I wonder if they were hungry.
When Peter decided to go fishing that night, was it because he really needed to eat?
Or was it just that he and the others didn’t know what else they should do now that everything had changed, so they went back to the work they were used to?
John doesn’t tell us.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Doesn’t matter if they were hungry, or bored, or confused. If they were fishing to make a living, or if they were fishing that night to feed others.
Because Jesus fills their net without any question about why they were fishing.
Hungry or not, Jesus feeds them.
Feeds them too much, really.
The net of fish is unmanageable.
And almost unnecessary. While Peter and the others in the boat have no fish, Jesus already has fish on the grill, ready to feed them.
He invites them to contribute to the meal, once their net is full of his miraculous fish, but there’s no doubt that it’s Jesus doing the feeding.
He never asks if they’re hungry.
He just fills their hands with fish, summons them to the table, and then places food into their hands.
And then, later, a conversation:
Feed my sheep.
Do you love me?
Feed my sheep.
Whatever else that conversation is – a rehabilitation of Peter, or a testing, or a commissioning;
whether it’s meant for Peter as an individual, or for Peter as the representative of all disciples – it’s the most literal of metaphors.
Feed my sheep – as I feed you, feed others.
As I love you, as you love me, love others.
Feed them.
Bread and fish might be a good place to start.
Nothing about asking if someone’s hungry.
Nothing about assessing need or merit, or budgeting, or how to make the most impact.
Just “Love me? Feed them.”
Food is love.
(Not everywhere, not for everyone, but in this particular conversation, in deeply important ways, feeding others is love.)
Just like Jesus fed Peter, fed the others, that very morning, when their nets were empty, and their hearts were probably hungry, too. Like when Jesus takes Peter aside to feed his soul and self by helping Peter find the depth and strength of the love he already has for Jesus.
Just like Jesus feeds us – you, me, and people we’ve never met – feeds us, now, hungry or not.
It’s all love.
It’s worth noticing that Jesus is not asking Peter to do anything Jesus himself is not already doing.
And I don’t think that it’s just a case of “I fed you, so pass it on.” I think it’s possible, probable, that when Jesus instructs Peter (and all the other disciples then and now that Peter stands in for) to “Feed my sheep”, Jesus is inviting – commanding – Peter, us, to take part in what Jesus is actively, currently, doing. Feeding people.
Because people are hungry. People near us, people like us, people perhaps in this room, are physically hungry. Because you’re fasting before Eucharist. Or because rising grocery costs mean not quite eating enough. Because the precarious economy means having to choose, or face the choice more often, between meals and medical care, eating or electricity.
And every single one of us needs to eat food, or we will first lose ourselves (as the need of our bodies turns our reasoning, moral everyday selves into people we don’t recognize) and then our lives.
Some of us may have experienced sharp or ongoing physical hunger, the body’s uncompromising need for food. Some of us have never been truly hungry, whatever our appetite.
And sometimes, you don’t know you’re hungry until you’re fed. Offered the nourishment you deeply need, and didn’t recognize, until it was placed before you.
We all need to be fed.
And feeding people is actually a familiar activity at Trinity. Whether you bring food or gift cards to the pantry, make breakfast at St. Paul’s, make sandwiches for the Christian Caring Center or Cathedral Kitchen. Whether you bring baked goods for coffee hour or a sale, or fry sausages in the early morning with the Men’s Breakfast Group, feeding people is an important part of what we do, together.
To have someone offer you food when you are hungry – food prepared with care, with generosity, without any expectation of return – may relieve pain, restore you to yourself, free you to live fully.
To be fed heals body and spirit.
Heals even when you’re not hungry; when you’re more than capable of feeding yourself. Think about when someone brings you a fresh, home-baked treat – and it’s a sacrament of welcome, or of comfort, or friendship. When someone invites you to a meal, and it’s a sacrament of relationship, a physical experience that facilitates the deeper, spiritual, experience of friendship, acceptance, care, or opportunity.
Food is complicated, often, and for many of us.
Jesus wants to make it simpler. To help us receive and give healing and love, both when we’re hungry and when we’re not. To feed others with him, and be fed by others, with him, as acts of love.
So he meets disciples on the beach, with food.
And after telling that story together, after listening to that conversation between Peter and Jesus, after tasting a wafer of flour this morning, and remembering other stories of Jesus feeding us, you and I can’t feed people without thinking of Jesus. Of loving Jesus. Of what Jesus is already doing, for others, and for us.
Can’t eat, ourselves, without paying attention to what Jesus is doing, to Jesus’ love.
As you shop, as you volunteer; in your own kitchen or in restaurants or here – anywhere you’re feeding people and being fed – Jesus is already involved. Already feeding others, feeding you.
It’s not always as obvious as a net overflowing with unreasonably large fish, but it’s happening.
So look for the links between food and love, everywhere.
Look for Jesus providing the food we need, you need.
Look for Jesus providing the food you don’t really need, too.
Literal food, and metaphorical food.
There’s a heated conversation going on right now on social media – and probably in traditional media, too – about student loan debt. Stories and opinions about need, and merit, and fairness. People who work hard to pay off their student loans without help. People who have suffered for years with debt that starved them of opportunity, or hope, or choices, or actual food. People who haven’t “earned,” or don’t “need” relief. People who “deserve” help.
Jesus feeds them all, whether they’re hungry, or not. Whether they can feed themselves, or not. Jesus stands in a long and holy tradition, reaching back long before those years in Galilee, as God feeds people whether they “earn” it or not, commands us to feed people whether they “need” it or not.
And for most of us, that’s such good news.
Because, with Jesus, we’re free to feed others, to give of ourselves, without weighing merits and scrutinizing need, without having to know everything and judge perfectly.
Free to be fed without dissecting our own merits and deserving.
If you love me, Jesus says, love others as I have loved you. Without reservation, unearned, abundantly. Feed others as I have fed – unconditionally, with abundance and delight.
Because feeding others, with Jesus, feeds our own souls.
It’s an extraordinary gift of freedom Jesus is offering Peter, and us.
The opportunity to just give, just love, without having to count and judge, knowing that we are giving, loving, feeding others out of the bottomless well of Jesus’s own love – out of our love for Jesus, which comes from the same bottomless well as Jesus’ love for us.
To love people freely, knowing we don’t have to figure out if they deserve it.
To give joyfully, knowing the gift matters whether the receiver “needs” it or not.
To feed anyone.
And to receive all that, whether we need it or not.
To be fed with care, and welcome, whether or not we can feed ourselves.
To be loved, without measure, whether we deserve it or not.
“Come,” Jesus says, “and have breakfast.”
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