Celtic Christian Spirituality reading list

Celtic Christian Spirituality reading list.

(The list below incorporates suggestions from Herbert O'Driscoll, Marcus Losack, Stephen Ott, and Katherine Doyle, S.M.
It is neither a required reading list nor is it exhaustive; it is intended to offer some possible choices for background reading.)


Spirituality – pilgrimage & exploration

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O'Donohue (HarperCollins, October 1997)

Celtic Threads: Exploring the Wisdom of Our Heritage by Padraigín Clancy (Dublin: Veritas, 1999)

The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination by Esther de Waal (Doubleday, 1997)

Every Earthly Blessing: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition by Esther De Waal (Morehouse, 1999)

Glendalough: A Celtic Pilgrimage by Michael Rodgers and Marcus Losack (Morehouse, 1997)

In Search of Sacred Places: Looking for Wisdom on Celtic Holy Islands by Daniel Taylor (Bog Walk Press, 2005)

Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality by J. Philip Newell (Paulist Press, 1997)

Living Between Worlds: Place and Journey in Celtic Spirituality by Philip Sheldrake (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1995)

The Music of What Happens: Celtic Spirituality - A View from the Inside by John J. Ó Ríordáin C.Ss.R. (Dublin: Columba, 1996; US: Saint Mary's Press, 1996)

Soulfaring: Celtic Pilgrimage Then and Now by Cintra Pemberton, O.S.H. (Morehouse, 1999)

The Wisdom of the Celtic Saints by Edward C. Sellner (Bog Walk Press, 2006)

With an Eagle's Eye: A Seven-Day Sojourn in Celtic Spirituality by John Miriam Jones, S.C. (Ave Maria Press, 1998)


Spirituality – anthology & compilation

Celtic Christian Spirituality: An Anthology of Medieval and Modern Sources edited by Oliver Davies and Fiona Bowie (SPCK & Continuum, 1995)

Celtic Spirituality edited and translated and introduced by Oliver Davies; with the collaboration of Thomas O'Loughlin (Paulist Press, 1995)

The Celtic Vision: Prayers, Blessings, Songs, and Invocations from the Gaelic Tradition edited by Esther De Waal (Liguori/Triumph, 2001)
Selections from Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1900).


History, myth & legend

Celtic Inheritance by Peter Berresford Ellis (London: Constable, 1985; New York: Dorset, 1992)

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill (Doubleday, 1995)


Memoir & biography

A Doorway in Time: Memoir of a Celtic Spiritual Journey by Herbert O'Driscoll (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985)

George MacLeod: Founder of the Iona Community by Ronald Ferguson (London: Collins, 1990; Glasgow: Wild Goose, April 2001)

Man of Aran by Pat Mullen (E. P. Dutton, 1935; M.I.T. Press, 1970)


Worship resources

A Celtic Primer: The Complete Celtic Worship Resource and Collection compiled by Brendan O’Malley (Morehouse, 2002)

Iona Abbey Worship Book by The Iona Community (Glasgow: Wild Goose, 2001)

Motion Pictures

Man of Aran written, directed and filmed by Robert J. Flaherty (Gainsborough Pictures, 1934)

Waking Ned Devine written and directed by Kirk Jones (Tomboy Films, 1998)


****


Early Irish history:

David Willis McCullough, ed., Wars of the Irish Kings: A Thousand Years of Struggle from the Age of Myth through the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Crown, 2000; Three Rivers Press, 2002)

Seumas MacManus et al., The Story of the Irish Race, Revised Edition (Devin-Adair, 1921)


An additional book on Celtic Christian Spirituality, by a collaborator on the Classics of Western Spirituality anthology of Celtic Spirituality (Paulist, 1999) is:

Thomas O'Loughlin, Journeys on the Edges: The Celtic Tradition (Orbis, 2000) in the Traditions of Christian Spirituality Series edited by Philip Sheldrake and co-published by Darton, Longman and Todd.


For fun, a children's book on Columba of Iona:

Jean Fritz, The Man Who Loved Books (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1981)


Picture books abound, and they include:

Dorothea Lange's Ireland (Roberts Rinehart, 1998) including photographs taken in 1954 and kept in the Oakland Museum of California.

and more typically

The Islands of Ireland, text and photographs by Kenneth McNally (W. W. Norton, 1978)

Jamestown

Notes for a homily on the 400th anniversary of the first worship service in the Jamestown colony in Virginia.

In the Deuteronomy passage (Deuteronomy 11:10-15) the people of God learn about the land of promise, how God gives the growth, if we keep faith with him.

The Kingdom of Heaven likewise owes its growth to God. God only knows, God only sees, what we cannot. Planting, nurturing, growth, and harvest, are all due to him.

From the smallest beginning he makes great things.

These would have been words of some comfort to the Jamestown settlers who, 400 years ago today, held their first worship service using the 1559 Book of Common Prayer.

Today we use the same psalter they would have, that of Coverdale, and the Authorised Version of the Scripture lessons, which built upon the versions common in their day.

The growth from small settlement to great nations would have been a vision of Promised Land to them. But they were not the first dwellers in the land. The Kecoughtan people were there. Their very presence and their hospitality would remind the settlers that it is God who gives the growth.

Keep his commandments, be steward to his lands, the lands he has given to your care, for you to dwell in, and then you will prosper.

It is quite a promise: keep my commandments and I will husband your growth: your growth as a nation and a people, and most of all, and above all, as a people of God.

May 14, 2007.

"TO THE TABLES, EVERYBODY, AND STUFF YOURSELVES!"

CEaster5


In the Errol Flynn movie "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) Robin gives Maid Marian a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. He escorts her to table at a clearing in Sherwood Forest. The poor, hungry, downtrodden, miserable people have gathered there, and from the king's deer they prepare a meal in celebration of their already-but-not-yet liberation from the tyranny of the High Sheriff of Nottingham, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and evil Prince John.

Spits turn, fires burn, and soon, all is ready. A great big man in a leather apron comes out to call everyone to eat:

"TO THE TABLES, EVERYBODY, AND STUFF YOURSELVES!"

Well. It isn't an exact parallel. They are, however, all sharing in the feast, high and low, rich and poor, alike.

What Paul had found at Corinth was different, and he admonished them:

For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! (1 Corinthians 11:21-22)

Paul is calling the Corinthians back to a true sense of the banquet of the Lord. He is calling them back to Peter's vision. Peter - and Paul - perceived that at the feast of the true king, nobody was left out. In the new order of the ages established by Christ, we receive the Great Commandment, "love one another." (John 13:34)

They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love.

Peter learned that nothing is profane that God has made clean. All creatures, everyone and all things, praise the Lord. (Psalm 148)

All things praise him. What God has made clean, you shall not despise, but accept and make welcome.

In the peaceable Kingdom of Heaven, all share at the table and share alike (Acts 2): not gorging themselves in the presence of hunger.

Twenty-four years ago a Franciscan named Neal Flanagan taught a New Testament Theology class. He talked about Paul's observation, that in the peace of God, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

Neal remarked that in the first century of our era, the Church dealt with the first distinction, between Jew and Gentile; in the 18th and 19th centuries, we confronted the second, liberty and slavery; and now we are dealing with the third. But Paul's list is not exhaustive. It may be that what we confront now is different.

As Martin Marty and Dean Baker have pointed out, each age has its own particular partial blindness. We look back on past ages and ask: how could they be so blind? Their prejudices look, in hindsight, quaint, absurd, and deeply tragic. But what will a future age see that we do not? What is our blind spot?

Peter had a vision: God gave Jews and Gentiles the same gift, "the repentance that leads to life." There goes that first prejudice. William Wilberforce, Frederick Douglass, John Newton, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the unnamed volunteers of the U.S. Colored Troops - all these opened eyes to the second prejudice, the discrimination between slave and free. And that blindness has begun to recede.

What is our blind spot? Could it be wealth and poverty, hunger and surfeit?

A hundred years from now, will anyone be able to comprehend the idea of sitting down for dinner without all being fed? Who are the hungry among us? Who is lacking sustenance?

Yes, spiritual as well as physical - but certainly physical. Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." (Luke 6:20-21)

Have we been as blithe as the first Corinthians and happily opened our picnic baskets and lunch boxes, sharing them among themselves, not sharing with the uninvited - because unseen - poor: the poor who have nothing to bring to the potluck but themselves, their own creatureliness?

[At this point I hold up a bed sheet imprinted with a pattern of African game animals, both grazers and hunters.]

And yet behold this sheet! Imprinted on it not the face of Jesus but the animals of Peter's vision: Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! (Psalm 148:10)

They are animals of Peter's vision - and ours, if our eyes are opened. All praise God - Jew and Greek, rich and poor, hungry and well fed, slave and free. All are to praise God: who are we that we could hinder God?

All are welcome at the Lord's Table. Come, eat, and be fortified for the living of the gospel.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:15-17)

Amen.


The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C - RCL:
Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

Holy Trinity, Willows
May 6, 2007
JRL+


Jon M. Walton, “Living by the Word: Dreaming in Joppa”, The Christian Century, April 17, 2007, Vol. 124, No. 8, p. 17.

watermelon seeds

When my brothers and I were growing up on the San Francisco peninsula, our Grandma Maxine came all the way out from Florida to visit us. She taught us two things, how to say the Lord’s Prayer and how to spit watermelon seeds. As she was putting us to bed, she prompted us to say our prayers – but we didn’t know any. “Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?” “No.” “Well, then, I’ll teach you.”

And she did. The next afternoon we were eating watermelon – and she asked us if we knew how to spit watermelon seeds. “No.” “Well, then, I’ll teach you.” She led us over to the edge of the lawn, where my father had just dumped some new fill dirt for the garden. We all stood there, Grandma Maxine and all us boys, spitting watermelon seeds out over the edge of the lawn. Then we went away and forgot all about it. A few weeks later, however, we had watermelon vines growing at the edge of our lawn.

I think it was the start of my brother Dave’s gardening avocation. And I think it planted something in me, as the Lord’s Prayer began to establish itself in my life.

We plant seeds through small deeds – and have them planted in our lives. From simple acts of kindness – or parenting – great things can grow.

Over the years of my life many small seeds have been sown.

Chuck, a kid in my class in elementary school, invited me to come with him to the Good News Club. You got prizes if you memorized Bible verses. I still remember some of them.

In tenth grade my neighbor Adrienne hosted Young Life meetings at her house, so I went to check it out. I was greeted with a warm welcome, and there I learned that I’ve got a friend in Jesus, and I began to accept that gift.

During freshman year in college, my roommate Scott invited me along to a Bible study – and there I met Joe and Deedie, Shannon and Richard and Bruce, all of whom became important nurtures of my growing Christian faith.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed – which is so small, but grows into something great and sheltering. It grows even behind our backs, while we are not looking – and suddenly there it is looming over us, giving us shade, filled with birds.

I have a problem in my garden. I have two small plants in pots that grew from seed, in one case a volunteer, in the other carefully nurtured from the minuscule. The two little plants are a saguaro and a redwood. In a few hundred years the saguaro could be 40 feet tall and weigh 10,000 pounds. And you know what happens with redwoods.

Trees are like green explosions in slow motion – we may not notice what is really going on because it is happening at a speed and with an elegant silence we do not perceive.

When I left the publishing industry – I had been in the book business since graduating from seminary – I left South Bend Indiana in a freezing rain in February, and drove hundreds of miles across the brown dry crust of the continent until I crested Tehachapi Pass. There for the first time in 2000 miles I saw green, in the great valley spread below me as far as I could see. And when I got to the Sonoma Valley there was mustard flowering between the rows of vines.

Something had been left behind, left in the earth; something, too, had been buried, and then, weeks later, something new began to grow. I did not know what it would look like. I only knew that it was growing.

We may not like the ways things are growing. We are not called to. We are simply called to be faithful, to care for what God planted, and to spread some seeds around.

We are called to grow, not to bend ourselves to others’ liking, but holding to the truth of our making, to grow into the image and likeness of God, into the fullness of the stature of Christ.

This may be hard in today’s church – as I gave this sermon for the first time we heard of the distress of many at General Convention as our bishop-elect was interrogated in confirmation hearings. We want the kingdom to go forward, to spread the good news. As I completed the sermon our archdeacon was waiting in the wings to tell us good news things were also emerging at the convention: Bishop Katharine had just been elected Presiding Bishop.

A few weeks later, I had the chance to thank some one I had meant to thank for years. Amy was a star of Christian music – and then she got a divorce. I thanked here because she did not try to bend herself into the shape others demanded of her, for their approval, but continued to be true to herself. She is still a singer.

Mark 4.26-34
for 6/17/06 12.45pm at Trinity Cathedral Sacramento
And again, for preaching workshop at CDSP, July 19, 2006
JRL

a handful of raisins

A Handful of Raisins

One of my college professors went on sabbatical in the Holy Land and came back and told us this story. Donald Nicholl and John Thornton, both on sabbatical at Tantur Ecumenical Study Institute outside Jerusalem, went running together. The hills there are hot and dusty, and the paths are covered with that loose gritty dirt that slides under your feet. One morning Donald and John were running pretty fast when they came to a place where the path turned sharply and plunged quickly down a steep slope. They went pell-mell down the path, unable to stop, sliding on that loose soil. As they came precipitously down the hill they passed a group of men, day laborers, toiling up the hill on their way to work. There were three or four of them. John flashed past them, then Donald came through. As he passed the last man in the line, that man reached out his hand and clapped into Donald's palm a handful of raisins. "You look thirsty," he said.

Donald just couldn't stop telling the story. He was greatly impressed by what he saw as the spontaneity of the gesture.

What I am impressed with, as I recollect the story now, is - the man was ready. He was as prepared for that act of spontaneous generosity and sympathetic charity as the grapes are to be picked from the vine when their time is ripe. As the grapes grow on the branch and the branch abides in the vine, so his heart was prepared, making room for the charity of God through faithful and obedient love - which came to fruition when grapes, picked and dried, were passed from one man's hand to another: a handful of raisins for a thirsty stranger.


Consider the Appleseed

What does it mean to 'bear fruit, fruit that will last'? While I was puzzling that out, I picked up a book a friend had recommended, "The Botany of Desire". What I learned is that an apple never "comes true" from seed, that is, the seed never produces a perfect genetic copy of the parent tree-not even close. Grafts, yes, are copies, made by hand when a particular tree's fruit - the Delicious, the Jonathan - is found peculiarly desirable. But apple seedlings each carry their own unique code, and every generation produces millions of new possibilities. Every apple seed is full of surprises - it contains the genetic instructions for a completely new and different apple tree. If not for grafting, every apple in the world would be its own distinct variety. And so it is for each new generation of seedlings.

The botanical term for this variation is "heterozygosity" - and apples have got it, even more than we have. It is the apple's genetic variability, its inescapable wildness, that accounts for its ability to flourish in new climates and places. Wherever in the world apple seeds are planted, new varieties arise, possessing qualities among them that allow apple trees to bloom where they're planted and bear fruit across the world.

In this profligate variegation of fruits, this wildness, is the preservation of the world: each bearing branch and each fruit that grows uniquely embodies the gifts of its making, - just as each of us Christ-bearers brings a new combination of gifts and a new way of embodying the message of God to our own place in the world. The fruit we bear, each one, is a unique contribution to the whole, and carries in it millions of possibilities for the next generation. In combination with the gifts of others, the fruits of our love and obedience produce results beyond our mortal ken - in the kingdom that lasts, that is the reign of God.

Lesslie Newbigin, in his commentary on this gospel, explains that the fruit that lasts, the fruit that we - disciples, friends - are to bear is love manifested in obedience, and obedience manifested in love.

His command is this: "Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:12-13, NIV)

What that would look like we know in full through the death of Jesus on the cross. We know it also through his reflected image in the lives of the saints. Jonathan Daniels was a student at the seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts - his fieldwork parish was Saint Clement's off Broadway in New York City. When the call went out for volunteers to go to Selma to march with Martin Luther King for civil rights, he got on the bus. And he spent the summer in Alabama, working in a voter registration drive. He wrote back to Saint Clement's - I've seen the letter there - explaining what he felt he had to do and what he knew it might cost him: his life. In a small town he was arrested along with his comrades. When they were released on bail, four of them went to enter a local shop. A man with a shotgun met them at the door, and told them to leave or be shot. After a brief confrontation, he aimed the gun at a sixteen-year-old student, Ruby Sales. Jonathan pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun himself. He was killed instantly.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

In 1998 Ruby Sales graduated from the Episcopal seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2000 she launched SpiritHouse, a non-profit organization, which aims to achieve a non-violent and just world through exploring the legacy of American violence, racism and sexism.

Love manifested in obedience, and obedience manifested in love, the fruit that lasts, is simply the life of Jesus, the true vine, being made visible in the world. The disciple has only one task, to abide in the vine; the grower does the rest. And the fruit will come, in the fullness of time.

I see that ripeness, that readiness, made manifest in a handful of raisins that Donald Nicholl received on the trail. And I see that readiness in the story of Ruby Sales and Jonathan Daniels, when a more terrible, more final, gift was given. As Jesus in his obedience made manifest the profligate love of God in pouring out his life for the world, so his disciples show forth that love, obeying his command, loving one another, and reproducing that life poured out in the world.

Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the abundant love of God, and the fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit, abide with us all. Amen.


Sources:

Jonathan Daniels & Ruby Sales:
http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/Jonathan_Daniels.htm
http://www.crmvet.org/mem/danielsj.htm
http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=607
Lesser Feast and Fasts (Church Publishing, 2003)

Donald Nicholl, recollections from a lecture in Cowell College, Santa Cruz, in the 1970s.

John Thornton, recollections of an interview at Trinity Church, San Francisco, in the 1980s.

Peter Kirkup, conversation, yesterday, about our teacher Donald Nicholl.

The Botany of Desire : A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan (Random House, 2001). [Thanks, Linda.]

The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel by Lesslie Newbigin (Eerdmans, 1982)


A sermon on the Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B RCL

Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento. May 21, 2006
Holy Eucharist 12:45 p.m.
JRL+

naked into the night

Notes for a homily on the feast of Saint Mark

A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked. (Mark 14:51-52)

The New Oxford Annotated Bible (1991) notes, at 12.12, that John ... Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas as far as Perga (12.25-13.13; compare also Mk 14.51n.). At 14.51 it notes, "The young man's identity is not disclosed. Perhaps he was sleeping in the house where Jesus ate the Last Supper and rose hastily from bed to follow Jesus to Gethsemane. If the house was that of Mary, the mother of John Mark (where the disciples met at a late date; Acts 12.12), it is possible that the young man was the Evangelist himself.

The New Interpreter's Bible notes, for 14:51-52: Who the young man was and what he represents is the subject of much speculation. Is he connected to the "young man" at the tomb in 16:5? Is the linen cloth he wears connected to the "linen cloth" wrapped around Jesus' body in 15:46? Or is the young man who runs away naked simply the concrete narrative illustration of flight, as Judas is of betrayal and Peter is of denial? Some scholars connect the young man to passages in the Secret Gospel of Mark, mentioned in a disputed letter of Clement of Alexandria, discovered in the 20th century. At 15:37 it notes that John Mark, a cousin of Barnabas (Col 4:10), was an assistant on the first mission (12:25; 13:5), but he returned early to Jerusalem (13:13).

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Feast of Saint Mark, April 25: Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 2 or 2:7-10; Ephesians 4:7-8,11-16; Mark 1:1-15 or Mark 16:15-20.

Almighty God, by the hand of Mark the evangelist you have given to your Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God: We thank you for this witness, and pray that we may be firmly grounded in its truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearABC/HolyDays/Mark.html

James Kiefer, "Mark the Evangelist 25 April NT"
(http://www.missionstclare.com/english/people/apr25.html)

joy comes in the morning

Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30: 6)


This has been a strange week. It began with a scene of mortal fear: 33 dead in Blacksburg, Virginia.

It continued with Earth Day, a plea for renewal for our whole planet – in the face of real danger.

And the gospel gives us an extraordinary scene.

153 fish. An experience of God’s abundance, a foretaste of the feast that will never end – as Sarah Dylan Breuer puts it – proof that into our world of scarcity, of competition for limited resources, even of active and open warfare for scarce and coveted goods, into this world comes a sign of hope.

Jesus is here, with us, ready to join us at the table he sets before us. Breakfast is ready: are we? Limitless joy, limitless peace and joyful, eternal life are there for us. It is morning; and yet we live in darkness.

We are born free, yet we are everywhere in chains.

The psalmist pulls it all together for us. The fear we can experience, in a setting as mundane, Herbert O’Driscoll points out, as a doctor’s office or the corridors of a medical building, can open a trapdoor into the underworld beneath our feet. Sudden news of mortality grips us.

Like the psalmist we may find ourselves pleading to God, promising, promising anything, if only this cup of sorrow can be taken from our lips.

And then joy comes, like the break of dawn, and our sorrows and fears are gone.

Don’t worry—it’ll all work out, a friend told me (self-mockingly). Revelations says so. And of course that is what John is telling us.

What he shows us is a scene beyond dreams: all of creation, all creatures that ever were or will be, on their knees before the throne of God. And there in front of them, behold, the Lamb of God.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!

The cost of glory is revealed—vulnerability and sacrifice. What better creature to show us those treasures than a lamb?

Next to this the Gospel scene is mundane, down-to-earth indeed.

After all the breathless tumult and painful striving of Holy Week, and the shocks of Easter, the disciples have scattered like sheep before a storm. Who will gather them together again?

Indeed, after all this craziness, Peter – and who can blame him – says, simply, “I’m going fishing.” And six others say, “We’re going with you.”

When life shatters, it is human to want to return to what we know, to take control. We want to go – back to Galilee, back to what we know, back to what we know how to do, back to normal. But –

Things are never the same.

The guys go fishing all right, but they don’t catch anything. Without Jesus, nothing happens.

Then they do see something normal. A man is on the beach. Breakfast is cooking over a campfire – they can smell that it’s ready.

But before they get ashore, he calls to them: “Put down your nets right there.” Close in to shore, right near him.

They do – and with him suddenly there is abundance beyond belief, beyond need, beyond hope.

Beyond hope, Jesus brings them overflowing grace – the gift of God’s mercy shines into their lives like the first ray of dawn after a long and lonely night.

Weak, wandering, lost – the disciples are gathered in like strayed sheep. Their shepherd is calling to them. They come to anchor.

And then he turns the table around on them. Now, Peter, you are to be the host. The shepherd. Do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I do. Then you look after my sheep.

You, who have shown your own weakness, your own fear, your own folly, you are the best qualified. You know what it is to be lost – and you know what it is to be found.

Feed my sheep.


CEaster3RCL
Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

Sarah Dylan Breuer, “Living by the Word: Unlimited good”, The Christian Century, Vol. 124, No. 7 (April 3, 2007), p. 19.

Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Today: Reflections on the Readings of the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Volume 2 (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre), 2001, p. 64-71.

Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento
April 22, 2007
JRL+