The Gospel Makes Breakfast

This post is part of a series looking at moments where Jesus shows us what the gospel is actually about.

A swing opened up on the playground, the one I'd been waiting for, and another kid got to it first. For a second grader, this is a top 5 atrocity that could occur. I was devastated.

In my anger and frustration, I called him a vile, cruel name: “dork.” Not even out loud too. I said it under my breath, and I thought no one heard. To this day I have no idea who, but someone had heard and told my teacher.

At the end of the day, my teacher handed me a letter. It told of the crime I committed. It said I called another boy a dork, and how disappointing that was to my teacher. It needed a parent signature, due back the next morning.

My mom worked at the school I attended. I slipped the letter in my backpack, and didn’t say a word the whole way home. After dinner that night, I couldn’t take the guilt and shame anymore. The time of my reckoning had come.

I handed mom the letter, and expected the worst. I was already crying, bracing for whatever punishment was to come.

She read it. And laughed.

Not at me, but at the letter. At "dork." At the gap between what I'd done and how certain I was that my life was over because of it. She pulled me in anyway, guilt and tears and all, and none of it was the reckoning I'd spent all afternoon preparing for.

I didn't know that yet, driving home with that letter in my backpack. All I knew was the dread. All I knew was what I assumed was waiting for me.

We do this with more than letters home. Underneath so much of our avoidance is an assumption we rarely say out loud: that the people we've let down are still angry. Still disappointed. Still holding the version of us that failed them, unwilling to see past it. We assume the worst reaction is waiting on the other side of the conversation, so we brace for it, or we skip the conversation altogether.

You aren't the first to feel this, and you definitely won't be the last. In fact, Peter felt it too.

Just days earlier, in a courtyard outside the night time trial that would end in Jesus's crucifixion, Peter had been asked three times if he knew Jesus. And three times, scared and self-protective, he said no. This was just as Jesus had predicted hours earlier. Luke tells us Jesus turned and looked right at Peter in that exact moment. Peter went out and wept bitterly.

Then Jesus died. And rose. And started appearing to the disciples, more than once, according to John's account. But Peter still hadn't faced him one on one. Not since the courtyard.

When the moment came to decide what to do next, Peter didn't go looking for Jesus. He went fishing.

“‘I’m going out to fish,’ Simon Peter told them, and they said, ‘We’ll go with you.’ So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.” (John 21:3)

They fished all night with nothing to show for it. The same boat, the same water, maybe even the same nets he'd used before any of this started. Before the calling. Before three years of watching Jesus do things no one else could. Before the promise that he'd never fall away, made just hours before he did exactly that.

Fishing was supposed to be safe. It was who Peter was before he became someone who could fail Jesus this badly. If he couldn't be a disciple anymore, at least he still knew how to be a fisherman.

Except even that didn't go the way he needed it to.

Early that morning, a man called out from the shore, asking if they'd caught anything. They hadn't. He told them to try the other side of the boat. Which is likely the last thing they wanted: advice. But when they did, the net came up so full they could barely haul it in.

That's when John knew, and said. "It is the Lord."

And Peter, still impulsive as ever, didn't wait for the boat to get back to shore. He jumped in and swam to shore. Toward the person he'd been avoiding since the courtyard. It is safe to assume he expected his reckoning, but the scene at the beach was unexpected:

When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish you have just caught." (John 21:9-10)

Jesus was already cooking. Before Peter swam a single stroke toward him. Before any explanation was offered, any apology attempted, any of the guilt Peter must have been carrying got named out loud. Breakfast was already going.

When Peter expected condemnation, He received breakfast.

Paul names this in Romans 5:6-8:

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8)

While we were still sinners. Not after we cleaned up. Not once we'd proven we deserved it. To take it back to Peter: while Peter was still mid-denial. The fire on the beach wasn't a reward for good behavior. It was already burning before Peter had done a single thing to earn it, because that's not how Jesus operates.

We tend to think grace is something we qualify for after we've shown adequate remorse. But Peter's story, and Paul's words, say otherwise. The remorse was real. The grace came first anyway.

After breakfast, Jesus turns to Peter directly. Not with an accusation. With a question.

“‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’ Again Jesus said, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’The third time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep’.” (John 21:15-17)

Jesus mirrors Peter’s three denials with three questions. And with each answer, the denial is undone. Jesus doesn't mention the courtyard. He doesn't need to. Peter feels the number without being told what it means.

This isn't an interrogation. It's restoration. He could have just declared Peter forgiven and moved on. Instead he asks, three times, giving Peter the chance to say the truth back to him, out loud, as many times as he'd once denied it.

Notice what Jesus doesn't say. He doesn't say "I forgive you" and leave it there. He doesn't say "we're good" and send Peter back to fishing. Each answer gets a job attached to it. “Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep.”

Peter didn't just get his relationship with Jesus back. He got his calling back too, the same calling, still standing, like the denial had never happened.

Sometimes we approach Jesus like He is any other person we interact with. We assume He’ll hold a grudge, believing that he might forgive, but He won’t want to use us anymore. But Peter's story says otherwise. The same man who couldn't say "I know him" to a servant girl has His calling restored and His purpose affirmed.

When I handed my mom the dork letter, I assumed I would be disowned. Peter felt the same when swimming back to Jesus. Yet we both experienced the beauty of grace, where wrongs are not held against us. And more than that, the relationship never changed.

I wonder how much of my life I’ve spent bracing the same way. Assuming God, or the people who love me, are keeping score the way I likely would if the roles were reversed. Assuming forgiveness has a ceiling, and once you've spent it, you're just tolerated instead of wanted.

Peter got breakfast before he got a word out. He got his name called three times, not as an accusation, but as an invitation to say the truth out loud and be trusted with something real on the other side of it.

I don't think the invitation was just for him. Jesus is waiting for us too. Not with shame. Not with condemnation. With radical love. And with breakfast. That is the gospel.

We don't have to avoid Jesus the way I avoided handing over that letter. Dread doesn’t have to keep us at a distance. The fire's already going. It always was.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you.

Philip