It might not feel it, this beautiful morning in the beautiful season of Easter, but in the Gospel it is a dark night, and the darkest of all nights, the night of the Agony in the Garden and the abandonment of Jesus by His Disciples. The Gospel reading begins ‘When Judas had gone out’. There is a direct correlation between Judas going out and the darkness and the shadow of the coming evils of the trial and death of Christ and the knowledge that love conquers evil and the Son of God illuminates even the darkest night.We are reminded of the words of Jesus, ‘The light has come into the world and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil’. So the darkness is to be dispelled by a new commandment ‘that you love one another as I have loved you’. But what is new about it? And why does this commandment remain new for the world two thousand years later? Why do we come here to this building to worship the source of love and to offer ourselves to the love that overcomes death and darkness?First of all, because love is more than a commandment — it is a gift and it points to the gift of Jesus to the world by his Father. It’s a gift that we are asked to offer to each other here as well, and to model beautifully, in whatever way we can. Doing things lovingly is reflects the glorification of Jesus through his passion and death and passes that on to us and our children, and through his passion and death we too will be glorified with the glory given by the Father to Jesus. But more, through this the Father himself will be glorified. This is the point of our love, to glorify God in and through each other and to enfold ourselves into that love. In a short while we will have our Annual Parochial Council Meeting at which we look at what happened last year, elect new officers for the coming year and, above all, seek new ways to love one another and our community. This is the guiding principle of our faith and our existence here – to love.Secondly, the new commandment of love is the expression of a covenant made with the world through the shedding of the blood of Jesus. The distinctiveness of this covenant is that it is an act of total self giving, an act of sublime generosity which reveals to us the Father’s generosity in giving us his Son.If we keep this covenant of love, we are told, ‘all will know that you are my disciples’ — so we will in fact make the Spirit of Jesus present for all time to and within the world and specifically here, in this place. But we need to ask, how do we show this love? How are we changed by it? How does it make its home within us?We need to reflect upon how John seems to understand the Trinitarian life of God, the relationship of the Son to the Father, and the relationship of the Father and the Son to the Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian life of God is not something ‘static’ — it is intensely dynamic. The Father sends the Son, and through them both, the Holy Spirit. In Baptism we receive the Holy Spirit and, as it were, make a return journey. Through the Holy Spirit we are united with Jesus and we ‘return’ with him to the Father. There is a processionality of love, through the creation wrought by the Father, the incarnation of the Son and the life of the Holy Spirit, living and moving in each other and catching us all up in that complex but infinitely simple dance of love, or hope and of new creation and creativity, in which we all find our home and our gifts may be used to the full, holding nothing back, not even our own selves, but giving ourselves to each other in a ceaseless act of love and surrender to the greater, cosmic, divine heart.We are brothers and sisters of God and like Jesus we can call God ‘Abba’ Father; and we are made divine, not by nature as with Jesus, but by the gift of the new covenant of love which is greater than any other covenant and remains new and is made anew in every sacrifice of praise on our altar and on the altar of our heart.When we love deeply, we know the sensation of that love with reciprocity. Likewise with God, this occurs through the Word of God, the life of the Church and through the Holy Spirit constantly making us new and calling us to life in Him and with each other. This love makes it possible to show the love of God to the world, because we will bear it so clearly in our own lives that it cannot be hidden, if we will just allow ourselves to be lost in love.We become a light that dispels the darkness of evil, a light to the world. ‘By this will all people know that you are my disciples.’ But it will cost, as it cost Jesus, as there is no love without the cross, but this easter, we can rejoice that He has overcome the world and all things can be made new. Here is love, offered to us, all we have to do is take it.
This Sunday we call ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’ and for good reason, but it is also sometimes reduced to a plea for clerical vocations, which debases the readings we hear and leads us on to the dangerous clericalism that equates clergy with shepherds and everyone else as sheep. It is not to be so with us! The early church used the Good Shepherd, rather than the Cross, as its symbol and it is certainly the best known image in the New Testament with roots deep in salvation history: David, the boy shepherd, was chosen to be king of Israel; he was the anointed leader of the people of God, to guide and lead them towards God and his kingdom.The same early Church in its ministry of living the Good News of the Kingdom of God had perhaps encountered difficulties - what is true and what is false teaching. Great concern for the people of God is expressed; if the people are misled, if they are persuaded by a false voice, they could be prevented from attaining the Kingdom of God – in other words, how do we know, in the midst of the confusion of this world and its many competing voices even in the wider church, if it is the voice of Christ we hear most clearly?This concern was expressed also in last Sunday’s Gospel, when Our Lord appeared again to the Twelve after his rising again from the dead. The answer we were given is love. If you love me, you will feed my sheep, and the answer is so critical that Peter is made to give it three times, the third of which contains his confession of faith ‘you know everything’ – ergo, you are God. Last Sunday’s Gospel was also about the large catch of fish and about eating; Jesus prepared fish and bread and invited them to eat, this reminds us that the shepherd leads his flock to where they can eat, grow and develop, not to infantilise or spoon feed them.The Apostles would also remember the last time they were with Jesus before his death, when they were with him on Holy Thursday, in the upper room for the last supper and the first Eucharist; he fed them, they were in communion with him, united. They would also, however, remember their subsequent behaviour, because Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him, and the apostles abandoned him. When Peter was asked three times if he loved him, he would have remembered that he denied him three times. There were problems in the early church as there are problems now, and they revolve around shepherds who are wolves, priests and bishops who had accepted the call to be shepherds and betrayed the trust placed in them. This great scandal reminds us of the universal call to share in the shepherding, the guiding of the Church, and that we are called to lead and serve at the same time, to be involved in the world as it is and to point it to how it could be, but to do so authentically, not as an elite semi removed from it. Smell of the sheep, as Pope Francis often said, be together, be one.When Pope Saint Gregory the Great was elected Bishop of Rome, he shrank from what he called ‘this intolerable burden’. But he did accept and became a great pastor. We now know that some who undertook the great responsibility of pastoral care were quite unworthy, that they betrayed the command given to Peter and the apostles to guide, lead, teach and cherish and led into darkness. Do not let this happen to you, question your shepherds and make sure you share that burden with them, you are not only sheep, but you are also shepherds, we are all partly sheep because we follow Christ, who gave us all a charge to love each other. I was so happy to hear Pope Leo XIV on Thursday night, when he said, ‘To all of you, brothers and sisters of the whole world, we want to be a synodal Church, a Church that walks, a Church that always seeks peace, always seeks charity, always strives to be close especially to those who suffer’. Well, may God bless him and keep him.And as for wolves and predators, well, Jesus did warn his disciples that he was sending them out as sheep in the midst of wolves. And we have always suffered from a double danger, liable to attacks from the outside from wolves and robbers and from false shepherds or leaders within, who have agendas that are theirs and not Gods. You see, the Bible doesn’t say that bad things won’t happen to Christians. It’s not ‘if I walk through the darkest valley” but “Even though I walk I through the darkest valley” which seems to suggest that it is more of an occupational hazard than a rare occurrence.Don’t treat the Good Shepherd as one of the Emergency Services coming to our aid when we’re in a bad place. Our Good Shepherd is with us as we wander through the green pasture as well, and life is so much more blessed when it’s lived in the knowledge that God’s presence is with us always and when we love each other.‘And surely I am with you always,’ says Jesus in Matthew 28. ‘..to the very end of the age.’ And as Pope Leo said, ‘This is the peace of the Risen Christ: a disarming peace, humble and persevering, it comes from God, God who loves us all unconditionally. God loves us, God loves you all, and evil shall not prevail. We are all in God’s hands. Yes, we are all in the hands of the Good Shepherd and we are all called to share in that work.
The setting is familiar, the Sea of Galilee, a place that echoes with memories of the disciples’ first call. Yet now, they are in a very different situation. The risen Christ has appeared to them, and still, they seem unsure of their next steps. Peter, perhaps reflecting on his denial of Jesus, returns to what he knows best, fishing. The others join him, but their efforts yield nothing. It’s in this moment of fruitless labour, when the night seems longest and the nets are still empty, then at that moment, that the risen Lord appears on the shore. And isn’t that often the way with us too? It’s often when we most feel like giving up, when work is getting us nowhere, when relationships are strained or faltering, when health is failing or finances feel stretched to breaking, it’s in those quiet, weary spaces that Christ draws near. Not in the glare of certainty or strength, but in the soft light of dawn, on the shoreline of our lives, when we are most aware of our need. Reading this Gospel takes me back to my first year of ordination as a Deacon. My theological college, St Stephen’s House had arranged a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and one morning, we too set out on a replica fishing boat to sail the waters of Galilee. It was an unforgettable experience… the waves lapping gently at the shore, the silhouettes of the hills that have stood unchanged for centuries, and the sense of, in this case, sailing, where the disciples once had.At the end of our time on the water, we gathered on the shore for a fish breakfast. Sitting there, we read this very scene from John’s Gospel. What struck me was the timelessness of it all. The landscape remains largely untouched, and those same hills would have witnessed Peter and the others hauling in their miraculous catch… a moment when exhaustion gave way to abundance, and failure turned to fulfilment.Our New Testament tutor reflected on the words of a theologian called Albert Schweitzer and his well-known phrase: “He comes to us as one unknown.” Words inspired by our Gospel, and are taken from the closing lines of his seminal work ‘The Quest of the Historical Jesus’. His phrase reminds us that just as the disciples on the shore of Galilee initially failed to recognise the risen Lord, so too are we often slow to recognise Christ’s presence in our own lives. Yet, like the disciples, we are invited to discover Him afresh, not as a distant figure of history, but as the living Lord who meets us in the ordinary, everyday moments and calls us to deeper relationship.And so the call to follow is not a one-time event, it is a continual process of renewal, of returning to Christ, especially when we feel lost or uncertain. Discipleship is not about having all the answers, but about remaining faithful to the Lord who calls us. Like Peter, we may falter, but Christ’s grace restores and renews us, equipping us to begin afresh.For me, this Gospel is a story of fresh starts, something we all need from time to time. For Peter, this moment was deeply personal. After his threefold denial, he is given the opportunity for a threefold affirmation of love. ‘Do you love me?’ Jesus asks, not to condemn, but to restore. This speaks of a moment of healing, where the risen Christ reaches into Peter’s heart, not to dwell on failure but to renew his sense of purpose... ‘Feed my sheep.’For us, too, Christ offers fresh starts. There are times in life when we feel like the disciples, returning to old routines, uncertain of the way forward. Perhaps it’s the weariness of daily struggles, anxiety, the slow mending of a fractured relationship, or the quiet ache of feeling adrift. But Christ comes to meet us in those moments… not only offering forgiveness, but the grace to keep going, to begin again.Think of the times in our own lives when we’ve needed a fresh start: the first day in a new job after the old one ended in disappointment, the patient, the hope-filled act of trying again after failure, the long, slow work of rebuilding trust after words were spoken in haste. These moments mirror Peter’s encounter with Christ… reminding us that we are never beyond the reach of God’s renewing love.For the early Church, this Gospel would have resonated deeply. In Acts, we see the apostles boldly proclaiming the risen Christ, even in the face of persecution. Their courage and conviction is rooted not in their own strength, but in their encounter with the Risen Lord… the same Christ who had met them, in their weakness, by the lakeside, and commissioned them to continue His work. For the early Church, this was a genuine, living source of hope, assuring them that their efforts, however small or humble, were part of a much larger plan.Today’s Gospel invites us to recognise Christ’s presence in the ordinary. Just as He met the disciples on the shore, He meets us in the familiar rhythms of life… in the beauty of creation, in the kindness of a friend, or the quiet strength of a whispered prayer. The resurrection is not just an event to remember, but a reality to live. The Risen Christ continues to come to us, often in ways we least expect.Here at St. Stephen’s, the Eucharist is our ‘shoreline’… the meeting place where human need and God’s grace touch. Here, at the altar, Christ feeds us with His very self, and sends us out, once again, to be His witnesses in the world. And just as those hills around Galilee remain unchanged, so too does Christ’s love endure, offering us the ability to begin again, again and again.As we reflect on this Gospel in the days ahead, let’s hear Christ’s invitation to cast our nets once more… even if the night has been long, even if the nets feel empty. Let’s embrace the fresh starts He offers, and follow Him with renewed hearts and minds. Amen.
Have you ever been asked to do something that you felt eminently unqualified to do? Maybe a step up in a job or a massive project upon which hangs a huge amount of prestige?Imagine how the disciples felt when Jesus visited with them that first Easter evening. They were essentially hiding from the Judeans, in a locked room. Jesus came and stood among them – speaking peace into a troubled situation. The disciples are then tasked, by Jesus, to go spread the Word, to forgive sins (by the power of the Holy Spirit). Yes, Jesus had sent them out before but this time it was different And note that Jesus was not asking if they wouldn’t mind doing all this…He’s telling them to do so.They can only do this with the help of the Holy Spirit – Jesus’ breath, God’s breath enabling them to accomplish an otherwise impossible task. Jesus breathed on them saying ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…’God breathed life into Adam (gen 2:7) and man came alive.Now, at the beginning of the new creation, God’s restorative breath is breathed onto the disciples ‘making new people of them and through them, offering this new life to the world’.As Christians we are to continue the work that Jesus began and that can often be very exhausting. We should ask God regularly for a filling of the Holy Spirit to empower us to fulfil our calling. The Holy Spirit is a beautiful and powerful part of who God is. We need Him in our lives as a conduit to become who God created us to be. Without Him, we are powerless. So it was with the disciples.But while all this is happening in that locked room, there is someone missing – Thomas is not with the rest of the disciples when Jesus first appears to them. Tom Wright describes Thomas’ absence thus: ‘the dour, dogged disciple who suggested that the disciples might as well go with Jesus, if only to die with Him (Jn 11:16), who complained that Jesus hadn’t made things anything like clear enough (Jn 14:5) just happened to be somewhere else on that first Easter day.’ We are not told where……So, when the other disciples excitedly told him what had happened, I wonder what went through his mind……When Thomas finally does see Jesus, and Jesus speaks to him, was he, Jesus, really rebuking him or not? There are differing schools of thought about this. That Jesus is being rather gentle with Thomas almost in a kindly father chastising an stroppy son type of way. Or that He is actually really rather disappointed in Thomas and his doubting. And that doubting is actually shameful, unwanted in this world (David Helm in ‘A Conversation withJesus on Doubt). Personally, I much prefer the notion that Jesus is not rebuking Thomas. It is suggested that some people do, actually, need doubt before they can believe. Doubt can lead to questions, which in turn lead to answers, which if accepted means that doubt has done good work. But when doubt becomes stubbornness which then becomes prideful lifestyle – then doubt has harmed faith. If, or when, we doubt – let’s let our doubt deepen our faith as we continue searching for the answers.Thomas is invited to put his fingers in the nail holes in Jesus’ hands and to put his hand into the wound in Jesus’ side, just as Thomas himself had said he needs to do before he believes. But as soon as he sees and hears Jesus, this need to actually feel the wounds is gone and he openly accepts that this is indeed the risen Christ – ‘My Lord and my God’ – acknowledging the fully human and fully divine Jesus.The link between Thomas’ seeing and our believing is John’s writing, as he explains at the end of today’s reading. If we trust in the veracity of what he has written in this pretty epic gospel we have belief based on eyewitness testimony – actual written testimony. Tom Wright writes ‘the paradox of faith – touching is possible, seeing is enough but believing is best of all.’Let us pray:Lord Jesus Christ, it is hard sometimes to believe. In the face of frustrated hopes and broken dreams, of sorrow, suffering and death, we too, like Thomas, can find ourselves doubting. Help us then, even when faith is hard, even when it’s a struggle to hold on, to put our trust in You, knowing that You will not fail us. Amen.
