A Piece of Broiled Fish Which He Ate in Their Presence
Preached at Blue Ocean Faith Columbus on Sunday, April 19, 2026
Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Friends, listen for a word from God in the Gospel according to Luke, the 24th chapter, verses 36 to 49.
36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.
44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
This is the word of God for the people of God.
Movement I: What Would You Give Him?
This week I crowd sourced answers to a question: If Jesus appeared to you right now and asked for something to eat, what would you give him? In addition to our congregational group chat, I also posted that question on my Facebook and in several clergy groups. Here are a sample of the responses I got:
Many people said whatever they had handy or simply everything they had which, for one person, could include toddler food like chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and edamame or her meal prep food of tofu, pasta, and veggies.
Three people asked if Jesus keeps kosher given that he was Jewish.
Some answers were clearly cultural or reflected people’s backgrounds including tacos, nachos, a juicy steak, enchiladas, soup, noodles, and a crumpet with melty butter.
While other people suggested options from Jesus’ culture: artichokes, olives, falafel, dates, wine, cheese, bread, and fish.
Speaking of bread and fish, one person suggested a tuna melt because the gospels make it clear that Jesus liked bread and fish.
Desserts and snacks were also popular including popcorn, ice cream (has Jesus ever tasted ice cream?), French silk pie, angel food cupcakes, and brownies.
Two people suggested the best items they could cook: blueberry buttermilk pancakes and chocolate chip cookies.
And two people, a pastor and a religion professor, said they’d either offer Jesus a beer or take him to a local brewery because he’s got to be tired of wine by now.
I love every single one of these. And I want you to notice something: every one of those answers tells us something about the people who responded: what you have in the kitchen, what you love, what you’d reach for in a moment of startled hospitality. The question reveals us.
Let’s look at how the disciples responded when they were faced by that question. Luke tells us that when the risen Jesus appeared in that room, suddenly, inexplicably, while they were in the middle of a conversation, they didn’t immediately reach for food. They reached for a category: ghost. Spirit. Something non-corporeal and therefore manageable.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus says. And they were terrified.
Jesus, ever patient with our confusion, says: look at my hands. Look at my feet. A ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones. But even then, Luke tells us, they still didn’t believe: “while in their joy they were disbelieving.”
This is one of the more psychologically honest sentences in Scripture. They were disbelieving because of joy. Not because of doubt. Not because of grief. Because such great joy breaks the categories we have for it.
And then Jesus said, almost comically, “Have you anything here to eat?”
That’s it. That’s the line. The risen Lord of creation, standing before them in resurrected flesh, asks: got any snacks?
They gave him a piece of broiled fish. And he took it. And he ate it in their presence.
Luke makes sure we know this. He dwells on it. The fish. The eating. The presence. Because this is the whole point: the resurrection is not an escape from matter. Resurrection is the redemption of matter. The body matters. Food matters. Presence matters. The risen Jesus eats fish with his friends.
Movement II: What We Give in Our Own Lives
Now. What would you actually give him?
Not the funny answer. Not the cute answer. Not the type of food or even food itself. What I mean is in the actual moments of your life, when the sacred shows up hungry, what do you give and, more importantly, how do you respond?
Because Jesus does keep showing up. Not in resurrected bodily form in your living room, but hungry. Always hungry. Hungry in the Matthew 25 sense: “I was hungry and you fed me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was sick and you came to me. Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me.”
The question is always the same: have you anything here to eat?
I want us to think about what it takes to actually respond to that question in our individual lives. It’s not a question about having the right theology. It’s not a question about being in the right denomination or reading the right books. It’s a question about what’s in your hands and whether you’ll extend your hands to Jesus.
Those disciples handed over what they had. They didn’t cook a new meal. They didn’t apologize that it was only fish. It was what was there, and they gave it. In fact, for many of the disciples, their shared story with Jesus had come full circle. They were back home in Galilee and they were fishing. Here in the mundane, ordinary moments is where discipleship actually lives; not in the grand gesture you’re planning for later, but in what you have right now.
What’s in your hands right now? Time. Attention. Skill. Money. A willingness to sit with someone in their pain without fixing it. The courage to say “I love you and I see you” to someone who needs to hear it.
In that moment the disciples had a piece of broiled fish.
The disciples didn’t hand Jesus a fish because they had worked up sufficient faith. They handed it over still not fully believing, still wobbling between joy and disbelief. The presence of Jesus didn’t require their certainty as a prerequisite. In fact, Jesus’ presence didn’t require anything of the disciples, but even in their fear and their doubt, something moved them to respond.
This is grace. We don’t have to get our act together and then respond to the risen Christ. We respond, perhaps haltingly, imperfectly, and confused in our joy, and the responding itself is how we come to know what we believe.
Movement III: What We Give Together
But Luke doesn’t let us stop there. Because Jesus doesn’t just eat the fish, say thanks, and leave. He opens the Scriptures. He opens their understanding to how they fit into that scripture. And then he says:
“Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
You. Are. Witnesses. Not viewers, perceivers, or beholders. Witnesses. Witnessing requires both seeing and professing. It’s not a private spiritual activity. Witnessing is public. Witnessing has the power to change things.
Beginning from Jerusalem. Not from somewhere safe. From Jerusalem, the city that had just executed him. From the wound. From the place of grief and political violence. Beginning there, it goes to all nations.
This is where the stakes of the text become impossible to ignore. Because we’re not just individuals responding to the risen Christ in our quiet moments. We’re communities, families, churches, and cities and the risen Christ appears to us too and asks for something to eat.
“Have you anything here to eat?” At the scale of our region, we’re asking: what are we doing about the 1-in-5 people in Franklin County who experience food insecurity? When we ask it at the scale of our nation, we’re confronted with systems that have kept communities hungry for generations. Slavery, sharecropping, redlining, internment camps, paying workers in company credit, mass deportation, racial and ethnic quotas, gender pay gaps, and contemporary poverty wages have kept most Americans—even straight, cis, male, white Americans—closer to poverty than to wealth. Every one of these systems were and are intentional choices made by ruling classes to keep others down and in their places.
Liberation theology, which arose from the poor of Latin America reading the Gospel under similar forms of oppression, has always insisted on this: God has a preferential option for the poor. Not because poor people are holier than rich people, but because God notices who’s hungry and takes it personally. The Jesus who ate broiled fish with his confused, grieving, joyfully disbelieving friends is the same Jesus who says: when you ignore the hungry ones, you ignore me.
This is not just a political statement. This is the text. This has always been the text. The prophets were saying it before Jesus was born. Isaiah demanding that people loose the bonds of injustice, let the oppressed go free, and share bread with the hungry. Jeremiah weeping over a city that had forgotten its covenant obligations to the vulnerable. The gleaning laws in Leviticus, requiring that the edges of the field be left unharvested so the poor could eat. The Jubilee, which canceled debts, returned land, and freed slaves so that poverty would not become permanent.
God has been asking communities the same question for millennia: have you anything here to eat? And the answer is always the same: yes. The question is whether we’ll give it.
The church at its best has always understood that responding to the risen Christ means more than personal piety. It means being the kind of community that reorganizes itself around the question of who is hungry. It means being a church that gets inconvenient. That puts its money, its voice, and its presence in places that are uncomfortable.
Here’s what Luke’s showing us: the risen Jesus didn’t just appear to the disciples and leave them changed on the inside. He commissioned them. He sent them out. He said: what happened here, in this room, with this fish, with this opened Scripture, with these suddenly understanding minds; that’s not the destination. That’s the beginning.
You are witnesses of these things. Beginning from Jerusalem.
Coda: He’s Still Here and He’s Still Hungry
I want to close with the simplicity of this scene.
The risen Jesus is in a room. His people are there. They’re confused, joyful, and half-believing. He shows them his hands. He asks for food. They give it. He eats it. In their presence.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. The resurrection isn’t a doctrine to be defended. It’s a presence to be encountered. And the encounter always, always involves something concrete. Something you can hold in your hands. Something you can give.
The risen Christ is still in rooms. Still showing up in the middle of conversations. Still saying peace. Still extending hands that have seen trauma. Still asking: have you anything here to eat?
He’s hungry in your home. He’s hungry in this congregation. He’s hungry in this city. He’s hungry in this nation. He’s hungry in parts of the world where exploitation builds what we call “comfort.”
And the invitation is the same as it was in that sealed room filled with fearful disciples. Not to have everything figured out. Not to have your faith fully formed and your doubt fully resolved. Not to wait until you’ve cooked something worthy.
Just to give what you have. In his presence. Which is all the disciples did.
They gave him a piece of broiled fish, which he ate in their presence.
May we be so faithful. Amen.