Rejected for the Right Reasons--February 19, 2025

Rejected for the Right Reasons--February 19, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets." (Luke 6:22-23)

Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest and author, once said it like this: “The poor show us who we are and the prophets tell us who we could be, so we hide the poor and kill the prophets.”  Well, yesterday we heard Jesus announcing God's blessing on the poor, and now today as we continue this passage from Luke that many of us heard this past Sunday, Jesus calls us to walk in the same path of rejection that got the prophets regularly into trouble all throughout the history of ancient Israel.  And it's not a popular place to be, by any measure.

The connection Jesus makes here to the prophets who came before is important, because Jesus' point about being blessed isn't to say it's automatically virtuous to be disliked.  It's not a default positive if people can't stand to be around you--that may just mean you are jerk.  As the old line of James Finley goes, "It may be true that every prophet is a pain in the neck, but it is not true that every pain in the neck is a prophet. There is no more firmly entrenched expression of the false self than the self-proclaimed prophet."  In other words, if people don't like being around us, that doesn't necessarily mean we are being excluded for the sake of righteousness or persecuted for our faith--it may just mean we are unpleasant to be around.  The goal is not to be unpopular for the sake of unpopularity, nor to be left out because we are rude, selfish, or terrible conversationalists.  The calling, rather, is for us to be alternative voices of God's Reign in the world like the prophets were, and to do it even when that calling is costly.

That's important to be clear about, because I've heard more than my share of loud, angry, and boorish folks who are also Respectable Religious People who like to wave the banner of being "persecuted for their faith" when in fact they have just alienated everyone around them because they are mean, obnoxious, and unpleasant.  Jesus isn't looking to give gold stars to people for their crudeness, and he doesn't give us permission to cast ourselves as martyrs when in reality we have just put people off because we've been acting like a horse's rear end.  The calling is to be willing to risk our status, our reputation, and our comfortable social positions for the sake of being the kind of voices the prophets were, who did have a way of upsetting the CEOs, the folks in the palace, and the ones running the show in the Respectable Religion Department.   We might be called to be rejected, but Jesus insists that means being rejected for the right reasons.

The prophets were holy troublemakers, who questioned whether it really was a good thing when the ancient Israelite stock markets were booming, but the poor found it harder and harder to get by.  They questioned whether it was really a righteous thing for the kings to put more and more trust in their military might, rather than to spend their energy on establishing justice and letting God defend them.  They questioned whether it was better to make bigger profits by working through the times set for sabbath rest rather than to have a culture that obsessed less about money and enjoyed more of their time.  And they questioned whether God really wanted all their sacrifices, rituals, and public shows of piety if the people weren't going to treat each other fairly, look out for the most vulnerable, and show mercy to the people with their backs against the wall.  As you might imagine all of that made them some powerful enemies within the economic sectors, the political centers, the religious institutions, and the military-industrial complex of ancient Israel and Judah.  Because they got all those Big Deals upset, the prophets were regularly run out of town, officially censured, cursed and insulted, and often (the legends said) put to death, whether by state execution or lynch-mob.  In other words, it was their consistent willingness to risk everything for the sake of speaking God's vision of how things were meant to be that got the prophets kicked out of high society, booed out of the country clubs, and escorted out of the halls of power.  And on that count, Jesus calls us to be like the prophets.  The calling is to be willing to bear rejection and exclusion for the sake of our witness to the Reign of God, not because we are mean-spirited, rude, or unpleasant people.

As we face this day, that's vital to consider. Jesus isn't recruiting people to be abrasive or to sow discord just for the sake of putting more spite in the world.  He is calling us to be willing to leave our comfort zones, risk our losing friendships, and bear other people's rudeness and rejection aimed at us, for the sake of living and speaking his way of life.  Others may choose to be hateful to us, but we will not hate them in return.  Others may exclude us, but we will not lock the door or burn the bridge from our side.  Others may choose to be immature, rude, spiteful, and mean-spirited toward us, but we will not return in kind.  Like the apostle Paul would tell the whole congregation in Rome, we are not to "be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." That, too, is at the heart of how Jesus calls us to be like the prophets.

It might not require something as bold and daring as a throne-room showdown with the king like Isaiah or Jeremiah might have had, and it might not require getting kicked out of the official government-endorsed sanctuary like Amos, but it might mean we speak up in small ways. It might mean that when someone else around you says something hateful or bigoted that you and I speak up and say that it's not OK.  It might mean that when you notice somebody else being silenced or interrupted, you call attention to it so that they can have their input heard and their place at the table respected.  It might mean that we risk being unpopular rather than keeping our heads down and not saying anything when others start acting like bullies.  And yeah, it might even mean that when someone you know starts making reckless or baseless claims on their social media that you take them aside one on one and ask them where they got their information from or to cite their sources.  We aren't being commissioned to be pedantic or condescending in the name of the Lord, just to be voices, even small ones, that amplify God's melody over the rest of the noise around us. And we might do that in any number of ways, even on a day like today.

If we think our mission is to be offensive and off-putting, we've missed the point.  But if we understand our calling to witness to God's Reign as we've come to see it in Jesus, even when that riles up the people in centers of power, wealth, and influence, well, then we might just be blessed.

Indeed we are, Jesus says.  Indeed we are.

Lord Jesus, give us both the courage and the clarity to risk our reputations and comfort for the sake of being your messengers in this time and place.