10th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 9 June 2024
As you may know, the story of the IT giant, Apple, is of a tech fairytale of one garage, three friends and very humble beginnings. As is now the stuff of legend, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak teamed up together in their 20s. Wozniak had designed a new form of computer to resemble a typewriter; Jobs sold his VW bus to fund the production, and Apple began on 1 April 1976, named after the apple farms in Oregon where Jobs had been laboring. And the rest is history, as they say.
However, things may well have been consigned to history if it weren’t for another player in the story, John Scully. In 1983 Scully was the President of Pepsi. Up to that point, the company had been his life’s work, and he had helped turn it to one of the world’s most recognizable brands. Jobs had heard of him and approached him to assist his own fledging company with the business acumen that he knew he required. He did so with persistency, getting knocked back any number of times. Why would Scully who was leading a successful company put his life’s work on the line for a startup that might not be around in five years? He had worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder at Pepsi, and he was being asked to leave the top position for a six-year-old startup by a 28-year-old who dropped out of college. That’s probably not where he had his sights set. Jobs, however, put to him his final pitch, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Scully left Pepsi that year.
Of course, the story become rather complicated subsequently, and the relationship between Jobs and Scully had further iterations. However, for our point today we focus just on this early relationship between them.
It is estimated we spend about 80,000 hours of our life at work.[1] Yet, the work that most of us commit our lives to isn’t the kind of work by which we’re inspired. This is not to say that we can’t be content with a job unless it inspires. The point is simply that our work takes up a lot of our time. It can be a place where we go to stay busy and to support the joy in other parts of your life, or it can be a place of deep meaning and satisfaction. The point that is being made here, is that opportunity doesn’t always present itself where we think it will. Often, it sits outside our field of vision, and we need to be deliberate in keeping an open mind. We have to continuously look beyond our horizons, and not to get too focused on the road we’re on currently. There is a broader reality and it’s filled with possibilities that can open a new world of potential.
Well what has all this to do with the Gospel text we have heard? In the commencement of his ministry, Jesus is following his passion. He has looked beyond standard expectations of how he should act, and has embarked upon a pathway of extraordinary risk. For this he is labelled ‘mad’; he attracts the strongest criticism that he is possessed. As we know from earlier passages in the gospel, something has moved him, intruded upon him, so that he comes out of his period in the wilderness to teach something new. Now, he is embarking on a path that is not determined by the expectations of others, but rather by something deep inside him from which he draws his deepest identity. He is acting now, and will continue to act from this source, rather than from any other. Ultimately, it will take him to his death.
The Gospel challenges us onto a road full of risk. It sets us apart. It asserts a way of living that is not shared by those around us. Many people will say to us, too, “you are mad.” “How could you believe in all that religious stuff?” “How could you think that way?” “How could you possibly associate with the Church?” “I thought you had more sense!” The comments made to Jesus are not that different from the comments that can be made to ourselves at times.
And yet, we are here because somehow, we know, too, something has called to us to live our lives not according to what is expected of us, but according to something we have intuited deep within ourselves to be true, to be good, to be beautiful – the promise that Jesus sets before us and upon which we have staked our lives.
Where do we draw our identity? This is the fundamental question at the heart of the gospel today. Will we draw it from the prevailing standards? Will we draw it from what others expect of us? Will we draw it from what simply keeps us secure, from what is always predictable and safe? Or, are we prepared to stop selling sugar water, base our lives on what is a huge risk, and so change our world?
[1] Taken from Zat Rana, “Career Strategy: Don’t Sell Sugar Water,” https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/career-strategy-dont-sell-sugar-water.html