The Most Important Meal of the Day

Linda Bongiorno
Wednesday 4 May 2022

Preacher: Revd Samantha Ferguson, Assistant Chaplain
Readings: Isaiah 61:1-3; John 21:1-13

Good Morning to you all.  Especially if you have spent the previous few hours washing away your academic sins in the waters on East Sand’s Beach.

This tradition of St Andrew’s came about because there are two initials in the cobbles outside of St Salvator’s Chapel. PH.  These refer to the first Scottish Martyr – Patrick Hamilton who was burned to death on that spot in 1528 at the start of the Scottish Reformation of Churches.

If you are unlucky enough to have stepped on his initials during your time as a student here in St Andrews then the legend goes that you will fail your exams!  However, do not panic! Your academic sins can be redeemed by dipping in the North Sea as dawn breaks on 1st of May.  All will be well!

I pray that those who braved the dawn and the cold and the sand, are now spiritually pure of all sins related to your academic career and can continue on regardless. Even with the hangover and will be able to stay awake.

I pray that those who indulged and dipped have regained feeling in their toes once again, and that you felt a sense of comradeship on the beach with your fellow students and towns folk.

I must confess I have only done the May Dip once in my life, and once was enough.  The selling point for me was not merely to rid myself of the many academic sins I had accrued over my four years of being a student here, but also the promise of a hot bacon roll alongside a steaming mug of much needed tea.

Breakfast was the reason I committed to swimming in the North Sea at 4am in the morning, alongside the promise that someone else, who was not me, would be making it.

The saying goes ‘Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.’

Breakfast, my friends, is truly the most important meal of our day and we should all learn to appreciate it and take time for it – to break our fast after our nights rest.

Some people like pancakes, others like a full Scottish. and the Chaplaincy staff enjoy baked oats or a scrambled egg bagel.  I, myself, will do anything for a bacon roll – even swim in the North Sea!

But enough about food before we all become hungry and you begin to wonder what on earth I am whittering on about during our precious chapel time together.

I just hope and pray that whatever breakfast you received on the beach, if you did the May Dip this morning, it was worth it.

Breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day to set you in a good frame of mind with a full belly to begin the tasks that lie ahead.  The difficult and the joyous and every tiny detail that life involves in between those extremes.  Remember my words if you face a week of exams ahead.  Care for yourself and you will be able to care for others and be able to concentrate.

And this morning we heard two passages that spoke of the importance of caring for others in this world.  First from Isaiah, that beautiful passage of what the spirit of the Lord calls us to do with our lives.

Second from John, where we hear tell of Jesus’ instinct to care, not only for the souls of his friends, but their bodies as well by providing breakfast on the beach.  To help comfort them after their time of need.

A breakfast choice that kept his carbon footprint down by using what was available, what was literally in the sea in front of him.  And by getting his friends to do the work of catching it for him!

For me this passage from John is more than a simple vignette in the life story of Jesus.  And, as ever with the stories that I reflect upon about the man that I have vowed to spend my life emulating, I wonder what I would have done if I was one of those disciples on that beach, early in the morning just after the sun had broken through the horizon once again.

What would your response have been if Jesus met you on East Sands this morning, hovering over his BBQ tray of fish and bread and offered you breakfast?  It is a question to ponder and one that I will use in my reflective prayer time and encourage you to do so also.

Another question also to ask is why did John include this particular story, post resurrection, of Jesus’ need to feed his sheep in his epilogue?  Not only to feed the sheep, but to help boost their catch in their re- established careers as fishermen?

For the disciples, without a leader to lead them forward, it seemed their Jesus Journey had ended.  So what else were they to do but go back to what they knew? To working the nets.

I believe that this story is here and given to us today, two weeks after the resurrection, not only to prove that Christ was risen, for Jesus had appeared to the disciples twice before this.

Not only to demonstrate Jesus’ power over nature, for he showed this when he stilled the storm and walked on water.

Not only to indicate that he had both a spiritual and a physical body, for Thomas literally put his hand in to Jesus’ side.

It was also to re-enlist the disciples as apostles and leaders in the church.  To remind them that, even though they had just been through the worst and the best that life could throw at them, Jesus, God, was not yet finished with them.

But their relationship with Jesus had been broken, first by their abandonment at his hour of his greatest need and then by not trusting and not knowing what to do next.

In order to heal that brokenness, Jesus did what he always does, he met them where they were.  On that beach, fishing in that moment.

And then he gave them a task – first to try fishing in a different way, to move out of their comfort zone where the catch would be so much more than they could ever imagined.

And then Jesus soothes their brokenness by meeting their immediate needs and feeds their bodies.  And in following Jesus’ orders to fish deeper, and by accepting to breakfast with Jesus on that beach on that morning,

those broken, battered and disheartened disciples came home to the man they called their master, their teacher, their friend and their God.

This story of John’s is all about reconciliation and renewal.  It is about hope and forgiveness and a turn towards the future rather rehashing over the past.

This story is about reminding us of God call to us to fulfil our vocation to love ourselves and love others when we follow the way of Christ.  This story is about remembering that we are anointed, and we are chosen.  That we have a duty to respond to God’s love for us by sharing the good news, releasing the prisoners, and comforting those who mourn.

By meeting people where they are even if it is on a beach at 4am on a Sunday morning and by giving them what they need – food, warmth, shelter, and respect.  We do this to help display the glory of God to those yet to know and remember that they are loved just as they are.

This epilogue of John’s is necessary to complete the story of Jesus and his disciples.  It is necessary to complete the story of us today.

To remind us that Jesus knew he had to feed his friends bodies first before the work of the Lord could truly begin, to heal the bonds between them that had been broken on that Friday when they thought they had lost everything.

For even Christ knew that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.  And that sharing a simple meal with friends is how his church would begin and continue to this very day.

That this meal was to be fish was to become a symbol for the early persecuted church.  Before the Cross became the mark of Christianity in the fourth century, a simple fish drawn as graffiti on walls on trees, on doorways and even on tombs was used to show where the new Christians could meet in safety and in secrecy.

And here on the front of your service sheets, we see the symbol in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla, (c. 150-200 AD) on a piece of marble with a very early depiction of the Cross blended into another symbol, the anchor. and flanked by two fish, the Ichthus—three symbols in one Christian carving.

So my friends, whatever is facing you in the next few days, be it finishing that dissertation, sitting an exam, or even going for another swim in the sea because you have now become addicted to not being able to feel your toes, remember to breakfast like a king before you do any of it and to do it with others if you can.

For if it was good enough for Jesus and his friends, well, it is good enough for us.

May God be with you and all whom you love this week.

Amen

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