During the Easter season, we hear so many stories about the resurrected Jesus. Descriptions of his risen body alternate between a sense of mystery, even eeriness, and a remarkable sense of the ordinary, a “hominess.” Jesus first appears to Mary Magdalene and she thinks he’s the gardener. The disciples who meet him on the road to Emmaus think he’s simply another traveler.
The disciples in the “upper room,” however, think he’s a ghost because he walks in without using the door. John’s Gospel points out that the doors were definitely closed. The apostles were alarmed and frightened, so Jesus compassionately reassures them by letting them touch his body, saying, “A ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.” Then he does something utterly ordinary, but extraordinary under the circumstances: he asks them for food and eats a piece of grilled fish.
Bright Fish Friday
I go a little crazy with excitement every time the Gospels mention homey details about Jesus: he ate, he slept (in a boat during a storm on the Sea of Galilee, he spit (to make mud paste to put on a blind man’s eyes and cure him), he wept (over the death of his dear friend Lazarus). But this humanity of Jesus, the “Word Made Flesh” as we call him, astounds me even more in the stories we tell about the Resurrection, especially on the Friday after Easter. The Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition calls this day “Bright Friday.”
For decades I’ve called this “Fish Friday” and celebrated a special ritual by cooking “fish on the beach.” It was best at our monastery in Nova Scotia, Canada, because the beach was on a fresh water lake like the Sea of Galilee. At our monastery in Ireland, we cooked the fish by the saltwater seas of the cold North Atlantic. I’ve even kept the tradition alive in Colorado and Arizona, though it’s not quite the same grilling fish in the middle of a dry land-locked desert. Why “Fish Friday” on “Bright Friday?”
The Gospel for this day is my favorite Jesus story, told by the disciple John. It’s full of concrete details only someone who was there can tell. Simon Peter says, “I’m going fishing.” As soon as I hear this line, my heart starts to pound in anticipation of what’s about to happen. The other disciples say, “We’ll come with you.” They catch nothing all night long. At dawn they see a figure on the shore. He tells them where to drop their nets, and they catch 153 fish. The story is so clear about the exact number, and this delights me. John recognizes the man on the beach as Jesus. Peter has been fishing naked and is so discombobulated, he puts his clothes back on before he jumps into the water and eagerly swims to shore.
Come, Have Breakfast
Jesus is cooking fish on a charcoal fire and warming some bread. This is the third time he shows himself to the disciples after the Resurrection. And what does he say to them? “Come and have breakfast.” The simplicity of this act undoes me.
Here is our Jesus, the God-man, risen from the dead. He has burst out of the tomb in something supposedly akin to an electrical storm, an earthquake, or even an atomic explosion. Wouldn’t you think he’d follow this with something spectacular? Instead, he builds a fire on the beach, cooks fish, and invites us to breakfast! The Chicago poet John Shea calls this crucified-risen Jesus “a cook with holes in his hands.”
Jesus was born from the tomb as he was born from the womb. After his miraculous rebirth at Easter, he behaves much the same way he did after his miraculous birth at Christmas: in simple, ordinary, human ways. As Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk upon the earth.”
Old Simplicities
During the Advent-Christmas season, I read a A Woman Wrapped in Silence by John Lynch. This is my favorite passage, and I also love to meditate on it after Easter and imagine how Jesus appears in his risen body:
His way with [us] has been to take [our] way,
And that’s the glory and the scandal both…
O, not the thunders and the lifted gates
He chose, and not exotic retinue
To bring Him flaming through the breathless towns…not this,
But briefest pausing in the pulse of life,
With all our old simplicities unmarred,
With no rejections of the flesh we bear,
The hearts we love with, and the pain we know.
He slept our sleep, and with us dreamed our dreams.
“He slept our sleep,” in this case, the sleep of death. “And with us dreamed our dreams,” in this case, the dream of life. “Briefest pausing in the pulse of life,” a short forty days among us between Easter and his Ascension into heaven. “With no rejections of the flesh we bear,” a God-man who suffered death as we do, a “cook with holes in his hands” who invites us to put our fingers into those flesh wounds and believe it is he. “With all our old simplicities unmarred,” the simplicities of bread and fish, a charcoal fire, the beach, and the remarkably intimate and simple invitation, “Come and have breakfast” – with me.
In the company of Doubting Thomas, who did not believe in the Resurrection until he had touched the wounds of Jesus, we cry out in awe and gratitude, “My Lord and my God.” Then we break bread with him and enjoy the fish he has cooked for us with his own wounded hands.
A Celtic Blessing
I also love this Celtic Easter Blessing which refers to all the encounters with Jesus after the Resurrection. I rewrote the last verse to tell my version of the story of “fish on the beach.”
The Lord of the empty tomb
The conqueror of gloom
Come to you.
The Lord in the garden walking
The Lord to Mary talking
Come to you.
The Lord in the Upper Room
Dispelling fear and doom
Come to you.
The Lord on the road to Emmaus
The Lord giving hope to Thomas
Come to you.
The Lord on the beach grilling
Breakfast, fish – a willing
Cook for you.
Who cooks for you?
God cooks for you!
Tessa, the writings are contemplative and meditative. I love Via Saguaro and found your visios of the Saguaro earthy, speaking of the Passion of Jesus and in my own life.