Sermon originally preached on Easter 3C, Sunday, May 1, 2022. It was the last sermon I ever preached as rector and it remains bittersweet to this day. As usual, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts first by clicking on or tapping their links below before reading the sermon. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 9.1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5.11-15; St. John 21.1-19.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Today is my last regular Sunday to preach to you, my beloved (ignoring the fact that many of you consider that my preaching is enough to make any Sunday irregular). Fourteen years ago today I was ordained to the priesthood. Eleven years ago to the day, we started a home Bible study/eucharist that would eventually become St. Augustine’s. I don’t quite know where the last fourteen years have gone, or more precisely, how they have passed so quickly. But here I am on the verge of retirement, feeling very much like a washed-up old man and hot mess, and so I am resolved to pack fourteen years worth of sermons into one today. I’m guessing that will only take a few hours, given my superb skill of summarization. I’m sure you are thrilled at the prospect. I see Father Bowser twitching already in giddy anticipation.

What are we to make of St. John’s strange story of Christ’s appearing to his disciples by the Sea of Galilee? What is St. John trying to tell us? How is this story relevant to us today, both as individuals and the Church? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

 Hearing St. John recount Christ’s third resurrection appearance to his disciples, we get the distinct impression that something new has been accomplished, that things have really changed, and for the better. Jesus is the same, yet he is somehow different. Despite appearing to his disciples twice before (Jn 20.19-29), they still don’t recognize him at first. They knew it was him but yet there was something different about him, so no one dared ask him who he was. As one theologian has wryly observed about the nature of these appearances, after the resurrection you don’t find anyone casually slapping Jesus on the back and saying with a grin, “We’re so glad you’re back, Jesus!” No, Christ was alive and had carried his wounds into God’s new world, remaining the same. But he was different and because he was alive and transformed, everything else was new. But were things really new? St. John doesn’t tell us the disciples were busy proclaiming that Christ had risen from the dead and working enthusiastically to build his Church. No, they had apparently returned to their original vocation of fishing, and the story gives us the impression they had done so because they were either depressed and/or bored. Nothing new there. Where was the excitement from the Octave of Easter we read about last week? In our NT lesson, St. Paul was still breathing threats and violence against the fledgling church. Nothing new there. The world still scoffed at the disciples’ proclamation that Christ was risen from the dead. Nothing new there. So what was really new?

Before we answer that question, it is critical to our resurrection faith that we again pay careful attention to the bodily nature of Christ’s appearance in this story. He stands on the shore and has cooked breakfast for his weary and discouraged disciples. He eats with them and talks with them. They can see him, hear him, touch him. Despite his transformed appearance they know it is Jesus because they recognize him primarily in his bodily form, not to mention his gentle kindness, thoughtfulness, and love. And here is the answer to our “what’s new” question. St. John, masterful and brilliant storyteller he is, is telling us in story form what the early Church proclaimed and what Jesus himself had told his disciples at the Last Supper—that in his Death our sins are forgiven, our wounds are healed, and we are made whole again. We are reconciled to God our Father and freed from our slavery to the power of Sin and with it, from Death’s tyranny. Yes, death will come to us all barring Christ’s return in the interim, but we will live and conquer Death because Christ lives and has conquered Death through his own Death and Resurrection, thanks be to God! Easter anyone?

How do you get all that from this story, you ask, and with a bit snark? I’m glad you ask, despite the fact that I just told you. But it wouldn’t be right if you stopped arguing with me during my sermons after all these years. That would mean you have stopped being the quirky people that make up this nuthouse of a parish, the people I love so much. So to repeat, while St. John does not tell us these things in exposition, he tells us in personal stories. In other words, we see Christ’s victory over Sin and Death in the transformative power it has on those who belong to him. Take his encounter with St. Peter, for example. There is much to love about St. Peter because he is us. He had shot his mouth off on the night before Christ died, boasting of his undying loyalty to his Lord, only to deny him three times in a spectacular act of cowardice of which we are all capable, especially in the context Peter’s denials occurred. And afterwards he had rightly wept bitterly over his profound failure. Imagine now for a minute that Christ was not risen from the dead, that there was no possibility for reinstatement, for forgiveness, for personal reaffirmation after catastrophic failure. How would St. Peter have felt? Utterly devastated and remorseful, no doubt, with no chance of his failure being put to rights. We all know this because we’ve all lapsed in our resurrection faith on occasion. There’s no worse feeling in the world than knowing a massive wrong/injustice cannot be made right because of our sins/failures. But this is exactly the situation we would find ourselves in if Christ really is dead. We may love God and others, but we’ve all let God and others down. We’ve betrayed and denied God and others and failed to live as the holy people God created us and calls us to be, and if Christ is not alive we are still dead in our sins with no hope of resolution or forgiveness. 

But Christ is not dead. He is alive and now confronting St. Peter about his past sin. “Simon, son of John, do you agapao me more than these?” Agapao is the verb form of agape, the Greek word that means the highest form of love, the kind of love that is self-giving and seeks the absolute best for the beloved, the kind of love with which Christ loved his disciples and loves us. “Yes, Lord, you know I phileo you,” St. Peter replied. Phileo is another Greek word for love, but it can refer to a lesser kind of love, a brotherly, affectionate love that is not always self-giving. Back came the response: Feed my lambs (take care of my followers, the Church, Simon). A second time Christ asked his wounded and hurting disciple: Simon, do you agapao me?, receiving the same answer. Yes Lord, you know I phileo you. Back came the response: Tend my sheep. A third time, matching the number of times St. Peter had denied his Lord on Holy Thursday, Christ asked him, “Simon, son of John, do you phileo me?” St. Peter was hurt by this third question, or perhaps the subtle change in it. We aren’t told why. “Lord, you know all things. You know I phileo you.” Back came the response: Feed my sheep. Now while there is much scholarly debate over the significance of Christ using St. Peter’s word, phileo, to ask a third time if St. Peter loved him, count me among those who believe St. John was too good a storyteller to have this be simply about semantics. Here we see our crucified and risen Lord meet St. Peter where he was emotionally with Christ at that moment. Surely St. Peter had learned from his unfounded bravado that he wasn’t the stud he fancied himself to be, nor did he love his Lord as he thought. He had failed catastrophically the man he loved more than anyone else, the man who had turned his whole life upside down. In telling us this tender and compelling story, St. John is surely telling us that this is how Christ and his resurrection are making all things new. Without forgiveness of sins on the cross, without a newfound freedom to resist Sin’s power, there could have been no real forgiveness. St. Peter, like us, would have remained dead in his sins and alienated from God the Father, doomed to utter destruction. But here was Christ, meeting his wayward and sorrowful disciple where he was, forgiving him and inviting him to take up the victory Christ had accomplished for him in his Death and Resurrection, and Christ does the same for us. St. Peter would accept Christ’s invitation by giving his life for the Son of God and so can we. 

In telling us this story, St. John is surely telling us that the power of Jesus is typically not made known in stunning ways, in ways the world recognizes as spectacular, although there are notable and numerous exceptions to this rule. Christ making all things new is not about razzle-dazzle or eye-popping special effects that we love to see at the movies. Instead, it is about the quiet way of Christ with his people, with St. Peter, with you and me, agapaoing us in all our unloveliness, forgiving all our failures and betrayals and denials, recognizing our limitations, but also seeing our potential and putting us to work for him, despite who we can be, out of his sheer grace and love for us. There is nothing we have said or not said, thought or not thought, done or not done that is beyond the healing love and forgiveness of our crucified and risen Savior, nothing that will not eventually be put to rights, even if we must wait for it to be put to rights in God’s new heavens and earth. If you cannot find real hope, real comfort, real healing in this reality and promise, my beloved, surely you are to be pitied most of all. St. Paul found it on the road to Damascus, St. Peter found it in our gospel story today as have countless other Christians across time and cultures. Let us join this happy and forgiven throng so that like the psalmist in today’s lesson, we too can make the bold proclamation of conquering death through Christ our own!

And how does this apply to Christ’s body, the Church, to us together? It is quite appropriate that today’s gospel lesson was the appointed text because it is the promise and power of Christ making all things new, even with all its ambiguity and perplexities, that allows me to leave the people I love so much. Make no mistake. Human leadership, good leadership, is massively important for any family. But human leaders come and go and I am no different than anyone else. We are a healthy, thriving parish with a bright future, and while I have played some small part in that, the fact remains that we are this way because we make Christ our true Head and Leader. We believe in his promise to meet us where we are in all our changes and chances of life, in all our fears and hopes and dreams and failures, and he promises to lead us through even the valley of the shadow of death. This is what allows me to retire with confident hope for you our beloved family, because I know Christ lives and is present here among us, making all things new, transforming the old.  

My dearly beloved, don’t ever lose sight of this reality and promise. Christ seeks you out, no matter who or where you are, and promises to bring you home one day to a world where there will be no more sorrow or sighing or sickness or alienation or madness or folly or separation or death. We can stake our individual and collective lives on this promise if we continue to respond faithfully to the means of grace that make Christ available to us in real and living ways: Bible reading and study, prayer, confession, sweet fellowship of all kinds (don’t forget to party and enjoy the blessings Christ showers on you), and regular partaking of holy communion. All these things open us to Christ’s risen reality and Presence in and through the Holy Spirit. We have all died and been raised to new life in Christ in our baptism, and we are yoked to him forever, thank God. In Christ is our hope, our present, and our future. In him we find comfort in our sorrows, God’s tenderness, forgiveness, new life in our failures, and a deep abiding joy in all things because we belong to Christ. Imitate this great love as he commands us. Beloved, make this old man happy and proud by responding to Christ’s love with boldness and courage and hope. Remain faithful to him who delivers you from Sin and Death, and never abandon the faith once delivered to the saints, the true apostolic faith. Don’t be worried about your future as God’s family here at St. Augustine’s without the Maneys because you have Christ and he will never abandon or desert you. He is busy making all things new, yourselves included, both now and in God’s new world to come, a world that Christ’s resurrection announced and inaugurated. God bless you, my beloved. I thank God for blessing me with the massive privilege of being your rector for all these years. Toots and I are thankful to have been part of this holy and very quirky family and I am thankful to be yoked to you in Christ forever. We love you more than you’ll ever know. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! 

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon originally preached on Easter 3B, Sunday, April 19, 2015. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links below before you read the sermon. This is important stuff for Christians living in any age, especially today. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 3.12-19; Psalm 4.1-8; 1 John 3.1-7; Luke 24.36b-48.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we read in St. John’s gospel the story of Jesus appearing to his disciples that first Easter evening. Today we read of a similar appearance of Jesus in St. Luke’s account. If these two stories report the same incident, St. Luke adds some new details that St. John omitted, details that give us further insight into Jesus’ resurrection body and what it foretells. But why should we care? What difference does Jesus’ resurrection make for us who live almost two thousand years later? One hint comes from our epistle lesson. St. John tells us that when Jesus is revealed we will be like him for we will see him as he is, and this is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

As St. Luke makes clear in our gospel lesson, the risen Jesus was no spook or ghost. Jesus suddenly appeared to his disciples and St. Luke tells us they were terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost. But Jesus was no ghost as he went on to demonstrate. Ghosts remain dead. Jesus was demonstrably alive. Ghosts don’t have flesh and bones as Jesus had. Neither can they eat food as Jesus did. And it is to the glory of the gospel accounts that they clearly reject the false notion that equated the risen Jesus with being a ghost.

Neither was Jesus’ body a resuscitated corpse in the manner of Lazarus or the widow of Nain’s son, both raised to life by Jesus. Their mortal bodies, while being brought back to life, would die again because they remained mortal and powered by flesh and blood. St. Luke, on the other hand, makes it clear that things were somehow different with Jesus’ body. To be sure there was continuity with his mortal body as demonstrated by the fact that his hands and feet still bore the wounds of the nails that had pierced him on the cross. And yes, Jesus was able to consume food the way we do. But there were significant differences. First, Jesus appeared to them suddenly, apparently out of nowhere, suggesting that his new body had properties that made it equally at home in heaven (God’s dimension) and earth (our dimension). Once heaven and earth are fused into a new creation as Revelation 21.1-7 promises, there will be no need to flit back and forth between the two dimensions as the resurrection narratives in the gospels clearly indicate Jesus did. How else to really explain his sudden appearances and disappearances?

Second, Jesus’ resurrected body was not always recognizable. Despite the fact there were some in the room to whom Jesus had previously appeared, no one apparently recognized him at first. This was also the case with Mary Magdalene in the garden, with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and with the encounter by the Sea of Tiberius. Why weren’t the disciples able to recognize their Lord immediately? Was there something manifestly different about his resurrected body? We aren’t told. But it remains a distinct and reasonable possibility. And Jesus himself suggests this is true when he said to his disciples, “While I was still with you.” Jesus was obviously with them at that moment, but in a fundamentally different way. Clearly Jesus had gone through death and emerged on the other side in a way nobody else had done previously, and in doing so had inaugurated the in-breaking of God’s new world on the old.

This, frankly, is just as hard for us to wrap our minds around as it was for the first disciples of Jesus. Like them, we really want to rejoice in this new reality but are terrified to do so because this concept is so radically different and new from our current worldview that is shaped by sin and death, and it poisons us. The resurrection narratives also fly in the face of much current false teaching about what constitutes an afterlife and heaven. The resurrection accounts flatly contradict the current gnostic and/or Platonic teaching of our day, sadly found in some Christian churches, that eternal life is all about a spiritual, disembodied existence rather than a new creation in the manner of Jesus’ resurrected body, or the various versions of reincarnation that deny the NT’s clear teaching about eternal life in God’s new world where heaven and earth are joined together, and where there is a real future and a hope.

I can hear some of you now. That’s all well and good, Father Maney. Fascinating even. But who gives a flip? What’s the point? The point is this. As long as we keep the resurrection disconnected from its source, namely Jesus, its promise and hope will appear to us empty and ridiculous. But when we connect the resurrection to Jesus as our Lord himself attempted to do for his disciples when he opened their minds to what the Scriptures said about him, we can start connecting the dots and this brings us back to what St. John says in our epistle lesson: We will be like Jesus, even if what that is hasn’t been revealed to us fully. But we do have some clues.

First, as we just stated, we will be like him in his resurrection body. This doesn’t mean we will share Jesus’ body with him but rather when our mortal bodies are raised from the dead and we are reunited with them, we will have a new body patterned after Jesus’ body. It will be impervious to sickness, infirmity, madness, sin, and all the other maladies that currently afflict our mortal bodies. So why is that important (besides the obvious)? Because it means creation matters to God. We matter. God created us with a body, mind, and spirit and each dimension counts in God’s economy because we are redeemed in toto. And if creation and we matter, it means there is a built-in purpose for living. More about that in a moment. Bodily resurrection also means that one day we will get to look into the eyes of our Savior who loved us and gave himself for us so that we could share in his present reality and future hope. What a moment! Not only that, we will also get to look once again into the eyes of those we have loved but lost for a season. Think about it. Don’t we all long to see our loved ones again, to see them smile, to hear their voice, and to embrace them? Who among us wouldn’t give everything we have for the opportunity to look once again into our loved ones’ eyes as well as the one who made it all possible in the first place—Jesus? We don’t know if we will be able to do this during the intermediate state between our mortal death and resurrection. But St. John tells us plainly here that we will get to do so when our Lord Jesus is revealed and the new creation comes in full.
And for anyone who has suffered a serious illness or watched a loved one waste away from a deadly disease or struggle with infirmity or madness or addiction or dementia, with all of its dehumanizing and degrading effects, think about what the hope of resurrection promises with its vision of a sin-free, evil-free, and perfect world inhabited by God and us with our transformed and beautiful human bodies? Here is real hope for the future, and hope is not to be sneezed at because without hope, we shrivel and die. So our lessons today give us a glimpse of our future reality as it breaks in on this sad old world that is so badly marred and damaged by sin and evil. Once we can wrap our minds around the reality of this promise and connect it to Jesus so that we know it actually happened and will happen again on a much grander scale, we no longer have any reason to fear or disbelieve, but only to rejoice in the goodness, love, mercy, and power of God the Father who created us in his image and redeemed us to be his people forever.

But that’s the future. What about now? Both St. John and St. Luke tell us. Second, when we make Jesus the center of our world, we are transformed, not only physically as at our resurrection or when we are healed, but also spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and morally. As St. John tells us here and elsewhere, we really are God’s adopted children by virtue of Jesus’ blood shed for us on the cross. And because we are bought with Christ’s own dear blood, our call is to become like him. St. John has spent a good part of this letter warning us not to be deceived and to encourage us in our new life in Jesus. He has warned us not to be deceived by those who claim that there is no such thing as sin or that sin doesn’t really matter, or by liars who deny Jesus is the Messiah and the antichrist who denies the Father and the Son (1 John 1.6, 2.22-23). He warns us not to believe those who claim that we can know God without knowing Jesus because they deny that Jesus is the very embodiment of God. In short, St. John warns us not to be deceived by those who do not know God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and who therefore try to make up their own reality that suits and justifies their evil and/or misguided ways.

St. John warns us about these things, not so much to tear down the deceivers but to help us see their teachings as the false and empty things they really are. And now in today’s lesson we see St. John starting to encourage us. Why settle for tofu when we can have the choicest filet?? No, St. John says. Because we are God’s children bought with the price of the Son’s blood, we will share in all that Jesus has so that when he appears we will be like him. This is why St. John goes on to make the remarkable (and troubling) statement that no one who abides in (i.e., no one who has a real relationship with) Jesus sins. This is true because Jesus does not sin and we who are tied to him become like him. St. John clearly doesn’t mean that Christians do not sin. That would contradict what he previously said about sin and flies in the face of experience. It also contradicts what he tells us elsewhere, that when we do sin we have Jesus as our Advocate. Rather, what St. John has in mind is that as we are transformed by Jesus in the power of the Spirit, we abandon our sinful patterns of living and start to imitate Jesus, so that he and his will are at the center of our decision-making and lives, not our selfish and proud ambitions and desires.

This should make perfect sense to us in light of God’s promised new world. If we are being shaped to live in that world by virtue of our relationship with Jesus, it means we have to learn new patterns of living characterized by love, mercy, grace, forgiveness and the like that are compatible with God’s new creation rather than clinging to our old patterns of living in God’s good but fallen world and characterized by anger, hostility, pride, mercilessness, and the like.

This is why Jesus tells his disciples and us to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his Name to all the world. We are to do this because we are the recipients of God’s forgiveness and by the healing and transforming love of Jesus are enabled to leave our former unproductive lifestyles for a new one that promises our transformation and healing. We see this played out in our NT lesson. Peter and John had just healed a paralytic to the astonishment of the crowd and now they are telling the crowd their secret. It was not by their own power but by the power of the Author of Life, Jesus of Nazareth, and faith in his name. For you see, whenever we let Jesus get a hold of us, transformation of all kinds always follows. Sometimes it happens in immediate and spectacular ways as when the paralytic got healed (and some of us do). But more often than not, it happens in gradual and almost imperceptible ways. And there’s an additional bonus. Living our life in the manner Jesus lived his means that we will always find meaning and purpose for living because we are living in ways that God always intended for us when he created us, as well as how we will live in God’s promised new world when it comes in full.

A moment’s thought ought to help us see the reality of this truth. Think of the seemingly intractable problems in our world with its hatred and war and injustice. In every case we hear voices clamoring for us to believe that it is the fault of one side exclusively. But that is never the case. The problems in the Middle East are not caused exclusively by Jew or Arab. Both sides contribute. And until there is repentance on the part of both sides, i.e., until both sides admit their hard-hearted and stubborn refusal to acknowledge their role in the dispute so that each has a basis to forgive the other, the warring madness will continue. The same thing is true with race relations and the emerging issue of religious liberties versus gay rights. Or consider those families who refuse to forgive a killer, even when the killer is executed. There can be no closure or healing where there is no forgiveness and we see this expressed consistently by those who are asked if the killer’s execution brought them closure. We can also see it on the faces of those who steadfastly refuse to repent and forgive because they are fueled by their own anger, for whatever reason. There is a hardness to their features that develops and they tend to grow old before their time. It is a sad spectacle to watch. No wonder the Bible warns us consistently about the deadly effects of sin! It literally does make us sick and kill us. But as Jesus’ people who are powered by our Easter hope with its call to repentance and the forgiveness of sins, we are to bring his healing love to bear on these people and situations (and others closer to home), both through our prayers and in our words and actions, all the while proclaiming that in no other Name can real healing and transformation occur. By Jesus’ life we find life and so can the world.

None of this is easy, of course, because the human condition is very complex and because there are sworn enemies out there who hate us and want to deceive us (and worse). To counteract the dark powers and their minions as well as the various circumstances of life that beat and weigh us down and cause us to become so distracted that we forget our resurrection hope, Jesus himself reminds us what we must do to keep him at the center of our world. We are to search the Scriptures regularly and diligently to learn the story of how God is rescuing us and his world from evil, sin, and death, a rescue that finds its culmination in and through Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are to search the Scriptures to remind us that Jesus is also our risen and ascended Lord who rules over his world, mysterious and improbable as that seems to us at times. We are to feed on our Lord at his Table each week and find him in our fellowship and worship. Doing these things will allow us to stop and take the time to reflect and remember that we are Easter people who have Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.