PROPER 17-C, September 2, 2007

Arlena and I began our vacation last month by joining her high school classmates in celebrating the fortieth anniversary of their high school graduation. There were about 100 in her high school class and about thirty of those made it to the reunion. Even though it was a relatively small gathering and an equally small affair, and even though I knew no one there except my wife, I had a great time. So did Arlena.

I love class reunions. I love to relive the old days and old times, to forget how it once was and maybe even tell a lie or two. But I know there may be more people who detest high school or college reunions than love them. Too often, I am told, class reunions become a case of one-upmanship. They brag about their successes, just to rub it in with those who have been less successful. And I suppose that some go to these reunions to see if the homecoming queen and star quarterback have both put on forty pounds.

Well, if some or all of that is what class reunions are about, this one was not. Everyone seemed genuinely pleased to see everyone else, meet spouses, and do a lot of catching up. I heard no bragging and no putting anyone down. It was truly a gathering of friends even if some of the attendees had not seen others in forty years.

In so many ways I think today’s Gospel incident speaks to all of this. On the one hand there is the issue of self-esteem. We don’t have to go to class reunions to feel put upon and put down or even to feel better about ourselves. All we have to do is pick up a magazine or watch television commercials to be reminded that what the world deems is really important in life is the amount of money in our bank account, the size of our stock portfolio, the care we drive, the number of toys we have – and that is for starters.

In so many ways success is our national battle cry. If the incident in the Gospel is any indication, that was also true in Jesus’ time. We eat success, breath it, caress it, baby it, and, even worse, judge ourselves by it. If we think we have lived up to society’s standards for success, we’re a success. Our ego is in good shape. We feel good about ourselves. But if we don’t think society sees us as a success, we then conclude that we must be failures.

Perhaps people of every generation and in every culture have always seemed to pay homage to the trinity of wealth, power and prestige. We bow down before them. If we cannot find them in life, we think we’ve missed our calling and that we are failures. And if we feel that way, we will never go to a class reunion. We would be too embarrassed, miserable failures that we are. To assert that we have it all wrong, that we have our priorities skewed, and that we are worshipping the wrong Trinity would be, I think, the truth.

Again, on the one hand Jesus is addressing the issue of self-esteem. In Jesus’ time in proper society where one sat at dinner was very important. One did not deign to sit above one’s station in life. Nor did one sit below. Everyone had his place in Jesus’s day -- his place: women had no place in Jewish society.

Notice that Jesus did not say that social customs were bad in and of themselves. They were neither good nor bad. In many ways, they were, and still are, morally neutral. When you or I give a party, we are free to invite anyone – and we do. We invite our friends. We invite people just like us. We don’t have to invite anyone we do not want to. To paraphrase that old Leslie Gore song: "It’s my party and I’ll invite whom I like to." And I do. And we do.

The issue of self-esteem and knowing one’s place in society led Jesus to the real issue at hand. The Gospel incident is asking us the highlighted question on our bulletin cover: "Who are our friends?"

What Jesus does in this passage, what he did throughout his life and ministry, was to remind us that conventional society and conventional wisdom may be all right for starters. But it is not enough. Not only do we not learn from people like us, we can easily forget that there are those who are different from us. But because we are different than others does not mean that we are better than others, no matter how successful or powerful or prestigious we are – or how unimportant the other may seem to be.

In fact, if we want a short course on what our life as Christians is to be like, all we have to do is take another look at today’s Collect. There we are reminded that there are four basic steps in living out our faith.

First of all, we have to graft into our hearts the love of Jesus’s Name. That means that we have to see others as Jesus saw them. Everyone was Jesus’ friend, everyone. We must learn to see others as Jesus saw others: everyone is of equal value and worth no matter who they are, where they live, what they own or do not own. Thus, they are to be our friends.

As we grow into being able to see everyone with Jesus’s eyes, we need, as the Collect reminds is, to increase, to grow in the living out of our faith every day. We do that, most of the time, unknowingly because we grow so slowly in our understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Growing in faith comes not in quantum leaps but in tiny steps. So we have to keep on walking every day, working at understanding and living out what it means to be a Christian, understanding that everyone is to be our friend.

As we grow in love and understanding, we need to be fed, nourished, with all goodness. Just as one bad apple can spoil the whole bushel, so one sinful deed can cause us to backslide. Someone once said that we are what we eat. That’s as good a metaphor as any when it comes to understanding why we have a difficult time at times in living out our faith. For when we fill ourselves full of what the world deems healthy food, we discover that we may have a belly full of material gifts but are also starving ourselves to death spiritually. A good friend is of inestimable worth.

And finally, as we grow in love of God and others and self; as we continue to grow understanding what our faith is all about; as we feed our hearts and minds and souls with what is truly nourishing, we will bring forth the fruit of good works. We will do good deeds because we love the other, because we have come to understand that the other is not only our friend, but a brother or sister as well.

Yes, all that may sound more lyrical than real, more poetic than possible. But it is the truth. When we go to class reunions they may never give the place of honor to the most Christian person. The most successful person will win that honor every time. But as Jesus’s life reminds us, it is really not important what other people think about us, how they weigh us on the scale of success, how they measure our worth. What is truly important is that we have the heart and eyes and mind of Jesus, a heart and mind that says everyone is our friend because everyone is our brother or sister. Everything else is a distant second.