Breaking Open the Tomb of Hope

Easter 3C: Acts 9:1-6; Psalm 30

Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

May 4, 2025

              Good Morning, St. Aidan’s. This Sunday brings us into the third week of Eastertide, the Great Fifty Days in which we are steeped in the glory of Christ’s resurrection. The stories and messages of these days are offered to us as a gift, a balm, an inspiration, Good News in the midst of bad news. These stories invite our hearts to be warmed and strengthened, and this week particularly for the eyes of our hearts opened to resurrection reality lived out here and now. The collect for the third Sunday of Easter speaks of “the eyes of our faith,” envisioning faith as an ongoing transformation of perception.[1] It also references the Emmaus Road story from Luke’s Gospel in which suddenly the eyes of the disciples were opened and the risen Christ was known to them in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:13-35). We will hear that story on this Sunday next year. Last year we heard a different Lukan resurrection story in which the risen Christ appeared among the startled disciples as they discussed the Emmaus Road encounter. He showed them his open hands and feet, saying “see that it is I myself,” before eating a piece of broiled fish (Luke 24:36-49). In this Sunday’s Gospel (John 21:1-19), together with our first reading, the risen Christ continues to train our perception (and broil fish). But he does so with a different emphasis: he shows himself in contexts and in ways that are unexpected and jolting, quiet and dramatic, calling us into the grounding of a love that cannot be shaken, a love that transforms.

              I love our passage from the Gospel of John— its quiet, its challenge, its humanity. Unlike the other resurrection stories I’ve mentioned, or that we’ve heard in Eastertide thus far, this one appears to take place well after the initial flurry of appearances.[2] The disciples seem to have returned to their daily occupations, now in the wake of resurrection reality, fishing being a prominent and symbolic practice of discipleship throughout the gospels. But is this a repetition with a critical difference, as critical theorists might put it? Is there a perceptible change in the disciples’ practice? Out all night, their actions seem to have been an exercise in futility: they have caught nothing. Just after dawn, about one hundred yards away, a stranger calls to them from the shore, perhaps seeming at first to taunt them. “You have no fish, have you” (21:5). He even calls them “children.” What went through their minds at first? So dejected, so exhausted – perhaps – they simply act when this stranger suggests the seemingly inane advice of casting the nets on the right side of the boat (presumably they had earlier cast it to the left). Now as the nets suddenly teem, their eyes are opened—not all of them all at once, but as in John’s empty tomb scene, prompted by the Beloved Disciple who perceives immediately: it is the Lord![3]

              For years I have been amused by Peter’s scrambling reaction to this realization. He puts on clothes, for he was fishing (relatively?) unclothed. Then he jumps into the water and makes his way to shore, leaving the other six disciples to haul in the catch. His actions so clearly express love, and a childlike one at that, like running to a beloved parent who has unexpectedly come home from away. We don’t hear what happened when he slopped onto the shore – did he throw himself at Jesus’ feet or hug him? Instead we are shown the scene: a charcoal fire awaits them with fish on it, and a prompt, “bring some of the fish that you have caught,” followed by an invitation, “come, have breakfast” (21:9-10). Resurrection discipleship does not simply deplete them, it feeds them. It invites them deeper into practices of nourishment and care, all of which is founded on love.

              This foundation might seem obvious, but for Peter it is not – not quite, or at least not initially. The exchange that unfolds between Jesus and Peter from this point on can have an unsettling quality. Why does Jesus need to persist in his questioning? Is it not obvious that Peter loves him? Peter certainly thinks so. And as I’ve said, Peter’s actions up to this point demonstrate his love in rather obvious, outward ways. Yet, like an especially perceptive, probing spiritual director, Jesus presses Peter to a deeper consideration. It isn’t that Jesus fails to believe Peter – as Peter says, “you know I love you,” even “you know everything—you know I love you” (21:15-18). Jesus does not simply agree and let Peter off the hook. Yes indeed, he does know. But there was always an unsettled, grasping, anxious quality to Peter’s love. It does not rest secure. Ancient and contemporary commentators on this scene have noted the parallel between Jesus’ asking Peter three times if he loves him, and Peter’s earlier denial of knowing Jesus three times in the lead-up to Jesus’ passion.[4] One could read this reminder, if it is that, as a harsh rejoinder of sorts. I see it rather as the risen Christ holding up a steady mirror, showing how Peter’s earlier denial of Jesus was rooted in a terror of losing his beloved Lord. If I disconnect, perhaps the horror of his impending loss will not be as overwhelming, as raw, Peter may have thought. But the love was always there. The question, Do you love me? invites Peter to stand secure in that love, as in the words of our Psalm: “While I felt secure, I said, ‘I shall never be disturbed. You, O God, with your favor, made me as strong as the mountains’” (Psalm 30:7). But Peter was not feeling that, and this is what Jesus invites him to rest in: the sure and certain knowledge of a love that abides between them, that cannot be broken, not by betrayal, by separation, by loss, or by death.

A contemporary icon I recently saw entitled “Peter Do You Love Me” situates the moment of this encounter not at the shore but on the water.[5] Jesus stands upon it, grasping the hand of Peter whose feet are partially submerged, just below the water level. It splices our scene together with the moment in the Gospel of Matthew, just after the miraculous catch when a storm had come upon the disciples in a boat (Matthew 14:22-33). Jesus had walked out to them across the water, amid the storm, and approached them, saying, “take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” Peter, in the boat, had said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” So Jesus had said, “come.” And by God, Peter did, walking on the water until the wind kicked up and suddenly terrified looking around he began to sink. Jesus gripped his hand, asking him, “why did you doubt?” Now here, he asks, do you love me? In the speaking of his reply, like the renewal of a covenant, Peter knows, professes, takes in, is invited to stand, to rest secure in that love. You know that I love you. I know that I love you.

This is the mode of resurrection perception we are invited to receive today: love. Be rooted in it. Abide in it with sureness because from that loving foundation we are called into action. Jesus’ responses to Peter emphasize this: feed my sheep, tend my sheep, and again feed them. The whole sequence is a sign of the impact of risen life in the here and now: keep fishing, cast the net on the other side even if it seems futile; be nourished by that catch; and do all of this together in the midst of a world replete with danger and hostility, in the midst of your own real fear. How can you do this? Because you have opened the eyes of your faith such that you know – you know – divine love. You know that you are loved by the God who made you, by Christ who redeemed you, by Christ’s collective body of which you are an indispensable member – each and every one of you. Many things in this world may seek to undermine that knowledge but keep the eyes of your faith open. Be grounded in love.

The challenge of this charge reminded me of a scene from a book called Silver on the Tree, the last in a series by one of my favorite fantasy authors, Susan Cooper. It is a contemporary (as of the 1970s and 80s) retelling of the Arthurian saga, with forces of good seeking to defeat the oppressive power of evil lurking in the world, cutting across time and space. In the particular scene that our readings made me think of, the protagonists have finally reached the king of a lost world. This king was not only a ruler but a maker – a deeply creative artisan who years before had created a unique, beautiful, and powerfully magical sword. The powers of good were very glad for its making and sought its release at the right time. The powers of evil could do nothing to stop its emergence except to stoke fear and doubt in its creator. Evil forces

showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing – fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to accomplish anything of great worth – fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such endless fears, that are the doom of people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds. And gradually, he [the king, the maker] was put into despair. Fear grew in him, and he escaped from it into lethargy – and so hope died, and the terrible paralyzing melancholy took its place. He is held by it now, he has held captive by his own mind. He and the sword Eirias that he made, with him. Despair holds him prisoner, despair, the most terrible creation of all.[6]

But then, having received this intelligence about the state of king whom the forces of good were now to approach to seek the sword, they came into his presence. And the king greeted them from out of that place of despair, still locked away, wondering why on earth he shoud respond to these visitors. But the child who was among the visitors started to reach him. And the king remembered that he had had a dream about such a child. And in this dream the child had taken “a few steps forward and knelt before the king.” And now the child in the present moment started to fufill that dream. The child said,

There are 5 barriers to be broken to reach the crystal sword, and they are told in five lines that are written in letters of gold fire over the sword itself. Shall I tell you what they are? 

The king stood looking down at him with a life waking in his eyes that had not been there before. “And I said, Yes, tell me.”

“And when I have told you,” [the child] was looking up into his eyes in a closeness like an embrace, no longer quoting now, “then that will be a falling away of the fifth barrier, Majesty, is that not so? For we have come through four of them already – the words are witness. And if I can break open your despair, which is the tomb of all your hope, then will you let me take the sword?

[The child] slowly stood up before him, and took a breath, and in the Welsh music of his voice the words came out as a lilting chant.

I am the womb of every holt,

I am the blaze on every hill,

I am the queen of every hive,

I am the shield for every head,

I am the tomb of every hope –

I am Eirias!

And [the king] let out a long, long sigh like the sound of a wave of the sea washing over sand, and with a sudden crash the carved wooden screen that stood against the wall of the Dome fell apart in two pieces, and lay on the ground. And glowing in golden letters on the banded wall they saw the lines that [the child] had just spoken aloud, clearly written, and below them on a slab of slate lay like a bright icicle a crystal sword[7]

Like the child in Silver on the Tree, the risen Christ breaks open the tomb of every hope. The risen one meets us in our fear, in our disheartenment, in our despair that can all too easily become a fortress imprisoning us in despair, shutting away our hearts, quenching our love. Do you love me? He asks, not because he thinks we do not, but because he knows the ways we each in our own particular ways have put up barriers to that love. He knows everything, as Peter said. He knows why we may have the barriers we do. And he invites us to step out with him in a faith grounded in love, a love whose origins are divine, a love that cannot be taken from us. That love can become the ground of our action, the work Christ calls us to build upon in this world, the creative offerings that each of us uniquely and collectively brings into this beautiful, broken world. On this day, Christ stands before us on the border of earth and sea. He stands us with us, grasping our hands on the water. He manifests himself, showing how resurrection works in the world: as irrepressible life, kneaded into the dough of creation, as anchoring resilience that keeps us rooted in love even as we cry out in sorrow and anger, as a call to continue to love the world even as it breaks our hearts. It looks like the bond of a love that cannot finally be broken. May we reach forth for that love in the days to come, nourished by it, launched anew into the loving practice of the risen Christ.

[1] The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 1979), 224.

[2] Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999, 2003), 229.

[3] Schneiders, 227-228

[4] Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI (New York: Doubleday, The Anchor Bible, 1970), 1106, 1110-1112.

[5] https://www.altarandhome.org/products/peter-do-you-love-me-icon-holy-card-pcm532

[6] Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree (New York: Atheneum, 1977), 161-162.

[7] Cooper, 198-199