Oh, what a beautiful morning!
This all sounds so ordinary, so everyday. And yet it is the kind of moment that stands out in a lifetime - some combination of daybreak on a lovely day, gentle lapping of waves, the joyous sound of the dawn chorus, people we love, and the smell of barbecued freshly caught fish for breakfast.
It is the kind of escape to beauty that we look for in holidays, leaving behind busyness, work, lists and obligations. But for these men, battered by all that had happened in noisy crowded Jerusalem, still hardly believing that he had risen from the dead, it must have been quite a moment.
Jesus' spent these final days of his physical presence on earth, making sure that they really understood that he had risen from the dead. After breakfast he spoke to Peter, reinstating and recommissioning him. Reassured, they would all remember this morning's breakfast and all the other meetings, when they faced persecution and their own, possibly violent, deaths. They knew they would live for ever with him.
This breakfast by the lake brings me reassurance as well. The Lord of glory, the Saviour of the world, creator of the universe, word made flesh, has conquered death - and he cooks for them. I like living here with the people and places I know and I don't want to die. In fact I don't want to move to another house, let alone to another sphere of existence. I say out loud on Sundays, ' I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting'. And I believe it as fully and as far as I am able, but sometimes that isn't very far. On dark nights of doubt this lakeside reunion reassures me that however and whenever I die, I will be transformed, not into something strange, but into a familiar recognisable individual, in, maybe, a familiar renewed earth.
The disciples went back to Jerusalem fully reassured, were filled with the Holy Spirit and then stormed the world.
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