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One of my all-time favorite entrepreneurial success stories began in
1941 when two brothers in San Bernardino, California, developed a
business plan they thought would make themselves and their families a
boatload of money. However, when the brothers presented their business
plan to the local banks, loan officers didn’t share the brothers’
enthusiasm. For most loan officers, the plan was too ambitious to offer
a sufficient degree of reward to be worth the inordinate risk the banks
would have to assume. After numerous rejections, however, the brothers
finally secured a $5,000 loan and opened up their first, drive-in
restaurant.
During its first year of operations, the drive-in was a smash,
especially among teenaged boys, who loved to frequent the restaurant in
their beat-up jalopies and hang around after a snack or meal to flirt
with the cute carhops. Young families liked the drive-in, too, because
it offered inexpensive food served relatively fast. Young parents could
take their little kids out for a meal and get them home before any real
problems began.
The brothers’ dream had come true! After eight years of modest success,
however, the two brothers were dissatisfied with the drive-in’s
profitability. Believing they could make much more money, the brothers
formulated a new business plan, this one premised on the assumption that
their customers would be willing to sacrifice variety in the menu for
speed as well as personal service for price.
So, with their new business plan in place, the brothers forged ahead,
gambling that the changes included in their business plan would increase
profits.
The first element of the new plan involved financing the venture.
Instead of a bank loan and paying interest, the brothers pooled their
families’ joint savings. With hard, cold cash in hand, the brothers
closed the drive-in to make the architectural changes as required by the
new plan. They also changed the menu, paring it down from twenty-nine
to nine items with an almost exclusive focus upon hamburgers,
cheeseburgers, fries, and milk shakes. They also replaced washable
ceramic plates and silverware with disposable paper bags, wrappers,
cups, and napkins. Last, but not least, the brothers got rid of the
cute carhops, opting instead for self-service.
With everything organized according to the new business plan, the two
brothers re-opened the drive-in and waited for the crowds to come and
the profits to roll in. But, the customers didn’t come and the brothers
quickly found themselves “losing their shirts.”
For a while,
they even asked their employees to park their cars in the customer’s
parking lot so it would appear that the updated drive-in had business.
Stunned, the brothers didn’t know what to do or where to turn.
That’s when the brothers’ started second guessing themselves. Should
they have taken the risk and made the changes? Was it too late to
get back to the original concept and be satisfied with that? What about
the financing? Might they have bankrupted their families and their
futures as well? What would then do then?
Rather than act hastily, however, the two brothers decided to stick with
the new business plan and allow things to unfold for a while longer.
In
the middle of their desert, not knowing what the future would bring, the
ambivalence these two brothers were experiencing is something fmost of
us have experienced first hand. There are times when we’ve made a
decision to move forward and implemented it, lured by a vague promise of
something better. When things don’t go according to plan, however, we
fear what the future may bring. We’ve already taken a risk, sometimes a
well-calculated risk and at others times a not so well-calculated risk.
However, we don’t want to be completely undone. So, as things unfold
and we become increasingly less clear about whether our decision was a
good one or not, uncertainty causes us to question not only our decision
but our motives and those of others as well.
Making the decision to accept God’s call and build the rest of our lives
upon this vocation doesn’t differ all that much from the two brothers
and their drive-in. Every one of us takes a gamble when we decide to
get married, when we decide to serve God’s people as a religious sister
or brother or as a priest, or when we decide to lead our lives as single
persons. When we first embark upon our vocation, we’re given no
guarantees that “the plan” will work. Furthermore, there are lots
of family members, friends, and acquaintances who are more than willing
to question us, our motives, and our judgment, too…all with the best of
intentions, of course!
Living one’s vocation usually starts off pretty well. Our hopes carry
us through many of the early difficulties. Possessing lots of optimism
and self assurance, we whittle every mountain down into a molehill.
But, as our hopes are tempered by reality and, in the middle of the
inevitable challenges we surely meet, we may feel as if we’ve failed.
Molehills become mountains as things
unravel, don’t go
precisely according to plan, or derail. All of our efforts to improve
things may have fallen flat. Or, even if things did according to plan,
we may discover that what we really hoped for and the happiness we
envisioned isn’t the outcome.
In
the middle of these doubts and worries, we find ourselves wondering
whether we should adapt our plan and take the chance to try again,
perhaps venturing out in a new way. We hesitate and make a decision;
then, we have second thoughts. We wonder whether we should embrace anew
the vocation God called us to follow, to rest on our laurels living in
dreams of past good times, or to turn away.
There always is a risk involved in accepting our vocation and there is
no guarantee of reward. As people of faith, all we have is God’s
promise to be with us and to nourish us as we live out our vocation.
We
heard this message in today’s first reading. Elijah had just
demonstrated how God’s word was powerful enough to mow down all of
Jezebel’s four hundred and fifty prophets. Elijah believed this
spectacle would convince Queen Jezebel to change her ways and he would
emerge successful. But, Jezebel didn’t change her ways and, instead,
pronounced a death sentence for Elijah. As far as Elijah was concerned,
his business plan was a complete and utter failure.
So, what’s Elijah to do? Where is he to turn? Will Elijah remain a
prophet? Will go into hiding and take refuge in his past success? Or,
will Elijah run away trying to escape his vocation and God as well?
We’re told that Elijah chose to escape to the desert. Now, sitting in
the middle of nowhere beneath a broom tree and hiding from Jezebel’s
allies, Elijah
is dejected. He’s failed, just as his forefathers―the prophets before him―had
also failed.
With all of this
weighing upon him, Elijah utters a prayer something like this:
God, why do I even
bother? You made it possible for me to achieve an incredible victory.
But, now, rather than enjoying the victory party I expected for my good
work, I had to flee for my life. Here I am in this stinking hot desert
hiding from Jezebel who placed a price on my head. Even this stupid
tree doesn’t give me much relief from the heat. So, here’s the deal:
let me die right here and now. Get it over with. I did my part,
failure that I am.
God doesn’t accept
Elijah’s deal. Instead of granting Elijah’s request, God sends an agent
from the heavenly court to provide Elijah a meal so that Elijah will be
nourished to fulfill his vocation. Evidently, there is yet another
chapter in God’s plan.
But, Elijah didn’t
understand the significance of what God had done for him, so determined
Elijah was to have things go according to his plan. Although Elijah ate
the meal, he remained seated on his duff beneath the broom tree,
brooding and eventually falling asleep. All Elijah wanted was release
from his misery.
Undaunted, God sends a
second meal. But, this time, the agent reveals the true purpose for the
meal. God means business and Elijah must realize this. This food isn’t
just any food; no, it’s spiritual nourishment for Elijah to journey to
God’s mountain and to meet with God, just as Moses had.
Does this not teach us
about our vocation, whether as a spouse, a dedicated religious, or a
single person? When we find ourselves in the middle of our desert
feeling down and dejected, with lips parched and stomachs grumbling, and
our spirits listless and having no zest for life, will we realize what
really is at stake? Until we enter into the pain we experience as we
live out the daily, weekly, and yearly reality of our vocation, until we
eat the food sent from the heavenly court, and until we complete our
journey to God’s
mountain, will
we ever truly value the gift of our vocation?
Likewise, in today’s
gospel, Jesus declares to the people in the crowd that God has sent him,
“come down from heaven” as the “living bread.” Jesus is the bread
that “draws”
people to God in that sense that Jesus invites people to God and show
the way to the Father.
This bread signifies who Jesus really is, where he really comes from,
and the fullness of life he has been sent to draw us toward. Jesus is
the sign for those who pay attention and seek to learn. Listening and
learning from Jesus is how the people in the crowd―just
like us―demonstrate an affirmative response to God’s call.
But, we mustn’t
overlook all of those nameless and faceless people in the crowd, the
people who may indeed be us. These people don’t listen to and learn
from Jesus. No, they impose their experience and prejudices upon him
and his teaching. They expect everything to go according to their plan,
the very plan that has blinded them to God’s plan.
Upon hearing Jesus’
testify that he is the “bread come down from heaven,” the people grumble
and complain because they know better. They say: “Hey, we know this
guy. He and his family are from down the street in Nazareth, not
heaven, for God’s sakes!”
Sadly, Jesus is
teaching them about something marvelous and new. The reaction of the
people in the crowd is only to remain fixated upon the bygone past.
Faced with the risk of moving forward into the unknown future trusting
only in God’s providence, their ancestors in the desert clamored not for
the freedom they had prayed for but for the “good old days” when they
were slaves in Egypt. And so, the “sins of the parents” visit the
children in future generations as they stand there in the crowd before
Jesus. Fearful of entering the unknown, these people want things the
way they are, have been and, the people believe, always were. So, they
neither hear Jesus nor comprehend the bread from heaven he offers to
nourish their spirit.
It takes faith to see
“outside of the box,” that is, to hear God calling us in our deserts and
providing us nourishment for the journey to His mountain so that we can
speak with God about who He is calling us to be.
For his part, Elijah
wouldn’t let himself see outside of the box. Instead, he prayed for
death so that he could escape his feelings of dejection and misery. The
agent bearing food from heaven was the unexpected sign; yet, even so, it
took God two attempts to drive the idea through Elijah’s thick skull.
For the Jews in the
crowd, Jesus―the
“bread from heaven”―was the unexpected sign who invited all of these
nameless and faceless people to partake of God’s very life. But,
blinded by their choice to live in the past and allowing it to prejudice
how they saw and how they thought, they also refused to listen.
In the desert of our
tiredness, in the desert of our hunger, and in the desert of the
despondency when we experience persecution for demonstrating God’s power
as Elijah did or for teaching others as Jesus did, our challenge is to
conquer the temptation to evade God and His call, like Elijah did, or to
see people not in God’s light but in the light of our own experiences or
prejudices, as the people in the crowd did.
There is an ironic
parallel to all of this in the final chapter of the two brothers in San
Bernardino and their drive-in restaurant.
It took a while, but
their second business plan did succeed. They were correct to wait for a
while and to ride the tide out. By 1961, the brothers were making
$100,000 a year from their own drive-in and even more from the
franchises springing up all over the country. Despite the early
roadblocks, everything had proceeded according to plan.
At the time, however,
their franchising agent, a man named Ray Kroc, pressed the two brothers
to expand even further. Kroc told the two brothers of his wild-eyed
dream of opening more than one thousand franchises. The brothers balked
at his proposition and sold him their stake in the business with the
proviso that their name remain on the drive-ins. And, as we all know
today, because Ray Kroc took the risk and ventured beyond the known and
the comfortable, there are more than 30,000 McDonald’s franchises
selling billions and billions of hamburgers (and nutritious salads too)
throughout the world.
Along with the rewards
and risks associated with any vocation, there is no guarantee of
success. As God sustained Elijah with food, so too, Jesus assures his
listeners that if they risk living out their vocations, he is the bread
from heaven that will nourish them in their journey to God’s mountain.
As people of faith, all
we know for sure is the testimony of the prophets and of God’s
only begotten Son. That is,
God has promised to be
with us and to nourish us come what may. The choice to believe, as it
was for Elijah and the people in the crowd, is ours alone to make. |
HOMILY
