Don’t Ghost Your Life!

A Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter 2024

I am perhaps not the savviest person when it comes to the workings and the technical lingo of social media. I do though have some awareness of one concept I have often overheard and that is “getting ghosted.” So, I looked up the definition of “getting ghosted” and it goes like this:

“Suddenly ending all communication and avoiding contact with another person without apparent warning or explanation and ignoring subsequent attempts to communicate.”

So, as they say at the Spelling Bee: “Could you please use that in a sentence?” Here it goes:

“I was in a text chain with Frank, and he suddenly stopped responding and I haven’t heard from him in 2 weeks! I think I got ghosted!”

When the disciples encounter the Risen Christ in Luke’s gospel account today they too fear they are “getting ghosted.” Luke tells us: “[T]hey were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” But in this case, it wasn’t the sudden unexpected ending to a communication or a relationship but a wildly unexpected invitation to a whole new way of communicating and relating that has absolutely nothing to do with ghosts!

The evangelist Luke, throughout his gospel presents a Jesus who is quite challenging to his disciples and to us when it comes to embracing fully the Life we’ve been given and rejecting totally our own fascinations with, and addictions to, death. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells us: “Let the dead bury their dead! You go and proclaim the kingdom of God! “Or elsewhere he says: “Where the corpse is there the vultures gather.” Or to the women in the cemetery on Resurrection morning: “Why do you seek the Living among the dead?” Jesus’ message? Don’t mistake dead things for real life. Don’t get so comfortable or familiar with dead things that you mistake death for Life!

In the Acts of the Apostles (also authored by Luke) we hear a rather shocking accusation made by St. Peter to those who participated in the crucifixion of Jesus: He says, “But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and [put to death] the Author [or Source] of Life.”

Let’s sit with that just a moment: You put to death the Source of Life. What an incredible thing to say. But isn’t it true for all of us in some very real way? We put Life to death because life is just to scary… being fully alive, a wonderful idea, but in practice… what a risk! I might be exposing myself to all kinds of unexpected things! So instead we too spend a lot of time putting Life to death. We “Ghost” our lives.

Listen again to the language in both our definition of “ghosting” and in Peter’s accusation against those who put Life to death. We hear words like: “avoiding,” “ignoring,” “denying,” and “killing.” We ghost our own lives, when we, like the disciples, who because of fear thought they were seeing a ghost rather than the very Source of Life himself, deny, avoid, ignore, and kill opportunities to live our lives fully, passionately, fearlessly as what they are meant to be: a gift to be given for others!

As some of you may be aware I lost both my older brothers in the course of the last year. And in the natural course of grief, I found myself “avoiding,” “ignoring,” “denying,” and “killing” invitations to life that God was giving me. I was living my life “assuming death.” I was ghosting my own life for fear of what it means to risk, once again, being fully ALIVE!

It may sound strange, but we have to CHOOSE LIFE! As Moses once said to the Israelites: “Today, I place before you the blessing or the curse, life or death… CHOOSE life!”

Choosing to be Fully Alive means risking the unknown, inserting oneself into the world and giving the gifts God gave you recklessly away for others. But we can be like those vultures hovering over corpses thinking we’ll find life there. Or we can be like those women in the cemetery on Easter morning, seeking life among dead things. Or we can be like those disciples mistaking the very Author of Life for a ghost… we can ghost our own lives out of fear.

Jesus says in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The promise of life is not only made to us by Christ but is fulfilled in his resurrection… but we must choose it. We have to transcend our fears and stop ghosting our own lives.

Jesus says to his disciples, and to each of us, at the end of today’s gospel: “You are witnesses of these things.” What things are we witnessing to? Dead things? Or all things that are Fully Alive!

So let’s stop putting to death the Source of Life and instead live fully lives that don’t end in death but transcend it by the power of the Crucified and Risen Christ!