Rhetoric Race and Religion
I hate to be rejected. Don’t you?
No one likes rejection. Yet, we experience rejection and its pain from an early age. Children feel hurt when, on the playground or in other settings, they are not allowed to play a game with the rest of the kids. Childhood rejection may even be self-inflicted, when we resent the fact that we are afraid to climb up to the top of the Jungle Gym.
I remember growing up and anticipating my being picked for a sports team at school. It could be a baseball game or a volleyball game. I waited with the other students as the teacher chose two leaders to pick their teams. The process was devastating as students waited. And waited. And waited some more, to be picked. The process lasted less than five minutes, but it seemed an eternity.
It felt awful to be one of the last ones picked for a team. It hurt as all the strong athletic kids got picked first and the ones with no perceptible athletic ability were left to the end. If you were the last, or among the last, you felt the rejection as each person, other than you, was picked.
Nobody wants to feel rejected. None of us wants to receive a rejection letter to our college application, audition or job application. It is painful and could be heartbreaking.
Jesus knew rejection through his life. The people of Nazareth, his own hometown, rejected him (Luke 4:26-30). Still others wondered about him because of that hometown. “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked (John 1:46). People rejected much of his teaching. Many questioned the origin of his teachings and do not accept him as he was born poor, the son of Joseph the carpenter. In Matthew 21:42, Jesus talks about the stone the builders rejected. The story is a revelation about Jesus, himself.
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