4^th Sunday of the Year [C] 2010

Forty-some years ago (1969), Lawrence Peter wrote a book about inefficiency in the business world. He called it The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong. He sent the manuscript to McGraw-Hill. Their publication editor rejected it. With this note: “I can foresee no commercial possibilities for such a book, and can consequently offer no encouragement.”

Peter sent the manuscript to 29 more publishers, and 29 publishers rejected it. They all agreed that its market value was limited. After 30 rejections, you’d think that Peter would give up on his manuscript. But he didn’t; he sent it out one more time—this time to William Morrow and Company. This time it was accepted. And how did the book do? It sold over 14 million copies! Not bad for a book which 30 publishers rejected as having “limited commercial value.”

Lawrence Peter’s experience of rejection has been repeated over and over in history. Abraham Lincoln, whom many people would say was the greatest president in the history of our country, was defeated seven times for elective offices before he won the greatest elective office of all… Vincent VanGogh, one of the greatest painters in history, earned only $85 from his paintings during his entire lifetime. A century later, one of his paintings, Dr. Bachet, sold for $82.5 million!

And then there was Jesus…. Even most non-Christian historians regard him as the greatest, most influential person who ever lived. Yet he was rejected…. Not only by the people of his hometown, who couldn’t imagine that the son of a carpenter could be anything more than a carpenter, but also by the religious leaders of his time.

If Lincoln, VanGogh, and Jesus had let rejection govern their lives and keep them from doing what they thought was right, our world would be a much poorer place.

Perhaps that is the message for us today. Jesus is warning us against letting rejection by other people keep us from doing what we believe is right. He said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you…. No slave is greater than his master…. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

He was preparing us: Anyone who wants to build a better world must be prepared for rejection. And I suspect that almost everyone in this church has at one time or another felt the kind of rejection Jesus was talking about.

Take students in high school or college. Ask them what happens when they try to remain honest in an exam when everyone around them is cheating. Ask them what happens when they try to remain chaste or drug-free at a party when others around them are being otherwise. Ask them what happens when they speak out against abortion while others around them are defending it. Ask them what happens when they speak out against discrimination while others around them are assassinating the character of minorities. And what is true of young people is true of older people as well. We’ve all experienced the kind of persecution and rejection that Jesus said we would.

As followers of Jesus, we can’t let that keep us from being honest and chaste and principled. We can’t let rejection and persecution keep us from defending the rights of the unborn and standing up for the dignity and rights of minorities. It hits us right in the face. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said: “Your light must shine before all, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Our vocation as Christians is to be prophets of the Father in our world, just as Jesus and Jeremiah were in theirs. Someone once said that the reason our society finds itself so screwed up today is that we have chosen to listen to our politicians rather than our prophets.

A politician is an elected official whose success largely depends on his/her ability to say what people want to hear. A prophet’s success, on the other hand, is usually measured by his/her willingness to risk saying what people need to hear, what God wants to say.

That is what our baptism and confirmation is all about—calling us to be the prophets of our day. To paraphrase St. Paul, “In a world of darkness, we Christians are called by God to shine like the stars.”

May this Eucharist and our being and believing together give us the strength to do that!