I ask you to spend just a few moments contemplating the setting. God has become flesh and dwelt among His creation. He has temporarily lain aside the independent exercise of His divine attributes and become entirely dependent upon and obedient to the Father, in all things. He has taught His apostles and the people of Galilee and Judea and other regions, even across the Jordan, about the Kingdom of God. He has performed miracles. Healings, exorcisms, demonstrations of authority over time and nature. He has constantly astounded the religious elite in their hypocrisy, by answering their challenges and coming out on top in every case. In humility and obedience He has gone to Calvary’s cross, poured out His blood and died to pay the penalty for sin, for all. Now He has risen bodily from the tomb in defeat of death and the grave, and one by one, two by two, appeared to those who have loved Him, and given them assurance that not many days hence they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
So what do we expect from this ‘super being’? This God-Man? This One who is declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead? I mean, how do you top all that? Any normal man who committed some fantastically courageous (or miraculous - if possible) act would, if he was wise, just bow out before he says or does something to ruin the moment and cause people to realize he’s still just a man. Maybe that’s why the cowboys always ride off into the sunset. Git, whilst the gittin’s good! Always leave them asking, “Who was that masked man?”
Now here we are at John chapter 21. Peter (the coward), Thomas (the doubter), Nathaniel, and the two boys who had thought they could drink the cup with Him, James and John; and two unnamed disciples (21:2), have gone back to their fishing.
And the risen, glorified, Lord of the universe, appears on the shore to cook them breakfast.
Doesn’t that just say it all? Whatever your concept of God is; however you tend to react to Him either in conscious or unconscious thought, hold it up to the light of what you see here, and let this picture shape your thinking of Him. He cooked them breakfast!
Have you sinned? Does your past haunt you? Are you riddled with the bullets of guilt and rejection and failure and personal shame? Are you beaten and abused and weak and tired? Are you aging and disenchanted and longing and lonely? Look toward the shore. The Lion of the tribe of Judah; the One who went down into death and conquered it; the One whose voice the wind and the waves still obey; the glorious, risen, Lord of all ~ wants to serve you breakfast. He’ll feed and strengthen you, and assure you, and accept you, and give you purpose, and then promise to be with you always. He is risen, to give you life. Look shoreward. Bread and fish upon the fire, prepared by a nail-scarred hand. Are you hungry?
