3rd Sunday of Easter - Resurrection and being truly human

The Diocese of Reno uses a program called Virtus for Protecting God’s Children.  Karen Barreras made this comment a few years ago that made me laugh: “we have a cadillac program, but we use it like a corolla.”
Meaning there was lot that this program could do for us, but we never used it to its fullest capacity.  We have since remedied that situation.
We humans, we are the cadillac of creation!
We are capable of so much; we are capable of so much goodness.
Too few of us realize this, and we live like Chevettes; never realizing our potential.
The mystery of our Salvation in Jesus Christ, the mystery of his Resurrection, which we celebrate in a special way in the Easter season, is that Jesus’ humanity, his entire person; body and soul; was used for its fullest potential; a cadillac and beyond!
Our Salvation in Christ is that he induces in us, he empower us, to realize our full potential; to be fully human.
Our Salvation is the freedom and the capacity to fully be those humans we are created to be.
Think of our Gospel passage today.  
Jesus goes to great pains to remind his disciples that he is still human, and not a ghost.  His humanity was never lost nor destroyed, but fully realized.
He reminds them, and us, that through his humanity, He revealed the very nature of God.
Through his healings, through his words, through his actions, he demonstrated God’s compassion, God’s love, God’s desire for our completeness.
His Death was part of that revelation.  He was willing to die for love of us, so that we could know and experience, and make real as well that the love of the Father for us.
Jesus demonstrated to us that this is also what it means to be truly, fully, wholly, realized as a human person.
Being human is about living for and with others!
Salvation is being free to be living for and with others.
Salvation is being free to work with God so that this world basks in God’s justice, God’s compassion, God’s mercy, God’s love.
I think we need to get past this funny, narrow idea that Salvation and the Resurrection is all about “me” getting into heaven.  This is a way of saying this world doesn’t really matter, and to be honest, I think it is selfish.
Besides, we actually don’t pray that.
We pray that the Father’s will be done on earth as it is heaven.
We pray for a transformed and healed world.
We pray for that completeness.
This is what Jesus did.
Here is the problem, here is the original sin, that we all repeat again and again.
We tend to think too small about our humanity, and we then to only think of ourselves.  
It’s the ego.
We tend to fall into the trap to believe that being a fully realized human means the ability to do whatever I want.  
That did not work out so well for Adam and Eve.
I think of the chaos in my own life, and more often than not, it is because I am only interested in my self, my needs, my desires, my will.  
And when I use my humanity to satisfy those needs, desires, will…. Life seems to be smaller.
Think of the saints, those holy men and women.  They used their humanity to do what is good. They give of their lives for others.
Pope Francis makes that connection to holiness in his latest exhortation.
Holiness is not otherworldly, it is this world.
It is opening ourselves to our fullest potential and making great things happen here in this world.  This is God’s will!
It is about giving compassion, mercy, and love.  It is about forgiving and loving. It is about living those day to day.
It’s about giving ourselves for others in service.  
Friday night we celebrated those volunteers who have done this; who through their service to others have made real and visible the love of God, the power of God to create goodness.

Now, we all know that being human and living our potential is not easy.
Here is where the Spirit comes in.
Jesus alludes to this at the end of this passage.
The Holy Spirit, the very person of God’s love and power, comes to us to empower us, to induce our humanity.
It is like our electric stoves.  We have those carbon coils which do nothing until an electrical current runs through them.  This current induces the heat potential within them to be made real.
God’s grace comes to us to induce us in the same way.
To make real those good virtues so that we can make choices that show forth our humanity.
That help bring healing to this world.
The fruits of the Spirit bring out our humanity, bring out healing.
And there are so many people who need this healing.
They need our choice for compassion, mercy, love.
They need our choice for generosity and sharing.
This is what it means to be Church!
This is what it means to Baptized.
This is what it means to Receive Eucharist.
It means we go out and be Human.

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