Rejected!

One of our basic human fears is the fear of rejection. We have such a strong need to belong and to “fit in” that we are afraid that others will ridicule us if we are different in any way from the crowd.

For that reason, all of us, at one time or another, have sacrificed our beliefs to be accepted by others. We have made believe that we agreed with others even when we didn’t. Sadly, we have also gone along with others when we knew that what they were doing was wrong. Our need to belong is so strong that, often, we would rather reject our principles and values than have others reject us.

Jesus was human in every way that we are, except for sin. Like us, He wanted to be loved and accepted by others. Like us, He wanted to belong. In fact, His desire to belong was so strong that He went so far as to take on a human nature like ours. He did not want to be rejected by others any more than we do.

However, Jesus would not sacrifice the truth in order to be accepted by others. Even when faced with rejection, He preached God’s saving love for all people. He would rather be rejected by people than water down the saving truth of the gospel.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is rejected by the people He knew best - people whom He loved. They thought they knew Him but they just couldn’t accept His teaching. In fact, they were so offended by Him that they drove Him out of town and were ready to throw Him down the side of a hill.

Jesus’ whole life was marked by rejection right up to the moment when He was crucified. However, as He does with all evil, God used the rejection of Jesus to bring about good.

First, The rejection of Jesus led to the good news being spread to other towns. The people of Nazareth drove Jesus out of their town but He just went ahead to bring healing and hope to other areas. When He was rejected by many of the religious leaders, He brought the gospel to tax collectors, prostitutes and lepers. When he was rejected by many of His fellow Jews, He reached out to Samaritans and Gentiles. Rather than allow rejection to break His confidence and steal His enthusiasm, Jesus used it to motivate Him to find those who would welcome His saving message.

This has been the story of the spread of Christianity from the beginning. When the early Church was persecuted in Jerusalem, they went out into the countryside. Eventually it spread throughout the Roman Empire. When the Roman Empire fell, people of faith brought the gospel to the barbarians until all of Europe was evangelized. When Europe was undergoing the Protestant Reformation, missionaries reached out to the indigenous people of the Americas until they eventually embraced faith in Christ.

The same is true in our day. Christianity is roundly rejected by the elites of our society. They have all kinds of sophisticated ways of arguing that the God of Jesus Christ is a myth. If the powerful and wealthy people of our world, then, have rejected us, we will reach out to the powerless and poor. If the elites of our world ridicule the gospel, then we will bring it to those on the margins of society. If we remain faithful to God despite the rejection and ridicule we face, the gospel will continue to spread and bring hope and healing to our world.

Secondly, God brings good out of rejection by using it to reveal His mercy.

All of us have sinned. That means that all of us have rejected God in one way or another. Yet, God has never abandoned us. Rather, He continually offers us forgiveness. As many times as we reject Him, just as many times He welcomes us back. As many times as we flee from Him, so many times He seeks us out.

Now, if it were in our power to be perfect, we would never know the forgiving love of God. If we had never fallen, we would never know the power of God to pick us back up again. If we never sinned, we might come to believe that God loves us because we are good. We would never know that He loves us unconditionally. We would never know what it means to be forgiven. Also, we would never know what it means to forgive another person. All that would be lost to us if we had never rejected God through our sin.

If we truly want to be like Jesus then we must be prepared to face rejection. We do so, however, with confidence in God’s promise spoken to us through Jeremiah in today’s first reading: “Be not crushed on their account...for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”

God is with us. There is no greater sign of His presence among us than in the Eucharist we are about to receive. This great gift of God’s love is available to us because of the rejection Jesus suffered on the cross. Through it, God brought about the victory of the resurrection. If we remain faithful despite our fear of rejection, God will use it to bring the good news to others. Then we can look forward to hearing our Lord say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”