Acts 9: 1-20, Psalm 30, Revelation 5: 11-14, John 21: 1-19

Well here we are.  My last Sunday at St. Philip’s.  It is hard to believe I must say.  I have so many memories wrapped up in this church, the building and this community.  I grew up here, this is part of my home, my grounding and now once again my leaving place.  As a child, I used to play on the street out front for hours on end, build snowpeople, rake the leaves, cut the grass, kick a soccer ball, cause trouble, annoy the neighbours.  When I was quite young I was once hit by a car while crossing the street just out here, a moment I reflect upon quite regularly.  I attended Sunday School, with mixed success here at St. Philip’s.  My father spent much of his ministry here and his ashes now rest in the Memorial Garden.  This place is home on a whole variety of levels.  But it is also a place where God is known to me. A place among a number of others where the distance from God seems less.  A thin place, a holy place, a grounded place, a place of the Holy Spirit.  A place to go fishing, as Peter in the gospel reading of today might have said, fishing for the presence of the risen Christ.

I meet many people each day and when I talk about what I do for a living I am often surprised at the reaction.  Some people are not quite sure how to respond when I say that I am a priest.  Some are absolutely intrigued and some are mildly curious.  But I am convinced as we seem to be inundated with more and more electronic and technological devices in our lives that the personal and spiritual aspects of our lives are becoming more deeply sought after, a growing curiosity is happening around us.  Push aside the screens and the keyboards and experience real human interactions and the real presence of prayer.  Push aside social media on a phone and share a conversation with someone in the same room and the same situation.  Being more aware of the presence of God is also becoming more aware of who we truly are and how we connect and interact with others.  The two are not separate things but interwoven, interconnected and intermingled.  And so finding places where we encounter the risen Christ is vital to us and the world of today.  Places like this one, St. Philip’s, where we go fishing as the gospel of today alluded to, places where we encounter the nearness of God and name our deepest, most sincere longings, the ones that define who we are, our relationships, our heart and soul desires and how God interacts and intersects with our lives.

Today in the gospel it seems that Jesus’ followers had had enough of sitting around and analyzing what in the world had just happened.  It did not seem to make any sense at all and the more they thought about it and tried to reason it, the more ridiculous it sounded.  God was in the sky in a place called heaven.  The Messiah had come down from this place and had been with them but then the cross came along and all became shattered.  All this careful laid out definition of God became shattered and hidden.  All was not right anymore, all that they thought they understood and knew made no sense.  God would not die on a cross.  God would not then come back to them in life beyond the grave.  Their definitions and understandings of how everything was supposed to work had been whipped out from under them.  And so they needed to get on with the things they once knew, to what grounded them and fed them.  Peter announced, “I am going fishing.” Returning once again to the place where he first met Jesus.  Once there things did not go as planned.  First of all they could catch no fish. Then the voice of a stranger broke their frustrated silence.  Then suddenly their whole understanding of God reformed in their minds.  Their fishing suddenly revealed what they had been truly searching for, that ultimate relationship that fed all relationships.  God was not distant and aloof.  God was among them.  Death was not the final say, sin was not the final say, predictable actions of God was not the final say, God hidden from their sight was not the final say.  God was amongst them was to be their grounding and understanding of who God is and was and would be.  Faith was not about following a set of narrowly defined doctrine but knowing the resurrected Christ calling to them.  That fishing place was a holy place, a place to encounter the nearness and wonder of God in their ordinary, everyday life.  This was an important and vital change.

And that voice of the resurrected Christ had a clear message.  When Jesus first returned to his disciples his words were Peace be with You.  The peace that buoys and binds and enfolds in light.  Peace be with you, not idle words but a deep message of knowing God’s love and God’s forgiveness.  And today in the church, the message from Jesus that we are to carry forward triumphantly is not one of division or elitism and rising above others.  No it was the message given to Peter on that beach long ago but meant for all time:  “Simon do you love me?”  “Feed my lambs.”  “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”  “Tend my sheep.”  “Simon, do you love me?”  “Feed my sheep.”  Three times so there was no mistake, the same number of times he prayed “Peace be with you.” in the reading last week.   With the peace of God in our hearts we are called to feed Christ’s sheep.  Who are Christ’s sheep, Christ’s lambs?  Well you are sitting beside them, you met them on the way to church this morning, you will be with them all this week.  They are all people.  We are called to live out a peace-filled compassion, a hope for justice, a plea for loving our neighbour, a guidance to see the risen Christ not only in the pages of Scripture by the sea of Tiberias but amongst us here and now.  Christ, the risen Christ, is in our midst.  We share that in the bread and wine of the Eucharist but also in how we live this day here and now.

The mantle of the great disciple of Peter they say has been passed down from pope to pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and also to us through apostolic succession.  This was part of what Pope Francis has written about how to live out the peace of Christ and living out feeding Christ’s sheep.  He said this at Easter:  This is the culmination of the Gospel, it is the Good News par excellence: Jesus, who was crucified, is risen! This event is the basis of our faith and our hope. If Christ were not raised, Christianity would lose its very meaning; the whole mission of the Church would lose its impulse, for this is the point from which it first set out and continues to set out ever anew….  In Jesus, love has triumphed over hatred, mercy over sinfulness, goodness over evil, truth over falsehood, life over death.

That is why we tell everyone: “Come and see!” In every human situation, marked by frailty, sin and death, the Good News is no mere matter of words, but a testimony to unconditional and faithful love: it is about leaving ourselves behind and encountering others, being close to those crushed by life’s troubles, sharing with the needy, standing at the side of the sick, elderly and the outcast… “Come and see!”: Love is more powerful, love gives life, love makes hope blossom in the wilderness.

I have seen that here at St. Philip’s on so many occasions.  We take seriously our calling to follow this resurrected Christ who invited Peter to feed his sheep and may that always be true.  You have taught me an awful lot about how to do this.  You have shown me on a vast number of occasions what this means in the love and support and encouragement you have shown me.  You have shown me that these are not mere words but holy words in the way you loved and cared for me and my family as the children have grown up here, at the time when my father died, at the times when things were not going well, at times when we have looked carefully at and grown in outreach, fellowship, worship, music, stewardship, concern and truly living the faith.  Community and compassion reign here as God’s Holy Spirit moves amongst us.  That Spirit has opened doors, shared in our concerns and led us to some fabulous places.  I thank you deeply and sincerely for revealing this to me in so many beautiful and profound ways and may that always be the case for St. Philip’s well into the future.  Thank you, God bless you and may you always be a community centred on this risen Christ urging you to Feed his sheep.