During the recent downturn in the economy, many good, hardworking people have lost their jobs. My heart goes out to them because they have suffered a double loss.

Not only have they lost the security of a steady paycheck, but they have also lost, in many cases, a sense their own identity.

For good or for ill, we tend to define ourselves and other people by what we get paid to do.

"What do you do?" Meet a new person at a social gathering and chances are that within the first five minutes you'll be asked that question, "What do you do?"

People want to know. Are you a teacher? A factory worker? They want to have some sense of who you are, so they ask "What do you do?"

You are what you do for a living, or so we pretend. Our job titles are an imprecise and less than reliable measure of our true, inner nature. I know that, and yet I've been guilty of applying that imprecise measure to myself.

I remember the one and only time I took a sabbatical - an extra month appended to my summer vacation. I had never before been away from my work for that long.

I remember feeling that I was floating in space, unanchored to my everyday routine, unconnected to my identity as the rector of Trinity Church. Without my job to define me, I felt empty.

I was a man without an identity, anonymous and adrift. Because I had mistakenly defined myself by my work.

Perhaps I was a little bit too full of myself, impressed by my title and occupation and not entirely open to what new experiences might come my way.

This morning's gospel lists several occupations - several ways that people in New Testament times earned a living and established their identity.

In this one brief passage Jesus mentions three of the worlds oldest professions: a harlot, a tax collector, and a priest. And no, they didn't walk into a bar.

The priests were angry with Jesus, because Jesus said that the tax collectors and the harlots would go into the kingdom of God before them.

In a society that ranked people according to the prestige of their occupation, Jesus turned that ranking upside down.

On the social ladder of first-century Jerusalem, tax collectors and harlots ranked at the very bottom. You couldn't sink any lower than to collect taxes for the hated Roman government or to sell your body for a living.

And priests ranked at the top of the social ladder (those were the good old days!).

But Jesus turned the ladder upside down. Those who were least, those who were on the lowest rung, were first in the kingdom of God.

Why is this? Why did Jesus "put down the mighty from their seat and exalt the humble and meek."?

Perhaps it was because the humble and meek were empty. They were empty. And so was Jesus. That's who he was. That's what he did.

What did Jesus do? If we want to know Jesus better, we have to ask Jesus "What do you do?"

He could say, "I work in a carpenter shop in Nazareth." But that would just be his day job. His real work - the work of his life - was to be empty.

The author of Philippians says it plainly: "Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant..."

He "emptied himself" and took on the occupation of "a servant." That's who he was. That's what he did. He emptied himself in order to serve others.

The priests whom Jesus addressed in today's gospel weren't just ordinary priests. They were "chief priests." They were C.E.O.s. Nobody in religious society ranked above them. And from some of their comments, we can pretty well surmise that these chief priests were full of themselves.

Although religion was their business, it's quite possible that they were so full of themselves that they left no room in their hearts for God or for others.

And then there were those who were despised and rejected by respectable society. In the four gospels they make up a large segment of the cast of characters.

The lame, the halt and the blind. The lepers, the losers and the lost.

Jesus gathered them to himself. He welcomed them. He loved them. He fed them.

Last week we celebrated the feast of St. Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector, despised and shunned by polite society. Jesus saw Matthew sitting at the tax office and he invited Matthew to dinner.

The religious leaders observed Jesus sharing a meal with Matthew and his fellow outcasts, and they asked the disciples of Jesus, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Jesus overheard their question, and he answered it: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."

Which is another way of saying, "Those who are full have no room for God, but those who are empty."

Amen.