Rejected With Christ: The Innerworkings of the Final Beatitude (by Laramie Brown, missionary to Haiti, Slovenia & Marseilles)

[Reading time: 2 minutes]

To belong and to be loved were identified by Maslow (1970) as basic human needs immediately following the physiological needs by Maslow. This need is so compelling that people will go to great lengths to maintain status and acceptance. Solomon Asch’s experiments in 1951 showed that even accepted logic and reason can be abandoned in favor of social acceptance—when they are put to the test.

For those who have been Christians for a long period of time, there seems to grow in us a sense that we must finally be rejected by the world’s systems.

It is a still, small voice.

Yet, when it comes as a fiery vortex from the pulpit, it often becomes dichotomized as the church opposed to the secular. Indeed, there is ground for this as Christ made it clear to His disciples that the world would hate them because He had chosen and accepted them (John 15:16).  As difficult as it can be to bear the rejection of the world, it has the potential to provide cohesive strength to a body of believers that band together.

Christ was not only rejected by the world but by His very own.

He was rejected by the institution He created that departed from His image and recreated itself in its own image. 

“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Lk 9:22). What was true for Christ was also true of His disciples—and will always be true for us.

In his Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer clearly recognizes this rejection is a necessary part of Christ’s prophetic fulfillment. And, as he makes explicit, it is also the command for His disciples to follow as they daily take up their own cross.

When the institutions we belong to bear the name of Christ but no longer bear His image, those of us who bear His image will suffer rejection by those systems. This rejection can feel like a devastating blow and cause us to question everything. The shadow can hover longer and feel unbearable.

Of course, and quite extraordinarily, this is exactly where we find the acceptance of our Savior. It is here that we find ourselves in the margins with Christ and those whom Christ loves.

In the story of Christ and the woman with the alabaster jar, both Christ and the woman were dismissively rejected by their host, a prominent religious leader (Lk 7:36-50). In their rejection, however, a beautiful, almost ineffable love and care for each other begins to be revealed.

The woman silently and tearfully seeks to fill all the rejected void with all she has and holds dear. In return Christ stands up for her in the face of the religious leader’s callous and shaming words.

This picture provides a glimpse at rejection by the religious elite, and acceptance by our Savior. 

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 9:11-12).