I trust that all of us have, at
one time or another, been battered by feelings of undeserved rejection.
Perhaps
such rejections have come from relatives or employers; maybe
from a friend or a desired date; possibly from a partner or spouse, or
even unjust rejection
from the majority of one’s fellow citizens. Possibly, feelings of
rejection by God have surfaced because of very important yet
unanswered prayers. Very few of us react neutrally when clearly unmerited
rejections
intrude on our lives. To one degree or another, large and small
rejections usually hurt, whether expected or not, whether justified or
not.
Surely, some realize from the outset that
they will be unfairly rejected – at least by various individuals
and groups. Bishop Gene Robinson understood from the outset that as a gay,
partnered man, his consecration as a bishop would be controversial. However,
he did not anticipate the degree to which international denunciation of
him and his ministry would become so vicious. Not so fierce, the rejection
of Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori as our Presiding Bishop was expected
by her and those who elected her. Most Anglican “Global South” bishops
have made it clear that they want nothing to do with a scholarly, progressive
woman as a primate – or
with Bishop Robinson.
Today’s account from the Gospel
according to Luke continues last Sunday’s story of Jesus’ sermon
preached early in his ministry within the synagogue of his hometown Nazareth.
His
own declaration of his messianic ministry was rejected by the
people who knew him as a fellow citizen. He shocked them by announcing
that the prophecies
of Isaiah were fulfilled, and that he, Jesus – son of Mary and Joseph,
was the embodiment of that fulfillment. Their familiarity with
Jesus’ humble
origins fueled their doubts; the people thought they knew enough
about Jesus to make sound judgments about him. When Jesus rebuked
their skepticism,
his comments offended their ethnic pride. Their contempt flared
into violence, and as a result, an attempt was made on his
life. With an escape from the
mob, Jesus went to the town of Capernaum where his ministry
was welcomed. Jesus walked away from the synagogue in Nazareth
and never returned.
The early church had an unreserved
interest in stories about the repeated rejection Jesus experienced. They
were comforted
and encouraged in knowing that they were sharing in his suffering,
for they knew firsthand the demands that went with confessing Jesus as
the
Risen Lord and Messiah. Trying to live lovingly as did Jesus,
they understood that they, too, would be unjustifiably rejected by most
of the population.
The people of Nazareth were just not ready or willing to hear
that those who were ethnically different from them are also to be invited
and embraced
as equals in the Kingdom of God.
What can you and I draw from Jesus’ life
ministry about life’s unearned rejections? How do we handle them,
whether large or small, so that we are not overpowered, so
that we are not permanently dejected? I should like to share two observations
that
I have found helpful and sustaining for most of my adult life.
(Needless to say, these will hardly scratch the surface of the implications
of Christ’s
life for whatever rejections you and I experience.)
Early on, I learned that an effective
preparation for undeserved rejections includes the acceptance
of the reality that not
everyone is going to like me, regardless of what I say or do.
As part of my graduate studies at New York University in
the 1960s, I was encouraged
to undergo a year of weekly private and group psychotherapy
at the (then) American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry.
During my first group session,
no sooner had we begun to get to know each other when a very
attractive woman clearly rejected me with hostile looks and
barbed comments. My immediate
reaction was to wonder what I had done wrong. How had I caused
this reaction from her? Before the evening was over, thanks
to the effective therapist,
clarification emerged. We learned that although she had not
realized it, the difficulty was that I reminded her of her
husband; the real problem
was hers, not mine. Additionally, we learned that I was much
too ready to blame myself if someone seemed to not like me.
Applying this event to my roles
as a classroom teacher and a parish minister, I went into most school
and church situations
armed with the assumption that half of my students and parishioners
would not care for me and might withdraw from a course or a parish activity.
(I chose the 50% arbitrarily; I never actually kept score.)
I took the
attitude that their blanket dislike of my teaching or ministry
was not my problem, but theirs. I am who I am, and I do what I do. I
cannot meet
everyone’s needs, whether reasonable or not. There are other teachers
and clergy with whom a better fit might be possible for dissatisfied
students and parishioners. Occasionally I would suggest that
a student or parishioner
try to satisfy his or her needs with someone else.
Heaven help those teachers and clergy
who need to be liked by everyone and who believe that they can effectively
teach or minister to everybody! The real world is such that
some undue
rejection experiences will occur now and then. Those who need
universal approval will suffer ongoing torment, because of their need
to be regarded
positively by one and all. Can you imagine how miserable Jesus
would have been if he needed everyone to like him? Clearly he was prepared
for not
only being disliked, but also rejected in the extreme - nothing
like you or I will ever have to go through.
A second major thing I have learned about
rejection is from the reports about Jesus after his Resurrection, especially
the references to his scars. His body, transfigured by God, was not free
of the scars of his crucifixion. Instead, he presented himself to his disciples
with the disfiguring evidence of his humiliation and torture. His past
history of torment accompanied him and was neither neutralized nor erased.
He had learned to live with – and even chose to die from – unmerited
rejections: negative responses from religious and secular authorities,
rebuffs from family and friends, and denunciations from all but very few
in his life. Still scarred, he was ultimately victorious, because of a
unique act of the Creator; God wanted to make clear to humanity that amidst
all this negativity, Jesus the Risen Lord and Messiah personifies for all
time God’s own Will for humankind. Jesus’ life and ministry
is the Creator’s clue to an authentic and fulfilled life for everyone.
After his Resurrection, the scars - traces of rejection - were
imprinted on his body. His terrible experiences were not blotted out.
I would like to suggest that when
a new rejection comes along, “deal with it.” By that, I mean ask
for, and accept, God’s strengthening power to cope with it. You
and I can choose to remain discouraged, take no further risks,
and, defeated, stop trying. Or, we can choose to accept reality,
assess actual
options,
endure it, quit complaining, make a fresh plan, and get to
work. Perhaps the plan will be, like Jesus’ departure from Nazareth,
to walk away and never return to settings that have inflicted
unjustifiable pain. As
one pastor recently wrote in a meditation, “Accept our problems,
accept our shortcomings, accept the unexpected, accept a world
that doesn't bend to our will, accept new knowledge -- and
then deal with it. Modify
plans, adapt expectations, give up failed approaches, see God
as God is, and join hands to work together.”1 I
would add, accept the lingering scars of your hurts, which at some level
might
be permanent. Additionally, I suggest that whenever possible
we go through all of this
coping in the
company of trustworthy family, friends, or counselors. God
is not enough as we face the hurts of this life; the Creator
fashioned us, such that
we function best when linked to God plus others, or in other
words, as we live in the community of God and genuine neighbors.
I realize that there is much more to be
explored about rejection, its many complex forms and effects, as well as
our possible constructive responses. Nonetheless, this meditation may serve
as a review, or a nudge, for us to reflect upon coping with this common
life issue in the light of Our Lord’s own hometown rejection and
the many more that followed during his ministry. What better place could
there be to find some strength to cope with rejection than right here,
together, at the Lord ’s
Table?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Tom Ehrich, “Reality-Check” in
MEDITATION ON GOD IN DAILY LIFE (January 25, 2007)
SUPPLEMENT FROM THE OXFORD BIBLE COMMENTARY
(4:16–30) Rejection at Nazareth Luke’s
story of Jesus’ ministry begins with his distinctive account of the
rejection at Nazareth, which all commentators on his gospel
agree plays a programmatic role for him (cf. Mt 13:53–8; Mk 6:1–6).
The infancy narratives have already hinted at the divisions
Jesus’ ministry
would cause in Israel and, by the time Luke wrote, the people
of Israel as a whole had rejected not only Jesus, but also
the proclamation of the
gospel. The problem this caused for the early church is reflected
in the NT as a whole but perhaps nowhere with more urgency
than in Luke’s
writings. For him, that rejection was a tragedy but it raised
the questions, not merely of why it happened, but also of the
nature of God’s response.
Did the Jewish rejection of God’s Son mean a rejection of them by
God? Was it even determined by God and did it come about as
a result of God’s decision to abandon his ancient people in the making
of a new people? Was he establishing a new covenant that brought
about the end of
the old? Luke’s writings certainly wrestle with these questions,
though they are seen in their full intensity in his story in
Acts. They come to the surface from time to time in his gospel
and nowhere more obviously
so than in this episode which is written up as a commentary
upon the event that is recorded in Matthew and Mark (not however
without their own different
interpretations of the reasons behind the rejection). Luke
shapes this story in the light of the events that have happened
down to his own time.
It expresses his own understanding of the tragedy. However,
though commentators on Luke are all agreed on the importance
of this episode, there is a wide
variety of opinion on what he was actually saying through it.
(For an interpretation which is quite different from the one
given here, see J. T. Sanders 1987.)
Jesus, in the synagogue on the sabbath day,
uses an OT passage to explain both himself and the nature of the salvation
that God is bringing through him. The passage is actually a composite one,
taken from the LXX version of Isa 61:1–2 into which is fitted a clause, ‘to
let the oppressed go free’, from Isa 58:6. Luke’s Jesus presents
himself as the fulfilment of Isaiah’s Spirit-filled prophetic figure
who proclaimed God’s eschatological redemption. What Isaiah’s
prophet anticipated, Jesus brings into being for, not only is he the final
proclaimer of the saving act of God, he is actually realizing it in his
own preaching and actions: ‘Today, this scripture has been fulfilled
in your own hearing.’ He proclaims ‘good news to the poor’,
that is to those who, marginalized in the present, are looking for God’s
redemption (see Lk 6:20–6). The ‘year of the Lord’s favour’ is
here. What was anticipated in the year of Jubilee, which took place (at
least in theory) every fifty years, when ‘you shall proclaim liberty
throughout the land to all its inhabitants’ (Lev 25:10), is now becoming
a reality. The bonds that oppressed God’s people are being broken.
It is noteworthy that Luke has Jesus leave Isaiah in the middle of a sentence
without including ‘the day of vengeance of our God’. As in
the infancy narratives, Luke understands Jesus’ work primarily as
one of redemption.
The people of Nazareth respond favourably; his ‘gracious words’ impress
them. ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ expresses approval
and local pride. Yet it has within it the seeds of misunderstanding and
it is but a limited response. So Jesus quotes a proverb (rather more emphatically
than the version found in Matthew and Mark) that points to the inevitability
of a city’s rejecting the prophetic message of one who is its own
(v. 24). Familiarity limits expectations and resents challenge.
It presumes upon the relationship and assumes that any message of good
news must include
natural associates within its sphere (v. 23). It fails to recognize
the strength of the challenge that is actually being made. Jesus elaborates
on the situation and, in doing so, hardens his stance.
Having spoken of the inevitability of rejection by his own, and therefore
of his own inability to perform deeds for them, he uses the instances
of Elijah’s dealings with the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17) and
of Elisha’s with Naaman (2 Kings 5) to show that earlier prophets
worked among outsiders even to the seeming neglect of their own. This
elaboration has often been seen as a rejection of his own people in favour
of a movement out into the Gentile world. It has been understood as an
expression of Luke’s belief that the ministry of Jesus meant a
new action of God which virtually drew a line under his covenantal
dealings with the Jewish people. He was establishing a new Israel that
now inherited
the earlier promises made to the Jews.
_______________________
LXX Septuuagint
Another reading of the significance Luke saw in the references
to Elijah and Elisha is, however, possible and is one which does not
make such a sharp departure from the positive attitude to the
Jewish people expressed
in the infancy narratives: the proverb of v. 24 explains the
inevitability of the rejection and, indeed almost justifies
it; regrettable though it
is, it is an understandable response. The OT incidents are
used, not to support a rejection of the local people, but to
show that prophets of Israel
worked outside her borders, that they were often unsuccessful
at home and that their lack of success denied neither their
calling nor their continuing
commitment to Israel. Jesus had not turned aside from Israel,
any more than had Elijah and Elisha. The nation’s rejection of him
had not resulted in its own rejection—either by him or by the God
who stood behind him.
Whatever the implications, the sermon
provoked a furious response on the part of the listeners who set out
to kill Jesus. His challenge
to established
certainties made them determined to stone him as a false prophet
(Deut 13:1) (v. 29). They were unable to destroy him, however,
but he, ‘passing
through the midst of them, went on his way’. Here, Luke uses a favorite
verb to express Jesus’ movement to his goal (9:51; 13:53). The rejection
by his own, so far from destroying him, furthers God ’s
purposes.