Come, Have Breakfast – Book Review
Come Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth, by Elizabeth Johnson, February 2024. Orbis Books, ISBN 978-1626985643, 256 pages. RRP £23 [approx] (hardback)
“Come, have breakfast”; the title says it all. This book of meditations on God and the Earth is immensely refreshing. It brings the Bible to bear on the wonders of Creation and broadens traditional understanding of God to encompass the whole natural world and indeed the Universe itself. Elizabeth Johnson builds upon a long distinguished career as a theologian and writer with a particular concern for the God-Earth relationship in a time of ecological crisis. These thirty meditations or essays are grouped loosely to fall within a Christian understanding of God: Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, Resurrection, the Spirit. Each meditation however, stands on its own, and needs to be read on its own, as Johnson herself recommends, preferably with Bible in hand.
A key meditation is entitled Animal praise to the God of all flesh. She carefully unwraps biblical quotations, from the story of Noah to the psalms and the prophets, to demonstrate how animals can worship their maker. “They bear witness with their very existence to the creative power who is the source of all”. She suggests that animals are equally open to salvation as humans and quotes Psalm 36; “Your steadfast love reaches to the heavens, You save humans and animals alike, O gracious Lord”. In this she is deliberately turning to the Eastern Orthodox tradition of understanding the natural world. A powerful meditation starts with the quotation from Job; “Ask the beasts and they will teach you.” Johnson pleads with us “to ask the galaxies”.
The enormity of the universe compels us to have a second book in our hand, what Augustine calls ‘a great big book, the book of creative nature…why look for a louder voice? Heaven and Earth cry out to you “God made me”. But it is not just the enormity, but also the intricacy of ecosystems in the creative order that demand to be observed in a religious spirit. Similar thoughts are explored in a delightful meditation, Here we are. She quotes from the book of Baruch; “the stars shone in their watches and they were glad”. God called them and they said “Here we are”. She sees that as parallel to many biblical passages, from the child Samuel to Isaiah, where the response to God is “Here I am”. The whole created order can respond to God in that way.
In one meditation, the gaze of Jesus, Johnson points out how close to nature Jesus is in his teaching. “Consider the lilies of the field” is but one example of how open Jesus is to the natural world, brought up to be a Wisdom teacher, knowing the Psalms and other Wisdom literature intimately. Perhaps the most challenging of all her meditations is the one on Resurrection. “You are the hope of all the Ends of the Earth and the far distant seas” (Psalm 65), and from Romans, “Creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God”. In her words “a grand community of creation destined for joy”. Johnson brilliantly summons us afresh to the praise of God for his whole creation.
Peter Dodd
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