Ep 95 - “The School of Trust”

In Episode 95 of Brother from Another Father, titled “The School of Trust,” the reflection explores Jesus’ response to rejection, frustration, and apparent failure in His ministry.

Drawing on the idea of “early adopters,” the episode examines how the Kingdom of God was first embraced not by the powerful or influential, but by the poor, the marginalized, and the overlooked. Rather than despairing at this, Jesus rejoices in the mysterious wisdom of God.

The episode reflects on what it means to place ourselves “in the school of Christ” — learning from His deep trust in the Father, His freedom from the need for worldly success, and His faithfulness even when the path leads toward the cross.

A thoughtful reflection on failure, surrender, trust, and the difference between being successful and being faithful.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to episode 95 of Brother from Another Father as we celebrate the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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The social scientist E. M. Rogers in 1962 advanced an idea of how a new product or a new idea is gradually assimilated and received into society. And he identified five groups of people who adopt this idea or this new product at different stages. And it follows a normal distribution curve. In the very front part of that normal distribution curve are the first people who adopt this idea or this new product. And they're called the innovators. Only 2.5% of the population. These are people like Elon Musk and so on, the luminaries, visionaries of our age, who take a risk on new technology in order to be the first. The very next category of people represents 13.5% of the population, and they are called the early adopters. They are the ones who will adopt a new idea or a new technology very early on in its penetration and assimilation into society. The next group, the third group, are called the early majority, 34% of the population. After them come the late majority, 34% of the population. And the final group, the last group to adopt an idea or a new product, are called the laggards, those who lag behind, about 15% of the population. So from this analysis, it should be clear that if you have a new idea or a new product that you want society to adopt, what you need is a group of elite early adopters. In uh the Gen Z language of today, we call them influencers. You want people who have a large following to be your early adopters. Because once people see their icons, their idols adopting a new product or a new idea, they will be quick to follow. Jesus in today's gospel is doing an analysis of his early adopters. He has come with a new idea, the kingdom of God, and he's trying to get it to spread in Jewish society. And he wants to know who are my early adopters? And instead of finding that his early adopters are the who's who of Jewish society, are the movers and shakers of Jewish society, he finds just the contrary. His early adopters are the very dregs of Jewish society, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the sinners, the crippled. Curiously, instead of being distressed about this and saying, Oh my gosh, this doesn't look good. However, is my idea going to find any penetration whatsoever if my early adopters are a bunch of losers? He does just the opposite. And Jesus rejoices and thanks his Father. He says, I thank you, Father, for hiding these things from the clever and the wise, from the influential, from the Pharisees, the chief priests, the movers and shakers of society, and for revealing them to mere children. Now, we must be very careful here when Jesus is talking about children. In our contemporary age, we have a very romanticized idea of children. Children are innocent, children are carefree, children are everything that we would like to be. This was not the idea that first century Palestine had of children. In the ancient world, children were at the very bottom of the pyramid. To be a child was to be someone without status, someone without rights. You were just junk. You were on the very bottom of the pile. And so when Jesus says, I thank you, Father, for revealing these things to me at children, he's saying, I thank you that my early adopters, the people who actually get my message, are the people without any status, are the poor, are the marginalized. We might find this rather bizarre. Why is Jesus rejoicing in this? Especially when we consider what has come just before in the Gospel of Matthew. Just before the passage that we heard in today's Gospel, we see Jesus doing two things. First of all, he is expressing frustration at the Pharisees, the scribes, the movers and shakers of society for the way that they have received both him and John the Baptist, claiming that John the Baptist is some crazy guy stuck out there in the desert, possessed by a demon. And then along comes Jesus doing everything opposite to the way that John the Baptist does. And instead of being happy, the same people criticize him for being a drunkard, a glutton, and keeping company with tax collectors and sinners. And then Jesus has a go at the lands of Chorazin and Bethsida and says to them, Why are you so hard of heart? For if the miracles and great works that have been done in you were done entire and in Sidon, they would have repented long ago. In fact, if we take these stories together with today's gospel at a glance, it's actually quite clear what's happening. Jesus is having a rant. He is ranting at his frustration, that his mission that was so full of hope that he expected would be welcomed by people, has instead found the opposite reaction, has instead been met with resistance by the most important people in society. And he's having this rant, and then suddenly he stops short, suddenly he starts to think about it, and then he laughs at himself and he thanks God. Because what does he manage to do? He's managed to see that in this mysterious unfolding of God's plan for the kingdom of God, God has chosen not the strong and the powerful, but the weak and the powerless. And Jesus now understands God's plan and he laughs at God's sense of humor and exclaims, huh? Sorry, Lord, why did I doubt you? This is actually fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for choosing the powerless and the poor. And sorry that I didn't trust you. Thank you for keeping this away, hiding it from the wise and the clever. Jesus, I think, is showing us and giving us a lesson of how to deal with failure in our lives, of how to deal with frustration when our plans do not go according to the way that we want them to. He is inviting us to learn from him. I love the way that the French expresses this same verse. The French says, Mettez-vous dans mon école, literally, put yourself in my school. If we are to put ourselves in the school of Jesus, what will we learn from Jesus? Why is Jesus's yoke easy and his burden light? He looks at his mission of spreading the kingdom of God and finds that things are not going very well. His early adopters are the dregs of Jewish society. With things like this, his idea, his mission of the kingdom of God is not going to go very far. The vast majority of Jewish society will not adopt his preaching and his ideas simply because they are espoused by cripples, prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners. Indeed, Jesus at this stage probably sees that things will end up in the cross. He will have to go to the cross. And for all intents and purposes, his mission looks like it might end in failure. But he does not seem to be worried about this. He is not scratching his hair and tearing out his hair and saying, Lord, you gave me this mission, but it's so, so difficult, and I don't know what I'm gonna do, and you need to help me out here. No, he says, My burden is light and my yoke is easy. Why? Well, I think we need to go back to the temptation that Jesus encountered in the desert when the devil tempted him to turn stones into bread. This temptation is symbolic of the temptation that Jesus would have faced throughout his public ministry to be successful, to be popular, to capture the imagination of the whole of Israel, and to use his power to make life easy for himself. And as Mother Teresa reminds us, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, God does not ask us to be successful. Rather, God asks us to be faithful. And this is the lesson that Jesus had to learn in the desert and then carry on learning throughout his public ministry. For this is the response that he gives to the devil. He says, No, man must not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Jesus realizes that all that the Father asks him to do is to be faithful, to live on his word, to do his part the best that he can, and then trust the rest of his success of his mission into his father's hands. I think we can be quite sure that Jesus did not have any precise, clear idea of how his death, resurrection, ascension, and then the descent of the Holy Spirit would enable his apostles to go out into the whole world and to spread his preaching and teaching like wildfire. I don't think that Jesus had a precise idea of how successful his mission would actually be once he had died. What he had to do was just trust that his father was taking care of things. And his trust was so deep that he did not really need to worry about it. And so it is with us. If things do not seem to be going our way, if life is not proceeding according to our expectations, if we are encountering failure, instead of tearing our hair out and stressing about it, perhaps what we need to learn is to put ourselves in the school of Christ, to learn from Him, to watch Jesus and the way that He trusts the Father, and to learn to trust the Father in the same way. God bless and have a good Sunday.