay focused on our task. Receive our sustenance and pass it along to feed others, and say, as we pass the bread, “Here is the kingdom. Look! God longs to make it real among us. Take and eat. There is enough.”
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Image credit: outerbanks.org
