March 4, 2007
The Thorns of Rejection
Arnold Palmer announced that he is playing his last Masters Tournament this year. Palmer won the Masters in '58, '60, '62, and '64. He is one of the greatest golfers in history. Palmer revealed his reasoning for dropping out of his privileged spot as an ongoing Masters player. A USA Today article said,
Even if Palmer wanted to keep going, Augusta National might have balked. Already, the club sent letters to three former champions—Doug Ford, Gay Brewer, and Billy Casper—recommending they stop playing this year. All complied, but not without some hurt feelings.
"I don't want to get a letter," Palmer quipped.[1]
Even a man as accomplished and as wealthy as Arnold Palmer doesn’t like to be rejected. If you have ever seen him at a professional golf tournament, he models graciousness and friendliness. I saw him out at Stone Briar years ago and I was blown away at how nice he was to the spectators.
I dare say this morning that none of us like to be rejected. God made us social creatures. When Adam was by himself in the garden with his two cats and two dogs, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Cats and dogs don’t get it for us. Lions, and tigers and bears don’t either. There was no suitable compliment for Adam so God created Eve. We are not made to be alone. When we are rejected, I think we feel alone more than any other time.
I remember the phone call from my fiancé back in 1978. I went to my home church in Havertown, PA to do my Pastoral Summer Internship. You’ve got to come to Dallas right away. Dr. Haddon Robinson has paid for an open ticket for you. It’s waiting at the Philadelphia International Airport. Dr. Robinson chaired the department of Pastoral Ministries at the time and he was going to marry us in 6 weeks. We had the most unbelievable engagement party a few weeks earlier. We had gotten the towels with the embroidered G on them. Professors like Dr. Gene Getz and Dr. Duane Litfin, now president of Wheaton College and numerous other Christian luminaries had showered praises and presents on us a few weeks earlier.
My fiancé said she couldn’t go through with the wedding and I remember not wanting to be seen on the Dallas Seminary campus when I came back after that tumultuous week. It hurt real bad as I’m sure some of you have been through the same thing.
Or maybe you’ve been through a divorce. I’m sure that was even more painful than the rejection I felt.
Consider one Swedish man. When his wife filed for divorce, he cashed in all their investments worth $81,300 and burned the cash. Nothing left for him or her but a pile of ashes.[2]
Or a recent job loss. You were doing a good job but the manager just didn’t like you and it was over.
Or friends that you once thought were close stay away now and you don’t know why. In 8th grade, when I chose not to play football a whole group of my friends cut me off. They all went to St. Joe Prep and when I played against them in basketball, they were merciless when it came to heckling me from the stands. They definitely had to go to confession after what they had called me.
No one likes rejection. In fact, rejection doesn’t simply hurt our psyches, it’s been proven to hurt us physically as well.
According to a Reuters article, that "kicked-in-the-gut" feeling that you get when you're ignored at a party or not chosen for a team generates physical symptoms. According to the article, "Brain-imaging studies show that a social snub affects the brain precisely the way visceral pain does."
"When someone hurts your feelings, it really hurts you," states Matt Lieberman, a social psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who worked on the study.
In the study, 13 "volunteers were given a task they did not know related to an experiment in social snubbing. Writing in the journal Science, Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger said the brains of the volunteers lit up when they were rejected in virtually the same way as a person experiencing physical pain.
"In the English language we use physical metaphors to describe social pain like 'broken heart' and 'hurt feelings,"' said Eisenberger. "Now we see that there is good reason for this."[3]
Now, we can become use to a pattern of rejection and believe in our hearts that no one could accept us. Consequently, if we have that belief, often times we will do things to continue that belief. Psychologists call it fulfilling your own prophecy. And we control being rejected rather than rejection just happening to us. Then after enough people reject us, we conclude that we are a reject.
Like, Kenneth Ray Brooks
who was arrested after attempting to rob Centura Bank in Orlando.
The would-be thief entered Centura Bank and shouted, “I’m holding down the
joint,” according to The Orlando Sentinel,
September 13, 2006.
According to police, Brooks then stuffed a stack of bills into the waistband of
his pants pushing them down out of view. Soon after he left the bank a dye pack
concealed in the loot exploded. Police reported, “Witnesses said they could see
smoke coming out of his pants.” When police asked him why his pants were
smoking, he claimed he was smoking a rack of ribs in his crotch.
But I would have to say due to my clinical experience as a past Licensed Professional Counselor and now pastoral counselor, that the worst form of rejection is done by our parents.
Now, my purpose isn’t to bash parents but parents hold an incredible amount of power in their words and actions with their kids. We’ve all made plenty of mistakes with our kids and I’m sure I have been rejecting of both of my daughters at times. So let’s all fess up to that.
The Psalmist, David, says in Psalm 27:10 – “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.
The ESV says it this way: “For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.”
And The Message reads this way: “My father and mother walked out and left me but the God took me in.”
The Psalmist experienced rejection from his parents and so do we.
Most of us know Gene Hackman as a versatile and successful actor. The highlight of his career came as winner of the Oscar for best actor in The French Connection. His lowest recollection, though, involves his loss of connection with his father.
Hackman recalls, "I was just 13, but that Saturday morning is still so vivid. I was playing down the street from our house, when I saw my father drive by and give me a light wave of his hand. Somehow I knew that gesture meant that he was going away forever."
To this day, the memory is a ghost that never seems to disappear.
Certainly, parents can reject their children by walking away and I know some of you have fought through thick and thin to not do that. Some of you have spent thousands in custody battles so you never walk away. You are to be commended for that. You can’t put a price on how devastating it is to kids when a mom or a dad leave them.
But there are other ways parents reject their kids. I heard all kinds of rejecting messages when I ran an adolescent psychiatric unit. From she’s just “bad seed” to “air head” to “stupid” I heard enough to last a life time. But it’s just as bad when parents simply reject their kids for not being the kid they dreamed of. Most of the time that dream is of a little me. So we treat them like possessions and demand that they be like us. And when our kids don’t, we reject them because we see something in them that we don’t like in our selves. If we reject that slow side in ourselves and we see it in our kids, we will take it out on them. If we don’t like the disorganized side of our selves or our shy side, or our anxious side or our weak side, or our hyper side, whatever it is, if we see it in our kids and we haven’t accepted it in our selves, we will take it out on our kids and reject them for who they are.
God’s word says, we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that includes our physical looks and our personalities. Granted we want to mold our kids to be like Christ. We want to teach them about the Lord but if we don’t accept them for who they are, they will not listen.
Parents have you thanked God for the kids he’s given you. You know they are a lease from God. Ultimately, they are not yours. They belong to him. He wants you to be like Christ to them but one day, you will launch them out into the world. Until then celebrate the kids he has given you. I’ve got the two greatest kids on the planet. Have you told them how glad you are God has given them to you. That’s the way LB and I say good night. And we both mean it. Try it. You’ll be surprised what it does for you as well as them.
The psalmist said, “My mother and father walked out on me but God took me in.” For those of us, who have experienced rejection from friends and family, thank God this morning that he takes you and me in.
You might be experiencing rejection right now but while rejection lasts a moment, His acceptance lasts forever”
Say that after me, rejection lasts a moment; His acceptance lasts forever.
But maybe you‘re saying, Jesus has rejected me and will reject me sooner or later because I just can’t get it together.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s why.
Jesus understands your feelings of rejection. He, too, was rejected by every one even his own family.
Isaiah 53:3 says, “He, the Messiah, Jesus, was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.”
Everybody rejected him.
Religious leaders rejected him. The good church going folk had nothing to do with him.
In Luke 9: 22, right after Peter says, Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus says, “He must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law and he must be killed and raised the third day.”
His friends rejected him, too. That same Peter who knew by divine revelation that Jesus was the Messiah when asked if he knew Jesus denied him 3 times. We saw that in our reading from Luke 22.
And He even experienced the worst rejection one can receive. His father rejected him when he was on the cross.
In Mt 27:45-46, Jesus cries out on the cross, “Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The word translated forsaken means rejected, deserted, abandoned. Jesus was abandoned by his father so he knows what it means to be rejected by a father.
But we have to understand that God in order to be just and the justifier had to judge sin but also provide a sinless sacrifice to pay for that sin. When He became sin for us, the world went dark so we could come into the light.
Isaiah tells us in 53:5: But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each one of us has turned his own way and the Lord God has laid on the him (Messiah) the iniquity of us all.
When the sin of the world was laid on Jesus his father somehow was spiritually separated from him. The wonderful communion he had with God the father was broken just like it is when we sin. Yet they were still connected. Jesus didn’t sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. But I will tell you it is a mystery how God the father and Jesus’ fellowship was broken. It simply doesn’t make sense how they could be connected yet separate. That’s why some say it was a spiritual separation, a break in their fellowship or communion. That makes the most sense to me.
John Stott says this about Christ’s death for us. “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I turn to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness.
That is the God for me. He set aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death.
I’m sure the disciples felt rejected when Jesus died but 3 days later he was back with them. Rejection lasts a moment; His acceptance lasts for ever.
But you still wonder. You read 2 Timothy 2:11 – 13 and you see if you deny him, he will deny us. And you think, if I deny or disown him, he will disown me. But let’s look at the context. This is a trustworthy statement Paul says in verse 11: If we died with him and we did when we accepted him, we will also live with him. Verse 12, if we endure, we will also reign with him. Notice, Paul is talking about believers. He is telling us that if we endure, persevere for Christ, we won’t simply be a resident of the kingdom, we will reign with Christ. But if we don’t endure and we deny him, He will deny us what? Not salvation – but rewards and the right to reign with him.
There was a Baptist pastor in a little texas town who had to double up as a barber. Well, a man from his church decided to get his hair cut and a shave. Well, it turns out the barber had to leave for a while but his wife Grace was there. She told the man she could give him a shave so the man agreed to it. Well, it was a really good shave and the man asked Grace how much he owed her. She said, $25. Well, he thought that was a lot but he gave her the $25 anyway. Well, the next day he woke up and he didn’t need a shave. He thought this is great. Maybe it was worth $25. The next day same thing and the third day his face was still as smooth as silk. He couldn’t believe it so he went back to the barber – pastor and asked him what was going on. The barber simply said, “Friend, since you were shaved by grace, once shaved, always shaved.”
Verse 13 tells us this: It reads, “if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” Peter was faithless but Jesus remained faithful to him. Peter did not lose his salvation at that moment. Peter lost some rewards but that’s it.
Rejection lasts a moment; His acceptance lasts forever.
Jesus told us the same thing. He said when he gave the great commission, “And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.”
God says in Hebrews 13:5, He will never leave us or forsake us. So even though you might feel rejected here and now by family, friends and everyone else, Jesus understands that feeling and promises he will never leave you even if you deny him.
May we accept one another with all our faults, personality quirks and problems as Christ accepts us. May we never abandon each other on our journey of faith together. May we remember even if we are faithless to him, he will remain faithful to us because he cannot deny himself. May we remember that he will be with us even to the end of the age.
And all God’s people said, Amen.
[1] Singh Highlights United Nations Performance." USA Today (4-12-02); submitted by David Slagle, Lawrenceville, Georgia
[2] Craig Brian Larson, editor, Preachingtoday.com; source: “Heartbroken by Divorce, Man Burns Family Assets,” Reuters (posted 1-23-03).
[3] “Study finds rejection literally a huge pain,” Chicago Tribune (10-10-03); Lee Eclov, Vernon Hills, Ill.