- Sermon - Mickey Anders

"Rejection"

By Dr. Mickey Anders

First Christian Church

Pikeville, Kentucky

August 1, 2004

Rejection; it's a word that carries a load of pain much greater than the sound of the syllables. The root word "reject" has the many meanings. We might say, "I reject your offer," which means that we refuse to take something. We might say, "The clothing she rejected was given to Helping Hand," which means to discard or throw out as worthless or useless. We might say, "The magazine rejected his manuscript," which means they decided to pass or skip it. We might say, "She rejected her own child," which means she denied acceptance, love and care to the child. We might say in medical circles, "His body rejected the transplanted liver," which means to fail to accept the transplanted part.

These definitions only begin to hint at the depth of emotions that are often associated with the word "rejection." We can point to many sad examples of rejection and its effect on people, but the truth is that every one of us knows rejection at one level or another.

For many people, it starts early in life when they perceive that a parent loves one child more than another. We find an example of this in the Bible. Many of the problems in Jacob's family came because Jacob so obviously loved Joseph more than any of his siblings. The sting of that rejection was so great that the brothers finally conspired to sell Joseph into slavery and tell their father that he had been killed by a wild animal.

For some it comes in a failure to excel in athletics. All of us can remember those backyard games when teams were chosen. The most popular kids took turns picking team members, until finally only one skinny, weak kid is left. And the final chooser says, "Okay, if we have to, we'll take him."

Others were secretly in love with the girl of their dreams. When the boy finally gets the courage up to let the secret be known, he discovers that she doesn't even know he existed.

How many times have we known a story of one who was expecting a promotion at work only to find that the job was given to someone else?

Writers must learn to live with rejection. One of my favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, written by Robert M. Pirsig, was rejected by publishers 121 times before one obscure publisher agreed to give it a try. Robert Pirsig persevered in spite of the many rejections, and the book became the publishing phenomenon of the 70s and a New York Times bestseller.

Candidates for public office often have to deal with rejection. Abraham Lincoln won many races in his long career, but along the way he lost many too. In 1832 he was defeated in his first campaign for the Illinois House of Representatives. In 1838, he was defeated in his bid for the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. In 1855, he lost his bid for the U.S. Senate. In 1858, he lost another bid for the U.S. Senate. But he was finally elected as the sixteenth President of the United States in 1860. Here was a man who was great because he had learned to live with rejection and not let it destroy him.

It is safe to say that the experience of rejection is universal. All of us have had to learn to live with rejection in one way or another. I suppose two questions come to mind: How do we cope with rejection? And does God reject us?

First, I think we can take comfort in our rejection knowing that Jesus was rejected too. It comes as a surprise that Jesus had to know rejection too. Isaiah says, "He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account."

Jesus understands our feelings of rejection because he was rejected just like we are, or maybe worse. According to Mark, he was rejected and misunderstood by his own family. When his parents lost him in the Temple at 12 years of age, they didn't understand. He replied, "I must be about my Father's business." In Mark 3:20-21, we find that Jesus is preaching at his home town, and his family "went out to restrain him, for people were saying, 'He has gone out of his mind.'" There is every indication that his family agreed that he was out of his mind and wanted him to stop preaching.

Jesus came "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," but was rejected by the religious and political leaders of his nation, and in the end, the people of his own faith rejected him forcing his followers to turn to the Gentiles.

In the final crisis of his life, one of his disciples betrayed him, another denied him, and the rest fled in fear. Those closest to Jesus rejected him when there was danger in the air.

All of this rejection of Jesus may be one factor in making it hard for Jewish people today to believe he really was the Messiah. It made it difficult for those earliest Christians to convince their friends that Jesus was the one. They were sure the Messiah was not supposed to be treated this way.

It would take the creative thinking of Paul to translate rejection into exaltation. He would take the scandal of the cross and make it the centerpiece of his theology. The cross did not prove that Jesus was rejected by God, as the Jews thought, but meant that Jesus took our sins on himself. He died for our sins. The scandal of the cross became the glory of Christ.

The scene is the last day of school before the Christmas holiday. The boys and girls of an elementary school had just finished their Christmas program for the parents and now it was time to go home for the two-week vacation. One set of parents was waiting for Bobby, their kindergartner who, along with all the other five- and six-year-olds, was carrying home a special project--the Christmas gift for Mom and Dad that the kids had been working on for weeks.

With great exuberance Bobby raced toward his folks trying to put on his coat and keep his backpack on his shoulder all the while. But Bobby tripped, and the special gift flew out of his hands, landing with a sickening ceramic crash. For a moment there was silence, and then Bobby wailed. His father quickly strode over and strongly said, "It's OK, Bob, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter."

But his mother was wiser about such things and so she threw herself to the ground, embraced the tyke tightly and said, "Oh but it does matter, it matters a great deal indeed!" And she wept with her Bobby, she wept. (1)

Now we see that the rejection which Jesus experienced makes him more compassionate, more understanding of humanity and more forgiving. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin." There the writer makes a strong case that Jesus can be our high priest because he understands us, he has been tempted as we have, he experienced rejection just like we have, and he stands at the right hand of God interceding for us.

Jesus understood the nature of his rejection. In Mark 12:10 he quotes Psalm 118:22 saying, "Have you not read this scripture: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes?'" Jesus was rejected, but he became the cornerstone of the faith in spite of that rejection.

The marble block that Michelangelo finally used for the Pieta was one that was quarried out of the highest mountains of Carrara, the purest, whitest marble that could be found. It had been ordered by someone else, but never paid for, and so it was sent to Rome to be sold to anyone who could use it. This was the stone out of which he made that incredible figure of the young mother holding her dead Son. (2)

Our passage from Isaiah goes on to say, "Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed."

Isaiah foreshadows the view that Jesus suffering made for our forgiveness. 1 Peter 3:18 says, "For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring us to God." 2 Peter 2:24 says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed."

There are many theological views that try vainly to explain how his death makes for our salvation. I must confess that I can't comprehend, and I don't understand it, but the Bible makes it clear the Jesus died for us.

In his book, "Written in Blood," Robert Coleman tells the story of a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. The doctor explained that she had the same disease the boy had recovered from 2 years earlier. Her only chance for recovery was a transfusion from someone who had previously conquered the disease. Since the two children had the same rare blood type, the boy was the ideal donor.

Johnny hesitated. His lower lip started to tremble. Then he smiled and said, "Sure, for my sister."

Soon the two children were wheeled into the hospital room, Mary, pale and thin; Johnny, robust and healthy. Neither spoke, but when their eyes met, Johnny grinned.

As the nurse inserted the needle into his arm, Johnny’s smile faded. He watched the blood flow through the tube.

With the ordeal almost over, his voice, slightly shaky, broke the silence, "Doctor, when do I die?"

Only then did the doctor realize why Johnny had hesitated, why his lip had trembled when he’d agreed to donate his blood. He’d thought giving his blood to his sister meant giving up his life. In that brief moment, he’d made his great decision. (3)

The Bible makes it clear that Jesus did exactly that for us. He gave his blood for us.

This answers our second question, "Does God reject us?" Jesus came so that we could know that God does not desire to reject us, but God does everything possible to bring us to God.

Several years ago, the Red Cross in small Oklahoma town posted signs all over town with these words: