Homily for April 26, 2009

Father Tom’s Homily
3rd Sunday of Easter
April 26, 2009

In our gospel reading today, we listen to Jesus telling us that he is really human. That he is not a spirit (the gospel reading says “ghost”). Jesus, the Son of God, is not a spirit who has the appearance of a human. He is really a human like any one of us.
He says, “Look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see for yourselves. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.”
And then, Jesus asks for something to eat. “They gave him a piece of baked fish and he ate it.”

We are asked to believe in a God who is human in every way, except sin. Jesus asks us to encounter him as a fellow human being, as a brother.
It is a challenge for us accept this because we understand that human qualities would limit the limitless God.
Jesus, both God and man, is something we cannot understand. So we say it is a mystery. We accept it because of Jesus’ words to us in today’s gospel.

In that same upper room a few days before today’s gospel story, Jesus spoke from his heart to his disciples at the Last Supper.
At that meal we heard him speaking with deep human emotions. He spoke as a person with intense love for them, and for all of us.
Besides seeing Jesus and touching him as he tells us in today’s gospel. We must also listen to his emotionally charged words that speak of his love for us.

Encountering a God with deep personal emotions is a new idea for the human race. We had always thought of God as distant and distracted with the tasks of governing the universe.
It is through emotions that we most truly encounter one another. Without emotions relationships cannot grow.
The apostle John says in his first letter, “God is Love.” So we are talking about a God with emotions. Jesus invites us into a relationship with God. It is a relationship full of emotions.

Charles Péguy was a French spiritual writer whose works were published about a hundred years ago. His poetry speaks of the emotions of God.
“All the sentiments, all the movements we should have for God, God had them first for us.”
This means that not only did God love us first, before we loved him. He also hoped in us first, so that we might hope in him.

In one of his poems, Péguy says: “He became one of us, binding himself to our mortal fate without any limitation.”
Considering the parable of the Good Shepherd, Péguy speaks about the emotions of God. God had a sense of loss and fear about the missing sheep.
When the lost sheep was found, God, like the father of the prodigal son, experienced a new sentiment, great joy. Like any other person who rejoices in the recovery of a missing loved one, this was a renewal “as though he were a new God.”

Jack Miles has written a book titled: “Christ, a Crisis in the Life of God.” I haven’t read the book, but the title comes to mind in considering a God of emotions.
In becoming fully human in Jesus, God has taken on every shade of human emotion. In becoming involved in the lives of people everywhere, God was taking on an enormous challenge that call into play many emotions.
One could say it was a crisis in the life of God, or more exactly, one crisis after another.

Péguy reminds us that we are able to imitate Christ because he first “imitated” us in becoming human.
It is through our emotions that we express our humanity. It is also through our emotions that we reflect and echo the emotions of God, the Compassionate One.
In Jesus, who wept for a dead friend, who laughed and danced at a wedding, who was saddened that a close friend betrayed him and another denied him publicly, who enjoyed the company of children and street people and just about everyone – in Jesus we encounter a God who belongs to us in a deeply personal way.
Jesus is our beloved brother, who loves us tenderly and speaks to our hearts. In this he is a perfect reflection of his Father, of our Father.

Péguy says, “He who made us in his image also assumed the whole human condition in order to reclaim and redeem it.”
One of the early Fathers of the Church said, “God became human, so that humans can become divine.”