Rejection: the Hatred of the World
We are approaching the anniversary of my engagement. On March 3, 2003 (the night before my birthday, because he was too excited to wait) my now ex-husband asked me to go for a walk around my college campus. I had given two tours of the campus that day and was tired of walking around it. So, true to form, I responded, “If I am going to walk around this campus again, there had better be a ring in your pocket.” We walked to a statue that is the landmark of campus and he proposed to me. I was completely surprised. I was unbelievably excited. I was rather overwhelmed.Throughout my life I had had the privilege of watching great marriages progress- namely that of my parents. I saw how important their relationship was to one another, how much they cared for each other. I experienced their efforts at making their relationship successful, even when it was difficult. Occasionally I heard my Mother say what a “good man” my father is, and sometimes heard Daddy refer to my mother as “his treasure”. The night of March 3, 2003, I was overwhelmed that I had found someone who saw in me the potential to have a relationship like that of my parent’s. I was someone’s treasure.
I think that is one of the primary reasons we search for a mate. We long for someone to love and cherish us not because they have to or are supposed to like our parents, but because they choose to. We want to captivate another person in such a way that they pick us out of the 6.7 billion people on the planet as their beloved. The moment that happens, all the years of insecurity disappear. The questions of a lifetime are suddenly answered – I am enough, I am desirable, I am loved…
Conversely, the moment that same person tells you they want a divorce, that lifetime of feelings immediately returns and is exponentially multiplied. That same person who but a brief time ago declared that we were the “one for them” out of the 6.7 billion people on the planet has suddenly changed their mind. Ultimate rejection.
Have you ever heard of someone named Mark Hamill? Maybe Carl Douglas? What about Margaret Hamilton? Not ringing any bells, are they? Mark Hamill stared as Luke Skywalker in Starwars. Carl Douglas is slightly famous for the song Kung Foo Fighting which should immediately conjure an image of a stuffed chipmunk kicking and punching as it sings the song. Margaret Hamilton played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. The only thing these have in common is the fact that they each produced an act of celebrity but the rest of their career was not all that noteworthy. It must be terribly disappointing to play one of the greatest characters in one of the best known movies but go onto little else. We jokingly refer to it as their fifteen minutes of fame, but what rejection they must have experienced. Think about another celebrity: Jesus. Jesus is decidedly one of the most well known people to have ever walked the planet. Today, no one would consider him to have only had “fifteen minutes of fame.” After all, his name and reputation have lasted some 2,000 years. It might be better to compare the celebrity of Jesus to that of struggling artists. He is better known and appreciated for his work after his life than he was during his life. This is true because during the life of Jesus, he was rarely celebrated, rarely desired or treasured.
The one moment of human exaltation Jesus experienced was the day he entered Jerusalem in preparation for Passover. The story taken from Matthew 21 describes:
“Nearly all the people in the crowd threw their garments down on the road, giving him a royal welcome. Others cut branches from the trees and threw them down as a welcome mat. Crowds went ahead and crowds followed, all of them calling out, ‘Hosanna to David's son!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in God's name!’ ‘Hosanna in highest heaven!’ As he made his entrance into Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken. Unnerved, people were asking, ‘What's going on here? Who is this?’ The parade crowd answered, ‘This is the prophet Jesus, the one from Nazareth in Galilee.’”
We know this event now as Palm Sunday, the week before Easter. In modern terms, one week the city was throwing an impromptu parade in His honor and the next week the same city was executing Him. Talk about fifteen minutes of fame. Talk about rejection.
I often think of my marriage as fifteen minutes of fame. It certainly didn’t last much longer than fifteen minutes. Nor was I note worthy to him for much longer than that. The divorce left me completely rejected. In essence, the one person (out of those 6.7 billion) who was supposed to treasure me for the rest of my life rejected me. Over the past couple of years, my journal entries show my obvious preoccupation with the theme of rejection as they are riddled with verses concerning the concept. Some of the verses are:
“He 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.”
Isaiah 53:3
“Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes?’”
Matthew 21:42
The most fitting of scriptures seems to be from Jesus’ address to the disciples as they expressed their concerns about rejection. John15:18 says “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” As shown in the stories of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and later his brutal and humiliating execution, Jesus was no stranger to rejection. That is the key. In the preface, I stated that we could perhaps work through this together. The pronoun “we”, of coarse was figurative as I was referring to me and whoever happens to read this post that has experienced the same feelings. But, maybe, the “we” should refer to me and Jesus. After all, who better is there to walk with than someone who has experienced the same rejection?
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