I celebrated Easter on a beach once. I saw Jesus on the shoreline my first Easter in South Africa.

I didn’t recognize him at first.

It was dark, so very dark as I left my apartment in Durban, South Africa. I didn’t live in the safest part of town and I thought about that as I crossed the street in the silent hush. Not even the birds were up. The hospital next door had yet to collect lines of patients waiting to be seen.

I crossed the road shivering and then was on the beach, waiting. Waiting in the chill.

I had been in the city for three months and only just found a church that I felt I could belong to. It was a small church that met in a school’s leaky all purpose room. The church decided to have a sunrise service on the beach. So there I was, waiting in the dark.

Eventually our small but faithful congregation sat in a semicircle looking to the eastern horizon and waiting. We started our liturgy, we sang, we heard the words about an empty tomb. The sky grew pink. And when we took communion, broke the bread and shared the cup, the sun rose.

It was joyful, hopeful, but Jesus wasn’t there, at least I hadn’t seen him yet.

After the service, we had a potluck breakfast on the beach, grilling up eggs and boerwors, South African sausage, potatoes, and more. We ate. And then looking at the food that remained and then about thirty yards down the beach, one young man said, “those folks slept here all night, I think, let’s make up some plates for them.”

We took plates of food down the beach to some young men, ragged with sleep and what looked like hard lives, and offered them breakfast. That’s when I saw the risen Christ.

The disciples have fished all night, fruitlessly. A figure on the shore calls to them to cast their nets on the other side. They do and all of the sudden the catch is so large it nearly sinks the boats. The disciples recognize Jesus and Peter throws himself in the water, he is so eager to get to shore.

They meet Jesus around a fire as he says to them “come to breakfast.” And bringing their fish, they sit together, break the bread, and are fed.

Jesus’ words to Peter, words to us, tell us three times: “feed my sheep, tend my lambs, feed my sheep. As I have fed you, go and feed others. So that all who hunger shall be filled. Feed my sheep.”

When we celebrate Easter we can get caught up in the details of resurrection.  There are questions of what happened and theological mysteries. Was it a bodily resurrection or was it just Jesus’ spirit that rose? Who saw him first, Mary or the other disciples? How was the tomb opened?

But that’s not what Easter is about. That’s not what matters. Jesus gets to the heart of the matter when speaking with Peter.

“Do you love me?” He asks. Do you love me? Do you want to follow me? Do you want to participate in the ministry of love that I’ve been showing you for these past years? Do you love me?

“Then feed my sheep.”

Jesus doesn’t ask Peter what he believes, doesn’t give a long explanation about atonement or even about eternal life. No, Jesus says, if you love me, feed my sheep. That’s what following me is all about. Feed my sheep.

Jesus is concerned with what happens now. I have fed you, go and feed others.

This is not an easy thing. Perhaps that is why Jesus asks Peter three times. No, really, do you love me?

When Jesus appears on the shoreline the disciples had already slipped back into their old life of fishing. What else would they do, could they do? The life of change and promise and hope and healing was all over. Jesus was dead.

Until this stranger shows up, until Jesus appears, and says, try the other side of the boat.

“Remember, we’re doing a new thing here.” He feeds them and says remember, it’s about feeding my sheep.

I know the Romans are after you and your families feel disgraced by you.

            Feed my sheep.

I know it’s hard not having me around, I miss you, too.

            Tend to my lambs

I never said it was going to get easier but I know you can do it.

            Feed my sheep.

Sister Fabiola Fernandez, a member of a Kansas City religious order says, “When you feed people, you give life…Food is life. Feeding those who are sick or lost isn’t only a physical act, it can also be a spiritual one.” (Kansas city star, xxx)

It also is a political one. Feeding people makes certain unequivocal statements about human worth and basic human rights, not a universally accepted sentiment.

In 2006 the city of Orlando followed Las Vegas in banning giving food to homeless telling grassroots organization Food Not Bombs to cease and desist in their weekly meals. (they didn’t are were consequently arrested.) Miami is currently considering a ban on feeding another person unless a you have training in doing so. Meaning, if you give half your lunch to the man pushing the shopping cart, you could face a $300 fine.

South Caroline gubernatorial candidate Lt. Governor Andre Bauer spoke about his platform recently saying “the government can’t afford to keep giving money away without requiring something in return. He said, ‘My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed,’ You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." (wistv.com)

That’s not what Jesus said.  “Feed my sheep.”

Not that it is easy. Those of you who participated in the hunger meal last week, what did most of you get: rice, half a cup of rice—those of you who represented the vast majority of the people of the world. Hunger is huge problem, sometimes seemingly an intractable problem. Our voices protesting to our own government, feed people, can seem lost in the midst of overwhelming military budgets, state budget cuts and the quadrupling of folks on food stamps in the past few years. (Only 11 percent of those folks are homeless, the rest were working Americans, seniors living on a fixed income, children. Those who lost their homes.) (feedingamerica.org)

“Feed my sheep,” says Jesus. It is in feeding people that we meet the risen Christ.  As we are fed by Jesus message of love, inclusion, hope and, yes, bread and fish, so we are then sent out to do the same.

Sara Miles writes in her book Take this Bread, I learned how central food is to creating human community, what eating together around a table can do. As a wise bishop would tell me… ‘there’s a hunger beyond food that’s expressed in food, and that’s why feeding is always a kind of miracle.’” (23)

Eating together does satisfy the basic need of hunger. We eat we are full. But it also satisfies the need for community, connection. Why do you think super Thursday is such a successful event here at Edgewood? I submit that it doesn’t have so much to do with the food.

Eating together also creates solidarity. I cannot see you as the recipient of my charity in the same way as if we jointly sit down and eat together.

My home church in Berkeley, CA participated in a rotating homeless shelter during the rainy winter months. Each church set up a temporary shelter in their social hall or basement for a week which hosted women and children who were bussed there and back each day. Church members took turns providing the meals, staying overnight, and playing with the kids.

As volunteers we were encouraged to help serve the meal and then sit down and eat with our guests. We were all awkward. What could we talk about? Not homes or jobs or movies?

One night I provided the meal and made a Mexican casserole that was part recipe but mostly invention. The meal was popular and a couple of the women asked for the recipe. I sat down and confessed that it was mostly a recipe I carried around in my head and adapted depending on what I had in the fridge. We chatted about cooking and feeding our families and became not the server and the served, but women trying to solve the perennial problem of what’s for dinner.

Feed my sheep says Jesus. And he didn’t just mean food

“Christians have held onto the promise that Jess would be among them when they ate together in his memory. They ate believing that God had given them Christ’s’ life and that they could spread that life through the world by sharing food with others in his name” (Miles, 76)

That’s where we meet Jesus. In food pantry. When gleaning. When running a meal over to Loaves and Fishes. In one more letter to the president about hunger.

As we grow an extra row in the garden for the food bank

As we advocate for supporting an expansion of food stamps

As we volunteer for the Garden Project

Jesus has risen. He meets us on the shoreline of our life, in the dark, in our despair, in our hope, in our hunger. He feeds us and sends us out: feed my sheep.

It is an easy question we can ask ourselves at the end of each day:

            Did I feed Jesus’ sheep today?

                        Or was I back to fishing on the wrong side of the boat again?

Feed my sheep.

Tend my lambs.

Feed my sheep.

Christ is risen. Alleluia. Amen.