This week I was searching for signs of the Risen Christ. The liturgical calendar says it is the Easter season. The google calendar says it is spring. It should be easy to find signs pointing the way. But what does it even mean – the Risen Christ? Blooming lilies, dogwood and red bud? Butterflies and bees? Eggs and bunnies? Mysterious encounters with inexplicable beings? Ordinary interactions with everyday people?

On Friday morning my search took me to the “Liturgy of the Light” at Christian Family Montessori School. Each year after Easter, the 9-12 year olds plan a service of worship for the school. For an hour, 100 children – ages 3-12 – and their families, gather in a large circle to sing songs and listen to scripture. The children wait expectantly listening for their names. As each child’s name is called, they walk forward to receive their own small candle, lit from the Christ candle. “Sophia, receive the light of Christ, Maura receive the light of Christ.” Some of the children are so small that the 3 foot Christ candle is taller than they are.

The children, even some of the older ones, glow as they walk back to their seats, carefully cradling their candles. It is joyful and magical, holding the light of Christ. And they know it is dangerous, holding the light of Christ. One wee child whispered with awe as he approached his seat, “I can feel the hot.”

In John’s gospel, the Risen Christ searches for the disciples. Do they understand these surprise meetings with Jesus? After two sightings of the Risen Christ, (well, one for Thomas,) are they now seeking Jesus? They seem a bit demoralized. At least they are no longer hiding away in fear. On this day, they have ventured out of the perceived safety of that locked room and are returning to their old lives.

They go back to the Sea of Tiberias, where, John’s gospel tells us, Jesus had turned five loaves and two fish into enough food for the whole gathering of 5000 people on the lakeshore. It was also at Lake Tiberias that they saw Jesus walk on water. Are they hoping to encounter Jesus again, hoping that their presence at this familiar place of miracles might bring him back somehow?  Or are they just going back to what they know best – fishing.

Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John and two others, are there on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, aka Lake Tiberias. Peter decides he might as well go fishing. The rest follow along. They are no longer cloistered away but they still need each other; they travel in a pack like humans do at certain ages.

They fish all night on the calm waters. It is uneventful; there are no fish and they don’t see Jesus walking on water. Then just after sunrise a stranger on shore who calls out to them. No, they say, they have not caught anything. “Try the other side of the boat.” It is a strange recommendation but they try it. And when the net is so full they can barely pull it in, the disciple whom Jesus loved recognizes the stranger and tells Peter, “It is the Teacher!”

Peter is quick to respond. He jumps in the water. He doesn’t even try to walk on water, he just wants to get to the shore. And sure enough when they get to the shore, there is Jesus, with a fire, already cooking fish and bread. He offers to grill some of their fish too, 153 fish when they counted. They don’t need to ask who this is, they just know, even before he gives them the bread and fish.

(This business of “153 fish” is a bit of a mystery. Such a strange specific number. Commentators and scholars do not know, or at least don’t agree on, what that number represents though there are plenty of theories. Just google it, you’ll see what I mean.)

In John’s gospel, after the resurrection, Jesus appears to Mary and then three times to the male disciples. Each time, they get a bit better at recognizing him, a little less frightened but no less joyful in knowing that he is somehow still with them, somehow still connected with them and connecting them to each other.

In John’s telling of the story, these appearances by Jesus don’t seem to move things along. The disciples seem sort of stuck, hoping that things can just go back to how they were, with Jesus leading them, and them following along – always a bit confused.

Until after breakfast.

After breakfast Jesus pulls Peter aside and has a heart to heart conversation. Jesus gives Peter a chance to redeem himself after that fiasco when he denied even knowing Jesus – three times before the rooster crowed. Jesus asks Peter, three times, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter responds affirmatively yet he gets almost as impatient reiterating his love for Jesus as he did denying Jesus some days previous. Each time, Jesus’ response is about sheep: Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.

Jesus, the shepherd, is giving Peter, the fisherman, a new career. Peter will no longer fish, even if the catch is 153 fish. He will now be in charge of the care and feeding of sheep. If we need an interpreter to know that Jesus is not really talking about sheep, we probably have not been paying close enough attention to this gospel’s extensive use of metaphor.

Jesus is handing the mantle over to Peter. Finally, it is no longer just about waiting for Jesus to appear and reappear. Peter now has a new role, as a leader of the movement. It comes with a warning though. Jesus says that Peter is no longer the youngster he once was. What comes next will not be a carefree existence. This new role will not be easy. Even as Peter leads, he may be led to places he does no want to go – even to death.

Ironically, after Jesus gives this new charge to Peter, to become the leader, Jesus says, ”Follow me.” Follow him in the way he lived his life? the way he did his ministry? Follow him unto death? It may be an honor to be handed this mantle by Jesus, but it is not glamorous, it is not without risk and it is not as simple as “feeding sheep.”

I went searching for signs of the Risen Christ. I asked two wise sages. Be careful when you ask wise sages; they will always tell you the truth and you will wish they hadn’t. The first one looked right at me and said, “Brokenness, Brokenness, Brokenness.” I thought maybe she misunderstood me. I said again, “Signs of the Risen Christ.” And the second one chimed in, “You don’t get to the rising without the death. You can’t have one without the other.”

The sages speak truth of course though one I would rather not contemplate. There is so much death and despair in the news, in the neighborhood, in our families, in ourselves. Death is present; it is too close. Does that mean that we don’t have to look too far for life either, for Risen Christ life? Is the Risen Christ here among us, even in the brokenness if we know how to see? If we throw our nets on the other side, if we look in the other direction?

It sounds ridiculous and maybe condescending, to tell people to look for the Risen Christ in brokenness – especially people who are living with poverty or chronic illness or addiction or drones dropping bombs, people living in a sick racist, heterosexist system. Who am I to say, from my comfortable, safe seat on the theological sidelines, that the Risen Christ is only found after going through brokenness and death?

Most of us do not seek out brokenness. Brokenness happens, it finds us. I think what the wise sage means when she says “Brokenness, brokenness, brokenness” is that it is in the midst of brokenness we may have the most profound experiences with the Risen Christ. Because as often and as ardently as we seek the Risen One, our seeking is almost inconsequential. It is really the Risen One who is seeking us.

In the midst of the brokenness, the Risen One seeks us. In the midst of brokenness we have a choice: we can ignore the stranger on the shore and keep doing what we have been doing, hoping that this time it will work. Or we can listen to the stranger, take the risk to throw our net on the other side and find abundance – though probably not as quickly as the disciples did.

While we may get a great catch of 153 fish, we are also invited to enter into what it means to listen to that stranger. As Jesus told Peter, there may be danger in following the way of the Risen Christ. That way may take us on unpaved paths, to places we would rather not go, accompanying people we may not know, to places of brokenness and death. And yet there too, the Risen Christ can meet us, will meet us, feed us, cook for us!

You may have told my own small story before but it remains true. At a very low point, after the death of my mother and a miscarriage and in the midst of deep loneliness, I met the Christa. I became aware of her while I lay in bed for a week, knowing that the not-to-be child that had once grown in me had died. And I had a sense that the brokenness of that not-to-be child was giving me new life. In the friendship of women who came to care for me and my family, there was new life, there was relief from loneliness, there was nourishment. It was a surprise and yet it was as the story has been told, life can come out of death.

I have met the Risen Christ and I am still searching for the Risen Christ; it is a lifetime journey. What a privilege to have the company of this community as we journey together, listening for the voice of the Risen Christ as the story continues to be told. Let’s keep telling each other the stories of our encounters with mystery amidst brokenness, life out of death.