Years ago, I learned an important lesson about life at my summer job, where I worked the night shift on a factory assembly line that manufactured 50-gallon steel drums.
My first week on the job, a fellow union member pulled me aside and told me a secret about our coworker.
“Psst,” he confided during the coffee break, “Watch out. He’s good friends with the big boss.”
That sounded ominous, and I certainly didn’t have to ask him what the implications were. The other guy got the easiest jobs in the plant because he knew somebody upstairs. He got the good hours because the person doing the scheduling wanted to make the boss happy. Plus, they looked the other way when he arrived at work late.
Being friends with people in high places certainly has its advantages, as I have discovered throughout my career. In fact, when I was a boss, I even exercised my bossly — or should it be “bossy”—executive privileges to help my friends or their kids who were looking for an internship or a chance to see the world of journalism up close. (I hasten to add, they were all qualified candidates and that the people who managed them made the final decision.)
However, I never had the power of, say, Michael Bloomberg or Donald Trump, who with a snap of the fingers could get jobs as campaign workers for their daughters’ entire yoga class. Yes, it’s good to have friends in high places.
I thought of that phenomenon again recently, when I was at a funeral Mass, and the priest gave a homily about the Gospel story of Lazarus. In John’s account, Martha rushes to Jesus to tell him that her brother has died. Jesus goes to the tomb and raises his friend from the dead. Father explained that Jesus will do the same for us someday and then added, “Jesus takes care of his friends.”
The phrase struck me. It’s good to be friends with the REAL Big Boss, and it’s good to have friends in high places…and you can’t get any higher than Jesus, seated on his celestial throne at the right hand of the Father. Jesus takes care of his friends, and what are we, if not Jesus’ friends? To quote him, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
You see, so often we think of our relationship with Jesus in purely corporate terms. We’ll get the raise if we perform up to expectations and do well on our evaluations. We’ll get the promotion if the boss likes us, so we spend a lot of time trying to make him like us, appreciate us, reward us…but that kind of behavior is symptomatic of a meritocracy… not a relationship with Jesus, who isn’t a typical CEO.
He loves us even when we don’t live up to expectations, when we drop the ball, when we are predictably less than perfect. Even then, he still takes care of his friends.
Sooner or later, all of us face challenges and tragedies that are part of the human condition, and it’s easy to fall into the deception that Jesus has forgotten us or is punishing us. Entire generations grew up under the misconception that when something goes wrong in life, God is punishing them. Others get angry with God because they think a commitment to Christ means life will be immune from suffering. It’s easy to become angry and resentful when we look at God that way.
He takes care of us, but that care doesn’t shield us from suffering. He is there in our suffering, and our best resource. It is often during those times that we can find the best evidence that Jesus takes care of his friends. If we turn to him for help, he’ll walk beside us in our grief, in our pain and in our despair.
Only after our lives have ended will we fully understand the countless occasions when our friend Jesus stood beside us…and cared for us. It’s one of the benefits of being friends with the Big Boss.
