Grace for Breakfast
For the full context of this reflection, read John 21:1-19
What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
The resurrection happened. Jesus is alive—but the world hasn’t changed. Not yet.
They’ve heard the news and seen the empty tomb.
They’ve even seen the risen Christ.
Everything is different, but it doesn’t feel like anything has changed. The trauma and grief of the crucifixion hasn’t let go. If the Kingdom of God is here and the work—as Jesus proclaimed from the cross—is finished, why is everything still so messed up? Why is Rome still in charge? Why are God’s people still struggling and suffering?
What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
Peter didn’t know what to do, so he said, "I'm going fishing.” I’d probably say, “I’m going to go have a cup of coffee, or play my guitar. I need something that feels familiar—something I know what to do with.”
Peter goes fishing, and the others go with him—because they, too, don’t know what else to do. And sometimes that’s what we do too, right? We go back to what we knew before. But even that feels hollow.
This is a story for everyone who’s ever tried to return to normal after everything changed.
Everyone who’s gone back to old routines while carrying new wounds.
Everyone who has proclaimed “Christ is risen!” amid the crowds gathered on Easter Sunday, only to make the same proclamation amid the handful who return the next week.
This is a story for anyone who’s lived in the tension between resurrection is real and I still feel empty.
Peter says, “I’m going fishing.” And that’s what he and the other disciples do. This is what they knew before Jesus. Some of them, including Peter, were even pros. Fishing was their job. But after a long night on the lake, their net is empty.
Empty.
Even the familiar feels empty.
It’s the quiet echo of the soul: When we try to return to what once gave us identity or control, and it doesn’t satisfy us.
Because resurrection changes us, even when we don’t know what to do with it.
And maybe that’s where many of us are—back in the boat, working all night, exhausted, with nothing to show for it.
It’s not just the net that is empty. They are. We are.
And it’s here, in the quiet failure, that grace finds them.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stands on the beach.
But they don’t recognize him. Not at first.
And that’s how it often is. Sometimes grace stands right in front of us and we don’t see it. Sometimes Jesus shows up in the ordinary voice calling from the shore, and we don’t realize who it is until the net is heavy with goodness we didn’t expect.
He calls out, "Children, you have no fish, have you?"
And I imagine a collective eye roll from the boat. Maybe a muttered, “Who is this guy? Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
And then, Captain Obvious on the shore says, "Cast the net to the right side."
It’s the worst kind of advice—unsolicited and obvious.
And yet… they do it.
Maybe because they have nothing left to lose.
Maybe because the voice carried something they hadn’t heard in a while—
hope.
And suddenly—
the net is full.
Overflowing.
More than they can manage.
But isn’t that often how a faithful response to grace begins—with a simple act of trust? A willingness to try again?
And the net fills. Overflowing. More than they can manage.
Suddenly, John whispers, "It is the Lord."
And Peter? Peter does what Peter always does—he leaps.
Still impulsive. Still all heart—trying to get to Jesus as fast as possible.
This is not about the fish.
It’s about Jesus, who meets us in our emptiness and abundance alike.
It’s about Jesus who shows up, even when we don’t recognize him, and when our hope is wearing thin.
When they reach shore, there is Jesus. Cooking breakfast over a charcoal fire..
I love a campfire. We have a fire pit in our backyard, and in the few months of the year when the weather in Fort Wayne is compatible with human life, Michelle and I love to sit around the fire with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and watch the flames dance. It’s more life-giving than anything on TV. When we go in after a night around the campfire, we often feel restored and renewed.
The charcoal fire on the shore was a place of renewal for the disciples as well—especially Peter.
It’s a very intentional image John uses in his telling of the gospel.
The only other charcoal fire mentioned in the Bible is in the courtyard of the high priest, where Peter denied Jesus. Around the last charcoal fire Peter insisted, “I don’t know the man!” Around this charcoal fire Peter has another chance.
Jesus has a plan for this charcoal fire, but it doesn’t include perpetuating guilt and shame. This is not a charcoal fire of condemnation. Yes, Jesus has a plan for this charcoal fire, and he starts with breakfast.
He’s already got bread and fish laid out, and then adds the abundance of the net to the meal.
It’s a quiet communion. A table of unconditional welcome,not judgment; of radical inclusion, not exile.
He simply says, "Come and eat."
Sometimes grace doesn’t arrive with trumpets and fanfare. Sometimes grace looks like a hot meal at the end of a long night. No speeches or teaching. Just presence, and an unspoken invitation:
You still belong. Sit down. Be fed. Come and eat—not because you’ve earned it. Not because you’ve got it all figured out. Come because you're tired, because you're hungry, because grace cooks breakfast even for the ones who failed.
Then comes the moment.
After breakfast.
After the meal.
Jesus turns to Peter: "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
Three times, he asks. Three times, Peter responds.
It’s not subtle. Jesus wants Peter to know what’s happening, and he does.
This is not punishment or shame—it’s healing.
Jesus meets each denial, each “I don’t know the man!” with the same question, “Do you love me?” And each time Peter responds, the wall of shame he’s built crumbles a little more. With every, “Yes, Lord. You know that I love you,” Jesus responds with an invitation. He responds to each each of Peter’s failures with an invitation:
Feed my lambs.
Tend my sheep.
Feed my sheep.
This is not just forgiveness. It’s not, “Ok, I’m going to let you off the hook kid, now get out of here before I change my mind. And you’d better not let me catch you wandering around here again. If I see you again, that’s it!”
Jesus isn’t erasing Peter’s past, he’s transforming it. He’s transforming Peter’s failure into his calling.
Peter’s failure doesn’t disqualify him, it becomes the soil in which his compassion will grow.
He will shepherd God’s people, not from perfection, but from the threadbare places of his story. Because that’s the rock upon which Jesus build his church—
Not flawless people,
but forgiven ones.
Not experts,
but followers.
People who know what it’s like to fail and be fed anyway.
People like us.
And then Jesus says something more:
“When you were younger, you fastened your own belt and went where you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
Peter will follow, even unto death.
But notice: Jesus doesn’t hide the cost.
He tells Peter the truth. The journey ahead will take you places you don’t want to go. The road of Christ is hard—and still says, “Follow me.” Because there is no way better than following the way of Jesus with Jesus.
Follow me. It’s the same call Peter heard by the lake three years earlier. It's the same call that prompted him to drop his nets with a similar enthusiasm to that which prompted him to put on his clothes and dive into the water a hundred yards from the shore. But now, Peter follows with more than enthusiasm. He follows with understanding; the kind that can only come through knowing God’s love, even amid the shame the world says, should define us.
Jesus says “Follow me.” The call hasn’t changed. But Peter has.
This is what it means to be restored:
It’s different from a reset or rewind. It’s not a glam up, it is a complete reforming in, through, and by Love.
Jesus doesn’t need Peter to prove himself.
He needs him to be loved and to love.
And then he sends him.
This encounter ends on the shoreline,
not with a command to believe harder,
but with a fire, a meal, and a voice that calls us by name.
This is not a story about going back—
it’s about moving forward.
It’s not about pretending we didn’t fail—
it’s about discovering that even in our failure, we are still beloved.
It’s not about cleaning ourselves up—
it’s about how Jesus meets us in our weariness,
our emptiness,
our shame.
It’s a story about how Jesus restores us not to what we were…
but to what love always knew we could be.
And then we’re sent.
Sent to love.
To feed.
To tend.
To follow.
Jesus didn’t ask Peter to prove himself.
He asked him to love—
and then to live that love out in real, embodied ways.
That’s our call, too.
Friends,
Whatever you’ve been carrying—
the exhaustion, the regret, the silence of God that felt too long—
hear this:
Jesus is still cooking breakfast on the shore.
Still calling you “beloved.”
Still saying, “Come and eat.
Come and follow.”
So here’s the invitation:
👉🏼 Lay down your shame.
👉🏼 Let love restore you.
👉🏼 Say yes to the call of grace.
👉🏼 Follow—again.
Follow not because you’re certain.
Not because you’ve got it all figured out.
But because the One who calls you knows your name, knows your pain,
and still believes you are beautiful and beloved—and from that beauty and belovedness, you have something to give this weary world.
What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
You listen for the voice from the shore. You throw your net one more time. You sit down at the fire. You receive the grace that’s already waiting for you. And when Jesus looks at you with love in his eyes, you say ‘yes.’ And you follow.
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