Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 01/30/22 Nothing to Fear: Rejection

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Homily from the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Do not sacrifice your identity and integrity on the altar of approval. We all need acceptance. It is a basic human requirement. But we also must have the courage and freedom to know who we are and what we are about independent of the accepting group. Mass Readings from January 30, 2022: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19 Psalms 71:1-6, 15-171 Corinthians 12:31—13:13 Luke 4:21-30

So we have focus on our campus, right? So focus is the Fellowship of Catholic University students. And basically, if you graduated college and you want to be a missionary on a college campus, it's awesome. It's a great thing to choose. I didn't have focus when I graduated college. And so I regret that I never was a focused missionary, but at the same time I didn't have the shot. So it's kind of like, oh, gee, you know. But I did have the opportunity.

Have you heard of Net? Net ministry? So Net is the national evangelization team. And so on college campuses, there's four missionaries, two guys, two girls. Net has like 11 people in a van, and they travel all over the country, and they put on retreats for high school students and junior high students and do a lot of ministry this way. There's net USA, there's net Canada, there's net Australia.

That would have been incredible. There's net Ireland. I had the application in high school and in college. I had the application on my desk for two years. And I wanted to do it. And even talk to some people, they're like, you can do this. And I never did it. every so often I'd fill out another line on the application to be on net and I never completed it

I never turned it in I was never a missionary and it's for one reason in one reason only and I think a lot of us have this experience right in our life where there's something we want to do not something we ought to do not someone not something someone told us we should do but something I actually want you wanted to do and you just didn't do it and there's a lot of reasons right we didn't do it but I think a lot of times the reason that we didn't do, the thing that we wanted to do, is the same reason I didn't send them my application. I was afraid. I think fear is one of those things that it holds us back from doing, again, not just the things we ought to do. I think fear is one of those things that holds us back from doing the things that I do. This would be great. This is what I actually want.

You know, fear is supposed to be a good thing. Like fear keeps us alive. Like we have like the fear response, right, is it's fight or flight and it's supposed to be like, yeah, if there's danger, fear is a good thing to feel. The problem is it's not just fight or flight. Sometimes it's freeze. And sometimes when we've experienced that fear, we just were paralyzed. And we don't do anything. Again, this is so common for all of us. In fact, a couple years ago, I shared the story, I will share it again, of a man named Ja Zhang. Jha was born in China. And at one point, he wanted to do great things in his life. At one point, Bill Gates visited his town in China. He calls it a town, but I'm like, dude, there's probably like a million people in your town because you're in China.

There's a lot of people. And Bill Gates visited his town, visited his school. He got to see and hear Bill Gates. And he wrote a letter to his family when he was 14 years old. In his letter, he said, here's my plan for life. By the time I'm 25 years old, I will have bought Microsoft. He wanted to own it. He wanted to dominate the world.

He's like, no, I will buy out Bill Gates and now I'm to be the owner. of Microsoft. So a couple years later, he had the opportunity to go study in the United States, and he took it. He's a smart guy, really industrious, hard worker, came to the United States, and he describes it. He said, I was in my early 30s, did not yet own Microsoft, spoiler. And not only did I not own Microsoft, I found myself in a mid-to-low-level job, living a mid-to-low-level life, chasing mid-to-low-level dreams. And it wasn't, again, because it wasn't smart. It wasn't because he wasn't industrious.

He said it was because I was afraid. Fear kept him back. You know, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has that really, Delano Roosevelt has that really famous quote, right? The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. There's nothing to fear but fear itself, you know, which is, again, partly true. It's also partly false.

I mean, this world is dangerous. This world is going to kill us all. So there is something to fear. At the same time, there are many times when there's really nothing to fear. In fact, FDR's full quote goes on, he says this. He says, my firm belief is that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But then he goes on, he says,

nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to change retreat into advance. Again, so many times we find ourselves paralyzed. We find ourselves not moving forward because we have a fear. And the fear is often nameless. It's often unreasoning. It's often unjustified. In fact, a lot of the power of fear comes from,

from the fact that our fears remain unexamined. Our fears are unexamined. I mean, I don't know if you know this, but when they film the movie Jaws, right, the movie about the shark, I'm old but not that old. Come on, you guys. So movie about the shark, they had all these scenes that they were gonna film with the mechanical shark.

Also, spoiler, it's not a real shark. So there was this mechanical shark, but there were two problems with the mechanical shark. One is it always kept breaking down, and secondly, it didn't look scary. So the director of the movie at one point said, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to film just glimpses of the shark.

You're not actually ever going to get a real clear shot, clear vision, picture of the shark. And it's that not seeing, it's that not knowing, it's that only having glimpses, that it will be terrifying. And I tell you, it was terrifying. I would not swim in Gold Lake because I was like, I don't know, maybe there's freshwater sharks.

Because our fear is just like this. It's often hidden. It's often nameless. it's often unexamined. And so what we need to do for our fears, we need to bring them into the light. So what we're doing, starting today, our first series of the spring semester,

it's called Nothing to Fear. Not because there's nothing to fear, but because there are so many fears in our lives that remain nameless, they remain unexamined, they're unjustified. And so what we want to do is every week, we're just going to name the fears. We're going to call out what they are.

So this first Sunday, the fear I want to talk about is one that paralyzes so many of us, that grips so many of us. It's the fear. I think maybe the one fear that causes us to compromise maybe more than any other. And that fear is the fear of rejection. Again, I don't know what you think when you hear the word rejection, but I think a lot of us are like, yep, okay. Because every one of us has a story.

Like every one of us has experienced rejection in some way or shape or form, whether that's, you know, not getting picked or, you know, getting up the courage to ask that person out and getting shot down or starting to date them and then getting broken up with or even worse, getting cheated on. or you're sending the application and you don't get hired to get rejected, or even just that simple rejection of being excluded. You know, they all got together and nobody told me. We've all experienced this, and it's so deadly painful. Isn't it just, in fact, studies have shown that the pain of rejection is often more destructive to us than physical pain. It actually does damage.

Researchers did this experiment where they took a group of people and they administered to them an IQ test, got their score, and then later on, they did it at the end, but they said they asked them to recall a time when they were rejected. And then they re-administered the IQ test. Their scores were significantly lower by just remembering what it was to be rejected. Again, rejection is so deadly. Why?

Because we need acceptance. We need to know, as human beings, we need to know that we belong. And this isn't even optional. this is actually human. It's a necessity for every single human to develop, to know at some point with some people, with this group or that group, that we belong, that we've been accepted.

And hopefully it starts with our family, but I know so many people who would say, like, no, in my family, I've never felt like I belonged. My family, I've never been accepted in my family. But at some level, in order to be full, in order to be complete, we have to be accepted. In fact, it's not just family. We have to then go beyond our family and find a tribe.

This is, again, this is just part of socialization, where we find a tribe where it's a situation where it doesn't matter, from sports to speech, to band, to working with cars, to like Renaissance Festival people or Comic, whatever it is, at some point we have to find a meaningful group of people who say, you're one of us, you've been accepted, you're approved, you belong. But then there's that next step, not only just belonging to a group. The next step, of course, is realizing that I'm not merely a member of the group.

Realizing that you're not merely a member of the group, but you have your own identity. You have your own integrity, which takes a risk. That's so risky because you've been accepted to a certain degree, but then to be able to stand up and say, but even in the midst of this group, I know who I am and I know what I'm about. And even independent of this group, I know who I am and I know what I'm about. And that takes so much courage because to do that, to say that,

to say, I know who I am, if you're to say, you know what you're about, means you're going to risk rejection. So the first reading today, we have the prophet Jeremiah. It's his call to be a prophet. I got to tell you, to be called to be a prophet, would be the worst thing in the world. Just horrible. Because, I mean, there's false prophets.

At fact, Jeremiah writes about the false prophets, and they are loved. The false prophets are accepted. Everyone loves the false prophets. Why? Because the false prophets tell people what they want to hear. But here's God who comes to Jeremiah and says, you can't do that.

God says to Jeremiah, listen, I've given you your idea. What does he say? He says, I've called you from your mother's womb. I know who you are. I've appointed you a prophet to the nations and you have to go forward and you have to tell them the truth. And basically, God gave Jeremiah an identity. Again, I formed you in the womb. I've known you. You're a prophet to the nations and he gave him his integrity. He's stand up and tell them everything I command you. Here's Jeremiah. He knew who he was and he knew what he was about. And he was rejected. He was really rejected.

His entire life. He was beaten. He was accused. He was in prison. I mean, he was plotted against at one point in the book of the prophet Jeremiah. He writes that he's like, he's like terror, terror on every side. There is no one. There's no one who accepts me.

There's no one who wants. No one saw Jeremiah coming and like, hey, come over here, Jerry. Let's talk. Everyone saw him. We're like, get away from this guy. In fact, there's this one point where he's lowered into the cistern. and this dried out empty well. And he's left there for days,

and he describes how he just kept sinking deeper and deeper into the mud. He was hated. No, it's a little caveat, a little sidebar here. I don't know if you've met these people. There are some people out there who seem to look, it seems like they thrive on this. It seems like they thrive on being rejected. For them, it's like a badge of honor, like, I'm rejected.

Well, people don't like me because I told the hard truths kind of thing. And you know those people like this? I know people like this, but here's what I think. Yeah, I would say it like this. Yes, some geniuses were eccentric, but just because you're eccentric doesn't make you a genius. Right? Like, some saints were weird, just because you're weird,

doesn't make you a saint. And yes, prophets were rejected, but just because you're rejected doesn't make you a prophet. Like that kind of idea, right? So the prophets, they didn't tell the truth because they were like, oh, I'm going to give them a, you know, what for? They weren't angry. Sometimes people are just angry.

agree. Jeremiah wasn't angry. Jeremiah loved the people. In fact, Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet because he would weep over the fact that these people, they don't want to hear what God has to say to them and they're getting lost. In fact, Jeremiah, again, as I said, he was warning the people that the Babylonians would come in and they would bring them into exile. They did that, and then they left a remnant, and that remnant went to Egypt. And Jeremiah could have stayed in Jerusalem. He could have even gone to Babylon, but he said, no, I'm going to leave with these people who hate me and I'm going to go to Egypt with them. The tradition is that he went to Egypt with them, and then they stoned him to death.

Jeremiah, he didn't give up, though. Why? Because he had his identity. He knew who he was. He had his integrity. He knew what he was about. We have to understand, of course, it's not a bad thing to want approval. It's not a bad thing to want acceptance.

The tragedy occurs when we're willing to sacrifice our identity or our integrity on the altar of approval. That's when it's tragic. Because I know there's probably a lot of us who are like, no, I don't need to be accepted by everybody, only by a few, only by the people that like really matter to us, right? The people we really respect, the ones that we really value their opinion. And I think about Jesus in this case, here's Jesus in the gospel today. What does he do? He goes back to his hometown of Nazareth. And if you know anything about Nazareth in the first century, Nazareth had like 300 people. And Jesus lived there for 30 years. So I'm guessing he knew everybody. might have been an extrovert, I don't know,

but even as an introvert, like after 30 years, you're going to know everybody in your 300-person town. Jesus walks into the synagogue, and what happens? At first they're all amazed by him, but then what happens?

He says what needs to be said. He knows who he is, and he knows what he's about, and he gets immediately rejected, because he's unwilling to sacrifice his identity and his integrity on the altar of approval. And yet, you know, we know this, that sacrifice, that's a trap anyways.

I mean, think about it. If out of fear of rejection, I pretend. Like if out of fear of rejection, I pretend to be someone else. Or if out of fear of rejection, I pretend to believe something else. Even if I'm accepted. Who have they accepted? They've accepted a false version of you. They've accepted a you that doesn't actually even really exist.

And so, again, it's a complete trap. So the question is, how do we get out of this? Like, how do we escape this? And I think we do it in two ways. We do it through risk and we do it through love. This has to be the case. we escape the fear of rejection through risk and through love. Again, remember FDR, he said that terror happens

when it's a nameless, unreasoning, unjustified fear. So we have to name it, and we have to ask the question, is it reasonable, is it justified? So, Ja, Zhang, right? Comes to the United States in his early 30s. He realizes, like, the fear of rejection has held me back from so many things. So he says, I turn to Google. Google is my friend.

And he says, I pull up all these articles about, like, how do you overcome the fear of rejection? And there's things like, you know, you just have to not care what people think so much and just, you know, go out there and do it and rah-rah. And he's like, basically, if I could have done that, I would have done that next. And then he came upon this website called Rejection Therapy.com. It's a real website. And it was designed by this Canadian gamer who wanted to gamify overcoming fear of rejection.

And what he did was, is it's called exposure therapy. If you're familiar with psychology, exposure therapy, is you face a little bit of what you're afraid of, little by little, and you overcome this. So how he did this was there were 100 days where he had to go out and seek rejection every single day. And so the first day, his challenge was to ask a stranger for $100.

And so he said, okay, I'm going to film myself doing this so I can go back and review the tape later on and see how I did. So he went into his building where he worked and he walked up to a man, maybe the security guard in the lobby, and he said, I was sweating like the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I was just like a mess. And I walked up to this man.

I said, excuse me, sir, can I have $100? And the man looked at him and he said, no, wait, why? He said, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you. He runs away, grabs this phone, the camera, and takes off. And he said, that night, I went back and reviewed the tape. And I saw myself walking, shaking, sweating, walking up to this man who was probably very delightful, probably not very intimidating. And I asked him for $100.

And I noticed then that he said no, but then he asked me why. But I was already running away. Like he actually wanted to know why I wanted $100 from him. But because I was so afraid, I ran away. So he said, okay, tomorrow, I'm not going to run away. Whatever it is, I'm not going to run away. The next day, his challenge was to go to a burger joint and to order a burger, eat the burger,

and then go back up to the counter and ask for a burger refill. And so that's what he did. He went to this burger restaurant, and he ordered his burger, sat down, ate it, came back up with the wrapper and said, excuse me, I would like to have a burger refill. The person on the counter says, what's a burger refill? And he says, well, it's like a drink refill, but just with burgers.

And the person said, I'm sorry, we don't do that. And then he said, that's when he would run away. But I'm not going to run away. I'm going to stand here and say, well, would you think about it? I really like your hamburgers. And I would like to have another one, please. And the person said, well, I can talk to our manager and see what happens there. And they talked to the manager and said, we're sorry, but no.

And he said, great. But he realized he didn't die. So the next day, he said the next day, the third day changed everything. where the challenge was to go to Krispy Cream, the donut place, go to Krispy Cream, and asked them to make him donuts in the shape of the Olympic rings. So he walked up and he said, I like to have donut in the shape of the Olympic rings. And he said, the woman behind the counter was like, wow, yeah, let's do it. He's like, really?

She's, yeah, how many are there? Seven, five, nine, I don't know. So they sketched out this whole thing and wrote, drew it all. She said, I'll be back in 15 minutes. And 15 minutes later, he had this box of donuts in the shape of the Olympic rings. And he videoed the whole thing. It went on YouTube. He had like 500, 5 million hits in a couple times.

days. He said it changed everything. Why? Because fear has power over us when it's nameless, when it's unjustified. And he realized, I was afraid of something that I was unjustifiably afraid of this nameless thing called rejection. But with risk, I'm able to overcome this, but even more powerful than risk is love. Because I would say this, I would say that rejection only cuts as deeply as a more powerful love allows. Rejection will only cut us as deeply as deeply. And as a more powerful love permits. So almost every beginning of every year, you know, when freshmen show up on campus,

this happens whenever people are in new situations, but it happens in a unique way now, where you see this happen all the time. People walk into a room, and there's a bunch of strangers, a bunch of people who are potential rejectors. And so the person who is the potential rejectee, a potential reject,

the person is on their phone. Have you seen this? Maybe you've done this. Maybe I've done this. It's a coping mechanism, and where I'm just kind of like, okay, I'm in this room full of people who could potentially reject me, so I'm going to be on my phone. And at first I was like, well, come on, that's kind of chicken.

But then I realized what people are doing. In this room where people could potentially reject me, I have this tether to someone who knows me. In this room full of people who don't care about me, I have this lifeline to someone who knows me and cares about me. In this room of people who could potentially just, again, not care, not love. but simply reject me. I've got this lifeline to someone. Basically, what I'm saying is when I'm reminding myself

that someone out there actually loves me. Someone out there actually cares about me. I matter to someone. That helps us navigate rejection. In fact, that's Jeremiah. Jeremiah rejected every day of his life until the day of his death. What do we hear in the first reading today? Here's God who says,

stand up and don't be afraid, as though I would ever leave you, Jeremiah. to speak the truth because I am with you, Jeremiah. In fact, even the gospel today, here's Jesus rejected by the people who probably knew the best. If you know anything about the gospel of Luke, right before this story is the story of Jesus getting baptized in the Jordan River.

Do you remember how that ended? What does the father say to Jesus when he gets baptized? He says, you are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased. Here's Jesus who has the strength to be rejected because he has been given the power of being accepted. And this is the last thing, because this is true for every one of us here. This is true for you.

Not just because you have the courage to risk, because every one of you, every one of us in this church tonight has been accepted by an unconditionally loving father who has declared over you. He truly has said this. He has declared over you that you are my beloved daughter, that you're my beloved son, and I am pleased with you. And that, again, rejection only cuts as deep as a more powerful love allows.

That's why you have the ability to risk boldly, because you've already been loved. You already are loved. You know who you are. You know what you're about. And you're not willing to sacrifice that on the altar of approval. You are loved. And because of that, you have nothing to fear.