"Easter Breakfast"

For all of you who are inclined to attend the Easter Sunrise service this year on April 5^th at 7 a.m., I hope you will linger afterwards for our Easter Breakfast. I realize that Easter brunch will always be more popular than Easter Breakfast, but I love the tradition of Easter Breakfast.

One of my favorite stories in the Gospel of John is the story of Jesus making breakfast for some of the disciples after they had spent a long night of fishing without catching anything (John 21). Jesus told them to cast their nets on the opposite side of the boat, and then suddenly they caught 153 fish. Even though the disciples finally caught a lot of fish, Jesus was already on the beach cooking fish over a charcoal fire. I find this story to be a tremendously hopeful story. Imagine a college student pulling an all-nighter and then having nothing to show for it the next morning. Then imagine the student walking over to the professor’s office to tell the professor that they don’t have a paper, and then the professor invites the student to a faculty breakfast.

The author Anne Lamott once shared a story about an Easter breakfast of apricot scones,  which was shared with a close friend who was dying.

Anne Lamott wrote about her friend, musing, “She ought to have one more Easter. Easter is so profound.” So, the two friends recreated Holy Week, a week later. On Thursday, they had communion, using Coca Cola for wine and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish for the broken bread in remembrance of him. They washed each other’s feet. They celebrated Good Friday, “a sad day of loss and cruelty when all you have to go on is faith that light shines in the darkness and nothing, not death, not disease, can overcome it.”

She writes for most of us when she says, “I hate It that you can’t prove the beliefs of my faith. If I were God, I’d have the answers at the end of a workbook, so you could check as you went along, to see if you’re on the right track. But noooo—Darkness is our context, Easter’s context; without it you couldn’t see the light. Hope is not about proving anything. It’s about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak [stuff] anyone can throw at us.”

For Anne and her friend, Easter morning dawned with a brilliant sun and bright blue sky and the aroma of freshly-baked apricot scones.

This is Easter, walking side by side with a dear friend through the lonesome valley, trusting that deep, joyful laughter awaits, because Jesus awaits, the one who said that he is the resurrection and the life.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Jack