Yesterday, Pam and I got to spend some time with this handsome couple. We had not broken bread with them in over 13 years...and yet it felt like they had never left. Isn’t it funny how it’s always that way with the best people from your life. They move away for years, then you’re reunited for brunch at Tarrant’s and you pick up right where you left off.
Bryan and Kay McMath were dear friends from what feels in many ways like a lifetime ago. We met as young married couples 30 years ago. We attended the same church and found ourselves in the same Sunday School class where he was the teacher, and I was his opening act. We were kids...newly married, brand new parents, freshly minted adults trying to find our way in a strange and scary world. The class was filled with other equally terrified and clueless young couples. The combined life ignorance of that group would have filled an entire new edition of encyclopedias. But Bryan, who was no smarter than the rest of us, nevertheless had a teaching gift that to this day I have not been able to find an equal, has an ability to present the transcendent truths of the Gospel in an accessible and compelling way. The class became a place where we were all free to be honest with each other, where no topic was off limits. Soon, a community was formed. The ten or so couples in that class began doing everything together, trudging through the pain and pleasures of life in equal measure.
I laugh at people in the church today who think they have stumbled upon some new phenomenon with the concept of small groups, where they go on and on about sharing life together, and other trendy buzzword phrases. Well, thirty years ago we were sharing everything in that class. It was called Sunday School.
I don’t remember how long we were there...six or seven years maybe? We all moved on to other groups. Most of us went on to teach classes or our own. But the time we spent in the McMath class was foundational to everything that has followed. Pam and I learned how to be parents with these people. We learned how difficult and rewarding it was to be happily married with these people. We struggled with finding our footing at work, establishing ourselves in our careers with these people. We learned what it was like to live as a Christian in the real world with these people.
Membership in this class was no silver bullet, no magic pill which inoculated you from trouble. Many of the couples who made up this group didn’t ultimately make it. There was plenty of disaster, tragedy and divorce to go around. But there was also an abundance of love and acceptance. A bond was formed, the kind of kinship that follows genuine and vulnerable relationships. So much so that you walk into Tarrant’s after over a decade, order chicken and waffles and breakfast pizza and talk each other’s ears off for half the morning. It’s as if they had simply stepped away for a moment, gotten out of town for a long weekend, and were now getting us caught up on the latest.
Last night we attended a wedding together with several other alumni from that 30 years ago class. It was a delightful evening of remembering some of the best things that have ever happened to all of us. Somebody took pictures of some of the prominent members of the class. Just to be safe, they decided to take front and side views!!
Feeling thankful this morning...
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