Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 8, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
Rejection. It’s kind of an ugly word. It stirs up all sorts of negative feelings and a gloomy sense of discouragement. We fear being rejected. We sometimes mock others who are rejected. And yet, rejection is an important part of our lives. We’ve all heard stories of successful people who suffered great setbacks and rejection only to persevere and make it big. Harrison Ford told to quit acting. Steve Jobs being tossed from his own company. J.K. Rowling being rejected by publishers.
Their examples can be great for inspiring us to persevere until we find success. Facing rejection head on helps us to improve what we do, to learn more about ourselves and to build that intangible skill we call “grit” or “stick-to-it-iveness.” But do we apply that lesson to our faith? To the thing we do on Sundays? Every Christian is called to be a prophet, so do we apply grit to our responsibility to spread the Gospel?
Quite frankly, today’s readings are a tad depressing for prophets like us. Ezekiel is told upfront that people will reject and resist him. St. Paul begs for God’s help with some hidden struggle and he is rejected. God basically tells him “no, it’s better for your humility if you keep suffering in this one way.” Then we have Jesus, the True Prophet, our Lord and savior himself. He is rejected by his own family, by the people he grew up with, by his whole hometown.
Especially in Acadiana, family is something very important to us. At the same time, however, the fading Catholic culture can strain those family relationships. Most of us have family members who are lapsed Catholics, lukewarm Catholics, or even hostile ex-Catholics. This strain can really undermine our zeal for the faith. We instinctively realize that there is a tension between growing in our faith and staying close to family. There might even occur this thought: “if I get too involved, if I let my faith show too much, it will create distance between me and the family members I love.”
And you know what? It probably will. And this is because rejection is a necessary part of our faith. Want proof? Remember the questions asked at a baptism. Do you reject sin? Do you reject the “glamor of evil?” Do you reject Satan? Only then, after these rejections does the priest ask you “do you believe?”
In order to truly embrace God and all the Truth He has revealed to us, we have to reject the devil, the world, and the lies that come from both of them. That means rejecting lifestyles and organizations that serve those lies. If you try to split the difference, if you try to be worldly but have a little religion on the side, you will risk facing the worst rejection of them all: Jesus saying “depart from me you evildoers, I never knew you.” God wants to accept and embrace everyone, but He cannot lie. He cannot be anything other than truth and goodness. If you reject the Truth, you reject God and so He will reject you.
But this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Jesus is pretty up front about it all. Carry your cross, hate your father and mother, lose your life for my sake, let the dead bury the dead. Even today, after being rejected by his own family, He hints at this reality. It’s starts out pretty good, “A prophet is not without honor,” until he says “except.” “Not without honor except among his own kin and in his own house.”
I’m not saying… Jesus isn’t saying to pick fights with your family on purpose. Only, accept the fact that some of your family will reject you if you take the faith seriously. Even still, there is hope hidden in that fact. God tells Paul “my power is made perfect in weakness.” God tells Ezekiel that, even if he is rejected, the people will know “that a prophet has been among them.” We are a crucified people and being rejected, especially being rejected by those close to us, is a form of crucifixion.
But we are also a resurrected people. It is often those who reject us that become our greatest witnesses. Paul knows this – he rejected Christ, killed his followers, and then became one of His greatest Apostles. We even see this reality play out in the family of Jesus, his “sisters” and his brothers, James and Joses and Judas and Simon.
It’s worth mentioning that these people are not his actual siblings, but his cousins. We know this because John’s Gospel explicitly lists James and Joses as the sons of Mary’s sister, also called Mary. There are three Mary’s at the Crucifixion: Mary, Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdala, and Mary the mother of James and Joses. Either way, some of them reject him here and in another gospel passage, they even call him crazy and try to drag him home. But their rejection doesn’t last
We see James – not either of the apostles, but Jesus’ cousin – later on as one of the disciples. St. Paul even describes him as “the brother of the Lord,” meaning his cousin. History tells us that this James eventually becomes the 1st bishop of Jerusalem. Another “brother” of Jesus, named, Simon actually becomes the 2nd bishop of Jerusalem. So yeah, they rejected him at first; Then they had a change of heart.
They would have never gotten to that point, though, if Jesus avoided the issue. Jesus could have played down his religiousness around them to avoid the conflict, but he didn’t. In order for them to come to the truth, they had to first see it, reject it, and then be won over by it. So it is with us. If you take your faith seriously, the world will reject you, and that will probably include some of your own family.
So what do we do? It’s simple, even if it’s not easy. Put your faith first in everything. That includes being kind and humble and forgiving, but it also means not hiding the fact that you reject what the secular world considers sacred. When they reject you, keep going, keep striving to live the truth in love. Rejection will never feel good, but we can learn to see it with the eyes of faith, with the serenity of Christ on the cross who prayed for the people who rejected him.
Be faithful in private and in public. Be faithful around your family. “And whether they heed or resist, they shall know that a prophet has been among them.” And if they know you are a prophet – a practicing Catholic – so will the Lord and the Lord always rewards his prophets.