Lexington, KY - Now and then I go online and Google the name of friends from years past. It's amazing. I hadn't seen my buddy Gus since I left the Air Force in the 1950s. It had been longer still since I talked with my boyhood friend Tim.
Gus and I asked "How are you" and "What have you been doing," and I learned he was a lawyer and he learned I was a priest. We didn't have a lot more to talk about.
Tim lived in Los Angeles and had a lot to say. He lived across the street from me when we were kids. Tim was past retirement age but financially pinched and unable to stop working. He also told me a story about something that happened when we were neighbors. Tim hadn't talked about it at the time. One day when he was 9 or 10 he came in from school to find packed suitcases at the front door. His father, not long home from WWII, was leaving his mother - and Tim and his older sister. Tim said he burst into tears of grief and rage and begged his father not to go, but he went. Nearly 60 years later Tim's pain was still strong. We talked occasionally off and on for several months and then lost touch again and I haven't been able to find him.
One day I Googled "Hasbrouck," a classmate from high school. Don't know why. Though it was by today's standards a small class in which you could know everyone, I didn't know him. I'm not sure anyone did. We knew of him, but Hasbrouck kept to himself, or moved in other circles. And we knew something about him: in math he was way beyond the teachers. There were whispers of something called calculus. I never saw him after graduation. At class reunions someone might ask, "Whatever happened to Hasbrouck?" No one knew. I never quite forgot him, and here's why.
In our school there were two big awards for seniors. One was the Yale Cup, given to an outstanding athlete and scholar. I wasn't an outstanding athlete, so I had my eye on the Harvard Book Award, given to a student leader and scholar. I was at or near enough the top of my class in studies, active in several scholarly - and other - organizations, president of the student council and co-editor of the newspaper.
The award went to Hasbrouck. I'm not proud of this, but I grumbled. In class after the ceremony my Latin teacher sharply silenced me with the words, "You were considered." I had not yet grasped the concept of grace.
Google found Hasbrouck, a partner in a CPA firm in Atlanta. I didn't call or write. I guess I could have congratulated him on winning the Harvard Book Award. Would he remember getting it? Is it too late to be gracious?
Anyway, at the time I thought the decision was unfair. In childhood we learn about fair and unfair and how to apply it, often shamefully to our own advantage: "No fair. That's not fair. Yes it is. No it isn't." Then, into our world that values and uses these labels, comes Jesus to upset the system.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. If you try to save your life, you will lose it; if you lose it, you will save it. Love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you and despitefully use you. Forced to go a mile? Go another. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Leaving the 99 to look for one who is missing. Father orders a party for his returning no-account son while his respectful son is out working.
One might wonder how such an odd religion has flourished for two millennia. There must be something to it. I guess it's time to let the Harvard Book Award go.
By the way, I got the Enoch Grehan Journalism Award, but had to split it with my co-editor.