The Beauty of Being Rejectable--July 10, 2024

The Beauty of Being Rejectable--July 10, 2024

[God said to Ezekiel:] "Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them." [Ezekiel 2:5]

For the people of God, vulnerability isn't a bug--it's a feature. It's not a flaw to be fixed, but a gift to be honored. The risk of being rejected--and putting ourselves out there in the world anyway--isn't something to be ashamed of or to blush at; it's the way we model God's own kind of love.  And God, as the storytelling keeps reminding us, risks loving us despite our repeated rejections, rebellion, and rottenness.  So of course, the people God raises up to speak a word on God's behalf are going to model that same kind of vulnerability.  That way, no matter how the people respond ("whether they hear or refuse to hear"), it will be obvious and "they shall know that there has been a prophet among them."  The capacity to be rejected actually reveals something about who God is and how God operates.

I want to sit with that for a moment here, because it really is surprising--and most definitely counter-cultural compared to the ways we typically act God or God's spokespersons to act.  We live in a time and place in which an awful lot of Respectable Religious Folks think it's our job to force our faith onto other people.  If others won't listen when we gently offer, then we'll have to mandate our message and require people by law to accept it!  It's terribly tempting to believe that God needs us to legislate that everyone listen to us and then enforce compliance to our religious agenda.  The only trouble is... that's the exact opposite of God's way to reach people.

It's worth remembering that in ancient Israel, the prophets had absolutely zero political power.  Being a prophet wasn't a government office or royal position, and it wasn't even connected with being a priest at the Temple. Ezekiel doesn't have some kind of "Project 605BC" agenda to enforce, and he isn't trying to pull the strings in the palace to codify his message into law. The prophets didn't issue legislative decrees or official proclamations--they were voices from the margins who couldn't "make" anybody do anything.  That's not how God operates.

Instead, Ezekiel is sent to only to speak, only to offer a minority report. The prophet's calling is to tell a different story from the official party line, a counter-narrative to the propaganda coming from the palace and the marketplace... and even from the temple.  But all the prophet is given to do that is a voice, not a cudgel.  The people may listen, or the people may reject--the prophet cannot and will not enforce God's message with threats or prosecute the ones who won't listen.  And if the people reject the prophet, even then the willingness to bear that rejection points to the character of God.  

That's how our witness is supposed to work.  It's not just the words we say, but the way we say them, that speaks of God.  It's not just the message we preach, but whether the lives we live convey the love we think we are talking about.  It's not merely having "the right answers" that makes us messengers for God--it's whether we can offer ourselves vulnerably to the world, the way God is vulnerable to the world first.  God constantly risks that humans will reject and rebel--and God's persistent refusal to give up on us nevertheless is part of how we come to see the depths of God's love.  In the same way, prophets like Ezekiel, as well as the people of God today, are called, not to use force or legislative mandates to get our way, but to speak what God has laid on our hearts to speak and to risk the possibility of rejection.  Either way, as the prophet says, "the people will know that there has been a prophet among them." 

Today, our calling is not to intimidate our neighbors into believing what we believe, attending our church, or accepting our morality.  Our calling as the people of Jesus is to embody the way God loves the world with compelling vulnerability--and God loves the world risking rejection.  As Madeleine L'Engle put it so beautifully, “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”  That's how prophets get others' attention.  That's how we show people what God is like--and how God gets through to us even at our most stubborn.

Who today might be waiting for you to speak a word from God into their lives with surprising, even captivating, gentleness?  And if we are freed from the fear of being rejected, what's stopping us?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to be vulnerable in our witness, as you have shown us the heart of God in your own vulnerability.