Easter Poems – Breakfast with Jesus (39)

Photo: Maarit Lundbäck, flickr

I love this story, especially since editing, some years ago, Conrad Gempf’s excellent book, Mealtime Habits of the Messiah. In my chapter on being Easter people in Finding Myself in Britain, I quote Conrad’s excellent engagement with this biblical passage:

I love how Conrad (an American living in Britain) opens up this story. Jesus, the king of the universe, is there with his friends, “smoking ’em a few kippers for breakfast.” He doesn’t condemn them; instead he does something surprising. (Conrad Gempf, Mealtime Habits of the Messiah [Grand 
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005], 18.)

What does he do? He asks them for some of their catch. They hadn’t caught any fish all night, but one word from him and the net overflows. And yet he says that they were the ones doing the catching.

How amazing is that.