Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Have you ever put together a resume for a job? Or maybe you’re working on one for college applications. You want to impress your prospective employer or admissions committee, so you’ve listed your summer job scooping ice cream, the clubs you’re involved with at school and leadership positions you’ve held, awards you’ve received, and practically everything but your kindergarten perfect attendance award. (Great job on that though!)

Maybe you play golf and you’ve listed “Cofounder & Vice President of the ‘Clubs’ Club”. Very impressive, and you even came up with the name yourself! Of course, it was really your friend who took the initiative to start it and the school required two people to launch the club…and the only course you’ve ever been on was for mini-golf. But doesn’t it look fancy on your resume?

But what if this happens; you’re offered an in-person interview, you get to chatting with the manager, and his face lights up. “Clubs Club?  Ha-ha that’s great! What’s your…. The time you got a hole-in-one under the windmill probably isn’t going to get you out of this one.

In this week’s Gospel, we “present” Jesus with the resumes of our Christian life, and he, like the manager, starts asking some follow-up questions. Turns out loving those who already love you and lending money to people you know are good for it, aren’t exactly the marks of a bold Christian life. “What credit is that to you? Even sinners lent to sinners.” This interview doesn’t seem to be going well. But there’s hope; he essentially sends us back out and tells us to apply again when we’ve got some more experience – and he’s got some great advice. “Rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High.”

So, think about the relationships in your life; the way that you love/interact with/treat your family and friends, and then do this exercise with your barely-acquaintances and even your rivals and your arch-nemesis. Would you drop everything to do a favor for a friend, but think of whatever excuses you could to justify getting out of helping your enemy? Would you give your friend the benefit-of-the-doubt that they must have been incredibly busy and didn’t have time to read your texts, but chalk it up to indifference toward you when your enemy does it? Jesus tells us there are no double-standards here if we want to live out the Christian life well. We are to love others. Period. It doesn’t matter who the “others” are. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s the last thing on earth we’d want to do – but if we really try to see Jesus in everyone we encounter, we won’t even need a resume – our relationship with him and what HE has done for us will be all we need to get in. After all, it’s all about who you know.