Homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

St. Joseph's Neier October 7, 2011

Rev. Kevin Schmittgens

Central Idea: The key to success in life is being able to handle all manner of situations that you find yourself in, trusting in the grace and mercy of God.

In every circumstance and in all things
I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry,
of living in abundance and of being in need.
I can do all things in him who strengthens me.

The most famous commercial of all time was only broadcast on television one time. It is so iconic and memorable that it only needed one showing – during the SuperBowl granted – to stick within our consciousness. It easy to remember when it was shown: it was called “1984.” For you younguns, it depicted an athletic women running through a dark, grey, dystopian future with a sledgehammer, as a Big Brother-ish figure droned on monotonously in a dank theatre about conformity and submission. As the zombielike followers listened with dazed attention, young woman spins and throws the hammer at the immense screen where the disembodied head continues his screed. As it hits its mark, the image explodes. With that this tagline appears: On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."

The irony here is that in just the very next year, 1985, one of the co-founders of Apple computers, Steve Jobs, the guru of creative and innovative thinking symbolized by that advertisement, would be fired by the very company he created. It seems Big Brother struck back. And Jobs would later claim it was one of the best things that ever happened to him.

I don’t intend to canonize Steve Jobs, who died this past week. It wouldn’t count because he was Buddhist. But his life and his legacy are worth noting and there are some rather amazing aspects that we would do well to reflect on. Beyond Apple Computer and the iPod and the iPhone and now the iPad, beyond the fact that there are very few people who have transformed human consciousness like Jobs did, beyond the fact that he has transformed all of our lives, there are some remarkable lessons to be learn from his life. As usual, I would like to focus on three of them.

He was born at the right time. Most of the billionaires who cashed in on computers were born between 1950 and 1955. They came of age right at the proper moment. They were young enough to think differently, to think out of the box, to refuse to be tied to the conventional wisdom of the past. And yet they were old enough to be there at the genesis of an incredible moment in the history of technology. That luck, combined with access to early computing, hard work and, let’s face it, massive intelligence and savvy, was the precise recipe for massive success. But there is another, somewhat hidden, aspect to Jobs’ life. Did you know that Steve Jobs was adopted? His father was a Syrian immigrant who his mother’s parents did not approved of. So he was given up to adoption. If he was born at a time when other choices would have been available, the world may well have been a very different place.

Failure and difficulty drove him. Where did we get the notion that children should not be allowed to fail in our society? Not only is that unrealistic, it is unhealthy and ultimately may lead to even bigger failures, like “too big to fail.” Steve Jobs knew failure. He was a college dropout. At the time of what should have been his greatest achievement, he was pushed out of Apple, pushed out by the very people he had hand picked to be part of that company. Jobs went on to start a new company, but he also bought a tiny start up company called The Graphics Group for a mere pittance. It has seemed to work out with him, because that company, later renamed Pixar, has gone on to make quite a bit of money making movies. You may have heard of some of them. When Disney bought Pixar in 2006, Jobs became the largest shareholder in Disney. But Apple, who rehired Jobs in 1996, seemed to have taken off the most when Jobs got ill. The last seven years Jobs has gone from success to success. His secret was revealed in, the now classic, commencement speech he gave at Stanford six years ago in 2005:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies…

What does success truly mean? Knowing that he was going to die, Jobs allowed a writer Walter Isaacson access to his life. The reason is that Jobs wanted his children to know who he was, the reasons why he was so driven, the reasons he often wasn’t there for them. He would be quoted that having children is 10,000 times better than he could imagine. It may have been his greatest accomplishment, which says a lot when you have personally developed the personal computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. In 1978, just as Apple was about to take off, Jobs’ off and on girlfriend had a child out of wedlock. She claimed it was Jobs’ daughter. He vehemently denied it, going so far to say that he was sterile. He would later accept and acknowledge her and some would say that he would name a computer, the Lisa, after her. How did I find all this info? My iPad.

Paul in his letter to the Philippians tells us that we need to be people who can handle any situation, wealth and poverty, satisfaction and hunger. Such is the lot of human beings since the fall of humanity, a fall symbolized by an apple with a bite taken out of it. We as Christians understand that through it all, in life and death, whether we are flinging hammers at totalitarians or just jamming to good tunes on our iPod, in success and failure, it is the grace of God which will carry us on, to face the future with hope, with life, with joy. Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.