By Justin Crisp
Do you remember the days when we answered phones by picking them up rather than tapping a piece of glass? Well, I do. I particularly remember the days when, as a teenager, I would compete with every other member of my nuclear family for time on the one and only phone line in our home. It’s unimaginable now: a house full of phones, capable, as a whole, of making only one call at a time. My mom couldn’t be on the phone with my aunt at the same time as my dad was on the phone with a contractor at the same time as my sister was on the phone with her boyfriend at the same time as I was on the phone with my girlfriend. And that was a problem. An hour and a half into my nightly phone call with my girlfriend, someone else would come into my room, tell me to get off the phone, and say, “What in the world are you doing anyway?” And I’d say, “Oh, nothing. Just hanging out.”
It was true.
Hours would pass, little conversation, just hanging out on the phone, monopolizing the line.
Teenagers are experts in “Oh nothing. Just hanging out.” (At least, we were in my day—which is another sermon.) I “just hung out” with my girlfriend on the phone, with my friends at the mall, with my buds in their basements during LAN parties (that’s 1990s nerd-speak for video game sleepovers). Hanging out was the thing to do, which is to say, the thing to do was to do a whole lot of nothing.
Interestingly enough, this is exactly what Jesus wants to do with his disciples after He’s resurrected from the dead. John 21 stages a first-century hangout. The events take place shortly after the tomb is found empty. The disciples have spent the whole night fishing on the water but have caught nothing. Jesus, unrecognized by them, comes to them and instructs them to let down their net on the other side of the boat. The disciples, famously, catch more than they can hoist up into the boat. Simon Peter, stunned into recognizing Jesus and delirious with joy, jumps into the water, fully clothed. Jesus brings Peter to his senses, and then, wonderfully, looks at His friends and “[says] to them, ‘Come and have breakfast’” (John 21:12). Jesus grills up the fish, toasts some bread, and serves it to them. They eat together. There’s no particular agenda. Sure, “when they had finished breakfast,” Jesus addressed his relationship with Peter, the fact that Peter had denied him before He died, but up to that point—the whole point of this scene for every disciple other than Peter—is just to hang out.
There were these retirees in my hometown of Seymour, Tennessee who would go to McDonalds, every morning of the world, eat sausage biscuits, drink their senior-discounted coffees, and just sit around. That’s what Jesus and the disciples are doing. This is shocking.
There are just 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension to the Father’s right hand. There are just 40 days between when Jesus is brought back to life, and when He is ‘absorbed’ fully, body and soul, into the Heavenly realm, never to walk the earth in the same way again. Just 40 days. That’s today to the beginning of October. That’s nothing. And Jesus decides the best use of His time, that morning anyway, would just be to hang out.
You’d think that Jesus, the man who was God, the God of the universe, would have spent that time more efficiently: He could have been healing people, correcting people, fixing things. Instead, He just hangs out. Which is exactly what He wants to do with us.
There is this peculiar thing infants do, developmentally, where babies are constantly scanning the room, looking for someone who’s looking at them, looking for someone to meet their gaze, to recognize them. We do this as infants, certainly, but I think the truth is, we do it our whole lives long. We are looking for something, someone, anything to meet our gaze, to recognize us, look at us, and know us, with love. We crave recognition, and we pursue it with reckless urgency anywhere we think we might find it.
One of my favorite writers, David Zahl, will speak and preach at St. Barnabas on September 21 as part of our Courage & Faith series with Christ Church. David is an amazing observer of modern life, and he recently said this: “Maybe it’s my current stage in life (the middle part of middle age), maybe it’s our historical moment (2025 and the rise of the algorithm), maybe it’s geography (blue state coastal America), maybe it’s just L-I-F-E, but everywhere I look I see ladders getting longer and treadmills getting faster. We are carrying so much these days, and the accelerating pressure to achieve, to improve, to be happy, to stand out, to thrive, only compounds the burden. The result is … [an] impossible way of life.”
If you’re exhausted of it, friends, unplug the treadmill. Kick the legs out from under the ladder. Act like a ’90s teenager. Just hang out. Take time in these last days of summer. Hang out with each other, with your friends, your families, your kids. Preeminently, and ultimately, hang out with Jesus, in Whom we have to do with the only Power or Person Who will ever meet our gaze perfectly and unconditionally.
It can be hard for us to believe God just wants to hang out with us, full stop, no agenda. I suspect we think God only ever invites us over to His house to make us a pitch, to ask us to do something, or give something, or become something. The fact of the matter, though, is that the God of the Bible just loves to hang out. At the beach, as I said, but also in the Garden of Eden where, the book of Genesis suggests, God liked to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening (Genesis 3:8). The truth is, that’s the church’s real reason for being: to be a place where you can hang out with God, a supernatural mall, an old-fashioned phone line, a living room, a front porch, where you and God can just chill, and you can rest in the love of the One who will always meet your gaze. In these last days of summer, may you too hear the call of our Lord, “Come and have breakfast.”
The Reverend Dr. Justin E. Crisp is a husband, dad, music lover, and priest. He is Rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church and lives with his wife, Jewelle, their pug, Val, and their daughter, Beatrice, on the St. Barnabas hilltop in backcountry.
