Straight after Easter Sunday, Jo and I disappeared for
several days’ break staying with some good friends down in Warwickshire. On our
last night there, we went out for a curry. We don’t eat meat, so Jo had a
vegetable dish, and I had a fish dish. It was delicious: an unlikely mix of cod
and tuna and prawns, prepared with fenugreek and ginger and a blend of spices.
In the centre of the table there was a plate of enormous naans, and we hungrily
tore off piece after piece to scoop up mouthful after mouthful. We ate too
much, and went to bed too soon after, and slept terribly as a result. But it
was so good to be together. We had spent the previous days eating and drinking
and sitting round reading books and exploring elegant towns and walking their
dogs around pretty villages and catching up with one another’s news and giving
one another space to not have to entertain or engage socially. The following morning,
we would get up early for the first time in days, go out and run the nearest
parkrun, and then spend the next several hours driving home in sweaty lycra. I
can’t think of a better way to observe the Octave of Easter, the first eight of
the Fifty Great Days of Eastertide.
Several of the disciples had gone out all night, fishing
on the lake. And at dawn, Jesus stood on the shore and called to them, “Little
children, do you have any fish relish (prosphagion)?” That is, do you
have the kind of fish dish that is eaten with flatbread? And they reply, “No.”
They have no fish relish with them. So Jesus calls out again, and tells them to
cast their net on the right hand side of the boat, and that they will discover
something, perhaps unexpected. They don’t discover any fish relish—that really
would be unexpected. Instead, the net fills up with fish (ichthyōn) and
what is unexpected is the sheer number of them. But then Simon Peter does
something very unexpected: he pulls on his cloak and casts himself into the sea.
And when they reach the shore, they find that Jesus has made a charcoal fire
and prepared bread and was cooking it along with some fish he already had with
him.
It is such a strange and beautiful story. Jesus,
making breakfast for his friends—as my friend Andy had poached us eggs for
breakfast as we sat in his kitchen. Constructing a fire—as my friend Andy had
made in his firepit as we sat round, and he cooked for us on the barbeque. Simple
things, with his hands. This is, surely, occupational therapy, learning how to
use hands that now have holes punctured through them—how do you knead bread
when the tendons of your fingers are torn in two? This is rehabilitation after
the trauma of torture and death, not to mention the trauma of resurrection,
just as much as the boys going fishing is rehabilitation after the trauma of seeing
Jesus go to his death, and come back again. This takes time, and, it turns out,
a little fish relish. That is why we take Fifty days over Easter, not just one ta-dah!
day (glorious though it is).
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