Living the Resurrection
Resurrection did not begin with a sermon. After the shock of the empty tomb, after fear and disbelief, after locked doors and unfinished conversations, Jesus Christ does something so ordinary it is almost anticlimactic.
He makes breakfast.
Bread.
Fish.
A charcoal fire.
Morning light.
Tired bodies.
Hungry souls.
This is how resurrection announces itself—not as spectacle, but as presence.
“The surprising thing about biblical spirituality is that God is present in the ordinary, daily, common, and concrete realities of life.”1
“God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.”2
Resurrection doesn’t pull us out of the world; it restores us to it. And here, on the beach, resurrection smells like smoke and fish and fishing nets. What we are invited into, as were these disciples, is resurrection breakfast—the most dramatic event in human history captured in quiet, small, and ordinary things.
Jesus hosts the disciples…again
On the shore of Galilee, the risen Jesus takes on a role familiar to his followers: host.
He does not ask the disciples to explain themselves. Nor does he demand repentance speeches, even though it was not only Judas who betrayed him; they had all abandoned him. He does not start with his own theological explanations or require new commitments of loyalty to him.
He simply says, “Come and have breakfast.” He practices resurrection hospitality.
And here is the quiet but unsettling truth: we are never in charge of our own spiritual formation.
Jesus hosts the table. We receive the invitation. But not alone; it comes in the company of friends.
Peterson reminds us that “When we practice resurrection, we continuously enter into what is more than we are. When we practice resurrection, we keep company with Jesus, alive and present. Who knows where we are going better than we do, which is always from glory unto glory.”3
Where is God present on Easter morning? At a breakfast table, feeding people who are still unsure what comes next.
We are guests—fully invited, fully welcomed, but not in control.
Grace does not demote us.
It seats us at the table as companions of Jesus and spiritual friends.
Living the Resurrection, Not Explaining It
Resurrection is not something we admire from a distance as if it were an object to examine. It is something we learn to practice in the life of the church.
The disciples are not given a post-Easter strategy session. They are not handed a mission statement. They are not invited to a “whiteboard exercise” for a five-year plan. They are transformed from students to apostles, those sent in the authority of the one who sends them.
They fish.
They eat.
They listen.
They are restored.
In Living the Resurrection, Eugene Peterson reminds us that Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t merely or even primarily about the future,
“…Jesus’ resurrection took place on earth. The first witnesses and participants in Jesus’ resurrection obviously weren’t in heaven. They were walking the same old roads over the same old ground they had grown up on and talked and worked on, with the same old people they had grown up with…They were beginning to get the sense that Jesus’ resurrection had everything to do with their ordinary lives. They needed practice in this reorientation. And they plunged into ordinariness. The old familiar workplace of sea and the fishing boat.”4
It is a new way of inhabiting the ordinary—work, meals, conversations, failures—now charged with God’s presence.
The Meal as a School of Discipleship
I wonder if we can see the deeply sacramental nature of meal times with Jesus. This breakfast is not filler material between the crucifixion and Pentecost. It is formational, and I dare say, revelatory. We learn how to grow up to maturity in Christ, as Paul teaches in Ephesians 4:15, and it reveals the very nature of how that growth will take place.
I wonder if we can receive the earth-shattering revelation that God took on human flesh, thereby sanctifying our most ordinary human practices, such as meals.
- It is inclusive. Everyone is there—including Peter, still carrying the weight of his denial of Jesus.
- It is comprehensive. Bodies are fed. Hearts are steadied. Vocations are reclaimed.
- It is personal and communal. Jesus speaks to Peter alone, but never apart from the others.
- It is abundant. Nets straining with fish. Bread enough for all.
- It is grace given in the most ordinary moment of life: our mealtimes. “…it is imperative that we join in vigorously and perseveringly convinced that every detail in our lives contributes (or not) to what Paul describes as God’s plan worked out by Christ. A long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven. Everything on planet earth.”5
It wasn’t long before the Apostle Paul wrote words like these:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.6
Resurrection discipleship is not imitation from afar—it is shared life, shared food, shared presence, and shared sacred purpose.
- We receive our identity.
- We find our sense of belonging in solidarity with others in what Paul called koinonia.
- We find our “calling” at our own altar in the world and our lives are marked by sacred purpose.
“Scripture (the living word) points us to Jesus (the incarnate Word) who calls us to sacred purpose (a living relationship of following Jesus) at our own altars in the world, for all of our lives.”7
Every Meal a Mini-Sacrament
Jesus does not call this breakfast the Lord’s Breakfast as he did their final Passover meal together, but it carries a similar meaning. At every table Jesus hosts, the liturgy quietly unfolds.
- Jesus Takes What We Bring
Fish hauled in after a long night.
Weariness.
Failure.
Hope tangled with shame.Or as in On Holy Ground, we arrive with “the unedited truth of who we are and where we stand.” Jesus takes us—not the version we wish we were; Jesus loves us as we are, not as we aspire to be. - Jesus Blesses What We Bring
He gives thanks—not for ideal disciples, but for present ones.
For people who ran.
For people who denied.
For people who stayed confused. Resurrection blessing is not approval of our competence; it is affirmation of our belonging. Our calling is not about a job or a resume but a relationship with a living and resurrected Lord. - Jesus Breaks What We Bring
Not the fish—but the illusion that we are in control.
He breaks pride.
Self-reliance.
The belief that leadership means never failing.Julie Canlis writes, “Love transforms us not by bypassing our wounds, but by entering them.” The breaking is not cruelty; it is communion. - Jesus Gives It Back—Transformed
The disciples eat.
They are restored.
They are sent—not away from the world, but back into it. Disciples become apostles, a Greek word that literally means “a sent one” or “one sent with the voice and authority of the sender.”
Living the Resurrection
Easter is not something we visit once a year.
It is something we learn to live—meal by meal, morning by morning.
Jesus keeps making breakfast.
Keeps hosting tables.
Keeps forming disciples not through pressure, but through presence.
On Holy Ground reminds us, “Formation happens not in control, but in consent—consenting to be met by God where we actually stand.”
And so, we discover, again and again, that the risen Christ is most fully known not when we finally understand everything but when we sit down, receive what is given, and learn how to live again.
Christ is risen.
And he is still feeding us.
Practice:
This week, see Jesus as the host, as present each time you sit down for a meal—at home perhaps with family, at work perhaps with co-laborers, “on the run” perhaps in the interlude of a commute or on your way to “the next thing.” Don’t imagine Jesus there as if that’s all you can do; welcome him as he invites you to another meal in his presence.
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This spring, Keith Anderson and Rob Loane are creating space for leaders to tend the inner life together in A Leader’s Journey in a Fractured World. You can read more and register here.
Keith Anderson, D.Min., is a Faculty Associate for Spirituality and Vocation at VantagePoint3 and President Emeritus of Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. He is the author of several books, including his most recent: On Holy Ground: Your Story of Identity, Belonging and Sacred Purpose (Wipf & Stock, 2024). His other works include Reading Your Life’s Story (IVP, 2016), A Spirituality of Listening (IVP, 2016), and Spiritual Mentoring (IVP, 1999). In his writing, teaching, and mentoring, Keith seeks to set a table for people looking to enter the “amazing inner sanctuary of the soul” in the most ordinary and extraordinary moments of life.
1Keith R. Anderson, On Holy Ground, p. 35
2Tish Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary, p. 21
3Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, p. 8
4Peterson, pp 67-68
5Eugene H. Peterson, introduction to Ephesians in The Message
6The Message, 6Romans 12:1-2a
7Keith R. Anderson, On Holy Ground, p. 5