John 21: 12-17 and Psalm 23 - Sunday, April 26, 2026

 

Just before I start, I need to set the stage.  Today’s sermon is not set in a general “somewhere”; this one is situated in a particular place.  So imagine with me the risen Christ, and some of his disciples, sharing breakfast on the rocky beach near Tabgha, in Galilee.  In this place, Jesus had walked and talked with the disciples and now the risen Christ and Simon Peter have some one-on-one time, talking about Peter’s role in the future. 

a sermon preached at Osoyoos United Church, April 26, 2026

It is so hard to come back, when you have really messed something up.  Not just made a blooper-reel mistake, but made a choice that impacted someone else’s life… or said things that have fractured a relationship… or completely missed something that you really should have responded to, conveying a lack of friendship or caring to someone else.

In today’s gospel reading, Peter is in such a position relative to Jesus.  Peter, who had been so bold throughout their time together, had suddenly turned timid in the final week of Jesus’ life.  Although I can’t for the life of me imagine what difference it would have made to Jesus’ fate, all four gospels want us to know that three times Peter had the opportunity to proclaim that he was a follower of Jesus; and three times he lied, disowned Jesus, denied any knowledge of the man.

Knowing this failure of nerve, let us hear once more the exchange at the beach of Tabgha between the Risen Christ, and Peter:

¹⁵ When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” ¹⁶ A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” ¹⁷ He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 

Is there perhaps a connection, between Peter denying Jesus three times, and Christ repeating this question three times? Bible commentators over the aeons answer a hearty “yes”: three denials need to be countered by three affirmations.  Christ forgives Peter, Christ has something big for him to do, yet there is a sense that the wounded relationship between them has not completely healed.  Reconciliation is not easy.  Recovering from faithless words or actions is not easy.  Forgive and forget is a lovely saying, but does not often describe the human condition.

In a blog post, Pastor Steve Oliver points out a simple but noteworthy thing in this scripture:  in their early days together it was Jesus who gave the disciple Simon a new name:  Peter, which means, “the rock.”  Simon Peter was his foundational guy, the rock (Matthew 16:18) upon which the Church would be built.  But in this beautiful post-resurrection scene of Christ and his friends sharing breakfast on the beach, Christ does not address him as Peter-the-Rock; he rolls it back, and calls him Simon, Simon-the-fisherman.  Maybe it’s just me, but if I were Peter I think that hearing Christ abandon that new name, a name expressing confidence in him, and going back to his old name, his “deadname”, might well have stung more than being asked the same question three times.

There is in this encounter, another word swap.  The first two times Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me?” he uses the Aramaic equivalent of the word AGAPE to describe the kind of love he is talking about, and Peter answers with a different word for love, the Aramaic equivalent of PHILEO.  As described by Huffington Post contributor Gary Edmonds, agape, the love word Jesus spoke, “is not based on merit of the person loved, but [is] unconditional,…kind and generous. It continues to give even when the other is unkind, unresponsive and unworthy. It only desires good things for the other and is compassionate”.  Agape is the selfless love of service, a full-on sacrificial love offered for the benefit of another. The word that Peter uses in reply, however – Philéo – is what we might call brotherly love, or friendship.  There’s nothing wrong with phileo, we all need friends, but what Peter is offering is way below what Christ was asking him for.

So after two times of asking if Peter will be self-giving and Peter saying he’ll be fraternal, the third time, Christ relents and uses the same word Peter had been using. It’s as if he realizes that he’s not going to get agape out of Peter, so phileo will do.  J.B. Phillips, in his New Testament translation, follows this line of logic, with Jesus twice asking, “do you love me” and Peter answering “yes, I am your friend”; the third time Jesus asks, “are you my friend” and, according to Phillips, Peter is hurt, not because he’s been asked the same question three times, but because Jesus let go of his hope that Peter might be capable of that higher Christian love, agape.

We see here, that even in this foundational relationship, which was such a force during the earthly ministry of Jesus, things can go sour. Sour, but not beyond recovery.  Jesus did what Jesus always does – then, and now: he provides a path forward.  No, things weren’t like they used to be. Christ didn’t call him Rocky anymore, and when asked to love without reserve, Simon Peter could only muster friendship – but that didn’t end his friendship with Jesus,.  And while Peter’s response to Christ may have been underwhelming in the moment, he did become that rock on which the Church was built. This, to me, is what the reconciling love of Jesus looks like: it owns the truth of what has gone before, and in light of that truth, finds a path. Sometimes there is no safe path forward, especially when there has been abuse, but there are so many other times when factors like embarrassment and anger and resentment and ego and fatigue block the gracious actions of the Holy Spirit, and if we can get past those things, we needn’t remain stuck in the same place forever.   

This ability to find a pivotal future for Simon Peter, is traditionally known as “the restoration of Peter.” [this stone Church in Galilee is named for it]. Here, Christ establishes with him a fresh start, the kind of fresh start that many of us have relied on repeatedly in our family relationships, the kind of repentance-based hope we turn to as the Church as we do the work of reconciliation with First Nations peoples.   Three times Peter denied, three times he failed to grab hold of the invitation by Jesus to love with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, yet Jesus would not take no for an answer.

Consistently, repeatedly, in their time spent together at Galilee, Jesus focused the attention of the disciples on those in their midst who were most vulnerable: those who were held captive by harmful social conventions, by lifelong infirmity, or by unjust financial structures, and Jesus implored his followers to be people of God’s liberating love.  Often, Jesus had to repeat himself as the disciples – especially as portrayed in Mark’s gospel – are not the brightest bulbs in the package, but these were the people he had chosen to bring healing and wholeness to those in need.

In this, Jesus aligns himself and his disciples with the long-standing religious tradition of portraying spiritual leaders – and, at times, God – as shepherds who would keep the vulnerable little lambs out of harm’s way.   He’s naming a reality in his world and ours, that the forces of inequality intentionally create very precarious conditions in some people’s lives, people whose lives are already shaky. Like sheep who need a shepherd to make sure they don’t tumble down a cliff, or to protect them from wolves, Jesus recognizes that there are particularly vulnerable ones in this world who need to be noticed and loved and attended to.  While the 21^st chapter of John was talking only about people, in the industrialized world we live in, I think Christ would include the soil, the water, the atmosphere, endangered plants and creatures, in the list of those at peril because of human greed.   And in relationship to these vulnerable ones, Christ says to Simon Peter, “Feed my lambs, Shepherd my sheep, feed my sheep.”  Love the vulnerable ones.   Guard them, help them find safety, establish justice, don’t completely ruin this planet, remember that every person and, in fact, every living being is beloved in the eyes of the Creator.  

When we think back to the social status of a shepherd in the days of Jesus, we may remember just how low a position it was.  Some ancient sources suggest that the testimony of a shepherd was not allowable in court, so low was the common opinion of them, and even more than that: in the economy of the day, the value of a sheep was probably higher than the value of a shepherd.  So when Christ commands Simon Peter to be a shepherd to the sheep, this is not a high-status proposition; it was a call to service.  Just as God, the good shepherd, was said to be present even in the valley of the shadow of death, even when we are surrounded by enemies, so Peter and those following after him in Christ’s name were to put themselves on the line.  And no, not just pastors or priests or ministers, though Peter is regarded as the first Pope; this is what Christ expects of all who claim to be disciples, all communities of faith bearing his name, all who have heard in the brave, reconciling words of Jesus the distinctive ring of truth.   Christ has a special affinity for all who are imperiled, and those of us who bear his light in the world are called to deep, non-judgmental service: practical, personal, and yes, even political. 

As we gather this morning, as disciples of Christ Jesus, we imagine the relationship between Jesus Christ and Simon Peter, and its rhythm from reliability, to doubt, to reconciliation and new possibility; and as we do so, we go deep in our own experience: our places of brokenness, our gratitude for healing, the places where we have work to do.  We see in this primary relationship between Jesus and his right-hand man, Peter, that even when we miss the mark there is the opportunity to be restored.  At this time when we seek new horizons in the name of Jesus, may all this be so, in the unfolding of your lives, and our life together.  Amen.  

References cited:

Edmonds, Gary. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/agape-and-phileo-love-we-need-both_b_58a1e5d6e4b0cd37efcfeb23

Jarrett, Ed. https://www.christianity.com/wiki/jesus-christ/what-did-jesus-mean-when-he-said-take-care-of-my-sheep.html

Oliver, Steve. https://holyjoys.org/restoring-the-fallen-peters-restoration-john-211-19/

Phillips, JB. The New Testament in Modern English. © 1958.

 © 2026, Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

Acts 2: 42-47 - Sunday, April 19, 2026

a combined Territorial Acknowledgement, Candle Lighting, and Reflection, from a worship service at Oliver United Church on Sunday, April 19th, 2026, prior to a congregational meeting. 

Symbols and symbolic actions mean a lot in Church life.

In his seminal book, Dynamics of Faith, Theologian Paul Tillich wrote that a symbol “participates in that to which it points.”   A symbol goes beyond mere metaphor; when something has symbolic power, it reaches beyond this material realm and touches the Holy.

Each Sunday morning, three candles are lit at the beginning of worship.  This was a practice that was already well-established by the time Shannon and I got here in the fall of 2024. As we prepare for a congregational meeting in which we imagine what it will be like to leave this sanctuary and attach ourselves to another house of Worship, let’s reflect on the symbolic power of each Candle.

+++ 

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Calls to Action, following years of first-hand testimony.  Then in May of 2021, news broke about the ground-penetrating radar at the grounds of the former Indian Residential School in Tk'emlúps.   In both these events, the brokenness between First Nations people and those who have come since was revealed in the starkest of terms.  Canadians in general and Churches in particular were called to account.

Lighting this red candle is a symbolic act by which we reach into God’s holy intention for reconciliation, inviting God’s healing power to light the path to a new future.  Our intentions do not erase the harm, but they do believe the testimony, and that is a start.  Lighting this red candle, week after week, symbolizes a desire for forgiveness and relationship with First Nations, and it challenges us to do more to embrace all populations harmed by the actions or the silence of the Church. When we light the red candle, we say no to any oppressive actions sinfully undertaken in Christ’s name: we seek forgiveness and a right path forward, lit by God’s own desire for reconciling grace.

And, as we prepare to move from one building in the town of Oliver to another building in the town of Oliver, the red candle and our territorial acknowledgement also remind us that in both places, we gather on the traditional unceded land of the peoples of the Syilx Okanagan Alliance.

 +++

A second candle is lit, which I have been calling a candle of connection.  This is a lovely symbol of Christian connection with our siblings in faith at Osoyoos United Church.  With time, though, it became evident that this community of faith had its own warm, genuine local connection, as many friends from St. Edward the Confessor Anglican Church frequently come to worship with us here.  Symbols need not remain static, so time the symbolic meaning of this candle broadened and deepened as it acknowledged not only our sister congregation in Osoyoos, but our growing connection with the St. Edward’s community of faith.   Christ’s calling from the 17^th chapter of John, “that all may be one,” has come to take on even fuller symbolism..

On June 30^th of this year, just a few weeks from now, the Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge comes to an end, freeing each of these two congregations to more fully immerse itself in God’s new and specific calling for each place.  We part as friends, and I expect the congregations will continue to do some practical things together, and Oliver United may find new connections with other nearby United Church congregations – in OK Falls, Oasis United in Penticton, Naramata Community Church, Summerland and Cawston, to name a few.

These broader connections symbolized by this camera take us right back to the origins of the Church.  In those days, people came from all walks of life, some drawn by the generous sharing of financial and material resources, some drawn by ecstatic expressions of holiness and prayer.  That breadth of belief and practice would have been exciting at times and frustrating at times. The reading that led off today’s service, in the 2^nd chapter of Acts, speaks of the togetherness that reached beyond differences, and the willingness to pool resources for the greater common good.   What a concept that was… and wouldn’t it be an amazing witness to the world if the Church could show such loving unity once more.

As we seek to share space at St. Edward’s, a home that is still very new to us – but home to our Anglican friends for 75 years now - I pray that this candle of connection will continue to warm us and provide a healthy glow for us to live by.

 +++

The third candle, the Christ Candle, symbolizes the divine light that illumines what we do here and how we live out the days between Sundays.  The light of Christ burns in the heart of all who trust in him and travels with them.  We also recognize that the light of the Divine is something born into all God’s children; this is a light we recognize in others and are drawn to.  The Christ light reminds us, symbolically, of the way that God’s holy intention lives within us and between us, before us and behind us, and it so clearly reminds us that while my best efforts in life are a great thing, I don’t generate my own light; God does that. 

While building safety rules insist that we don’t just leave the Christ Candle to burn in the sanctuary between Sundays, in my practice of worship over the years, there is only one time that the Christ Candle actually gets blown out during a worship service: on Good Friday, in that moment when Jesus himself gave up his Spirit, the moment when evil seemed to have won.   On the third day, though, on Easter Sunday, the flame comes alive once more, symbolic of the way that even when everything within us says that we have been defeated, God says NO, that is not true.   This light is here, to help you see with hopeful clarity even amidst the gloomiest shadows.  The light of Christ is the light of life, the light of love.

And so we re-light this candle, to guide each of us and all of us together, and to remind us always that our ministry in the world is Christ’s ministry.  All our hopes, all our plans, are intimately tied to the Christ who lights our way.

 +++

Taken together, people of Oliver United Church, these candles say so much about who you are, where you have been, and where you are going  Each brings a unique symbolism, and you will need all of them as the path leads from here… a desire for reconciliation, a commitment to connection, a trust in Christ’s guiding light.  These, together, will light the journey to your new home at St. Edward’s.  Thanks be to God for the gift of light, Amen.

Reference cited:

Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. NYC: Harper, 1957.

© 2026 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge. 

Matthew 28: 1-10 - Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026

Today we celebrate the dawning of a new day.

Forty-two years ago, when Shannon and I headed off to seminary at VST, we made a move from our sunny prairie home to Vancouver, where sunshine is a much rarer commodity, especially in the winter. When we moved back to BC in the fall of 2024, the possibility of bleak winters was well known to us, though this winter of 2025-2026 was quite the oddball. 

Growing up in a generally sunny place, I had no idea how important the sun was to me because it was always there, and then I lived in a place where it was a less frequent companion and realized how much my personal energy gets recharged by solar power.  I was raised where it would get to 40 below in the winter but at least it was sunny –“and it’s a dry cold, don’t ‘cha know” – but when we got to Vancouver we started carrying umbrellas everywhere we went, and shivered all the time, in the relatively balmy winter temperatures of minus-five to plus-five.

Then: springtime came. In 1985, I learned that springtime in British Columbia is the most startlingly beautiful season I have ever lived in, anywhere. The sun returned and the people rejoiced!  And when we looked around us, there were cherry and apple blossoms, magnolias and rhododendrons and dogwood, crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths, and here in the south Okanagan, the list includes the blossoming out of apricot and peach and nectarine and plum and pear, as well as cherry and apple.  As a flatlander still trying to find his place in 1985 and, to an extent, even now, not only was this a feast to my eyes, it restored my soul.  The funeral pall of drizzling gloom that had suppressed and spirit throughout the long dreary days of winter was lifted, and replaced by brightness and beauty and optimism, a divine-infused hope of better days to come. 

The emotions that I just described are very much akin to the emotions of Easter Sunday: the dawning of a new day after the indescribable gloom of crucifixion, the dormancy of winter replaced by the headstrong, colourful insistence of spring, and God’s own promise of even better days to come.   The clouds part, the sun shines, the stone is rolled away, and life has unimaginable hope once more.

People around the world – particularly in northern climes, where the cycles of seedtime and harvest may be brief and precarious – celebrate the coming of spring with a variety of religious and cultural festivals, many of which have themes of lessening darkness and growing light, or the death of a seed in the earth followed by the resurrection of new growth and harvest.  The Venerable Bede, writing in the 8^th century, noted that the resurrection festival, Easter, draws its name from the Saxon goddess of the dawn, Eoster. That connection sits fine with me, for it makes perfect sense that the cycles of nature established by Creator God, which we count on year-round, would so dramatically align with another holy cycle, the dying and rising of the Christ, which we count on as we consider the new life proclaimed by Jesus for a world more just, and the eternal hope he sets in our souls.

As finite humans striving to make sense of an infinite God, we yearn to make sense of things far beyond our understanding.  The trustworthy return of seasons, the predictability of germination and growth, our lifelong wondering about what happens when we die, hard questions about love and hatred and the lives of the just and the unjust, have been questions for millennia.  We seek the divine in ways that fit our setting, and God meets us in those desires.  The varieties of culture and language and religions, taken together, form a profoundly exciting diversity, expressing a cross-cultural human desire to seek God, in ways that we will find God and will be found by God.

And so today, I notice what God’s creative energy is doing in creation, what God’s everlasting commitment to life has meant to people around the world, and what God’s restorative energy has done in Christ, and as these truths co-exist I am filled with awe and wonder.  

I will never truly understand the process of germination and growth, yet my very existence and the presence of every foodstuff that nourishes my body relies on that process.  Our son, who worked at farms and fisheries for years, helped me learn more about this but still I am happily baffled by the details and sequences of it all.  I am thankful for the innate inclination toward life, a divine urge which God has given to the earth and the seas and to all living beings. As mentioned at our candle-lighting, I am thankful for Indigenous peoples around the world who keep reminding us how life is infused into everything around us, and for our neighbours of many faiths who have such varied ways to express wonder and gratitude for the trustworthy agricultural cycles of life, death and rebirth. In all processes of growth, in the emergence of new life, I am awash in the glory of God.

I see those same processes at work in the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.  Throughout the season of Lent we had six small candles at the front of the Church, lighting one more each Sunday, signifying the way that Christ’s ministry was becoming bigger and deeper and more influential as he travelled through Galilee. That ministry of local impact grew into the words and traditions that still speak to us today.  We see in the story of Jesus, God’s own intention for our lives and for all life: a desire to open our eyes, open our hearts, open our homes and our tables, open our lives to an expansiveness of love that we can barely even imagine.

We also see in the story of Jesus, the sharp resistance of those who were threatened by him, and that is an unfortunate and inescapable reality even today.  As the light of Christ was growing, illuminating a wider swath, those who sought to deny life attempted to extinguish his light altogether.  In our world of 2026, words like compassion, inclusion, empathy and fairness, which I always assumed were positive attributes that everyone would strive for because they are so closely connected with the ministry of Jesus, are now dismissed and denounced, by powers and principalities who claim Jesus as Lord yet serve very different purposes than he served.  When threatened, empire responds with force, then…and now.

On this day when we celebrate the durability and strength of Easter love, we know that in our lives and in the life of the world, there are times when the clouds gather, when the sun is hidden, when death is all too real, and life itself seems like a cruel joke.   Much as I would like to say that the story of Jesus was a straight upward incline that just kept getting better and better, there was a moment when it all fell apart, when the brutality of crucifixion appeared to have the last word.  At Easter, meeting these challenges face-on, we proclaim our trust in the life-giving power of God, who will not let death have the final say.  The same God who bursts open seeds by the tender determination of shoots does not leave us in despair. The same God who tends to our woundedness helps us find the resilience to start again.  The same God who brings low-hanging winter clouds to our valley for weeks at a time, rewards our perseverance with blossoms and beauty.

When he was a young parent, Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman suffered a sudden and unimaginably tragic death in his family.  His song, Spring is Coming, attempts to embrace God’s healing love in the midst of sorrow, and it goes like so:

We planted the seed while the tears of our grief soaked the ground

The sky lost its sun and the world lost its green to lifeless brown

Now the chill in the wind has turned the Earth hard as stone

And silent the seed lies beneath ice and snow

 

And my heart's heavy now but I'm not letting go

Of this hope I have that tells me Spring is coming, Spring is coming….

 

Hear the birds start to sing Feel the life in the breeze

Watch the ice melt away The kids are coming out to play

Feel the sun on your skin Growing strong and warm again

Watch the ground: there's something moving

Something is breaking through New life is breaking through

 

Spring is coming…
all we've been hoping and longing for soon will appear

Spring is coming…it won't be long now, it's just about here.

 Those words, written amidst tears, pretty much say it all for those of us who are enlivened by Easter faith.  On this day of resurrection may you, my friends in Christ, find hope of new life.  As we hear the words of the gospel of Matthew speak of an empty tomb and a risen Lord, may we, as inheritors of that tradition, be startled into seeing God in new ways. As we look around at the glories of blossoming orchards, and hear the melodies of birdsong, and wonder at the hidden life of tiny insects, may we embrace those signs of new life as evidence of the loving, trustworthy, holy power of life and love.  As we see the endurance of the human spirit amidst the cruel challenges of 2026, may we be enlivened as disciples of Jesus to remain committed to inclusion, justice and joy.  In all of it, may God be alive and real in your thoughts and actions, your hearts, minds and spirits, and may Christ be alive in your thoughts and actions toward others.   Alleluia! Christ is Risen.  Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!! Amen.

References cited:

Chapman, Steven Curtis.  “Spring is Coming” - Sparrow Records © 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj3DMk3NB-8

Living in Canada blog. “Sunshine hours for Canadian Cities”, https://www.livingin-canada.com/sunshine-hours-canada.html

Turner, Allie. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/lifestyle/9-vancouver-blooms-that-arent-cherry-blossoms-to-watch-out-for-this-spring-5259094

Wikipedia, “Names of Easter”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Easter

© 2026, Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.