Facing Rejection: Psalm 32: 1-5; Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32
One of the hardest things we deal with in life is rejection. We see the little boy on the playground holding a daisy he just plucked up from the wildflowers nearby and holding it out to the little girl. But she replies with, “Eww, cooties!” and runs away. We see the woman in middle age who has learned her husband and partner of many years has been unfaithful and broken the marriage trust, and now their years of investment together are no more. She feels rejected and tossed aside. We see an elder, filled with wisdom, love, and a desire to connect with others, sitting alone in a care facility wondering if all her family and friends have rejected her and left her to a lonely demise.
Rejection is hard, painful, and filled with years of trying to reconcile the bitterness. This parable of Jesus speaks to rejection. It’s one of Jesus’s most versatile parables—usable in so many situations and places of life for understanding and guidance. But one theme that resonates throughout is a family facing rejection, and how they processed through it. A son rejects a father. A father overcomes rejection. A brother feels rejected by the father, and all must learn where to go from here. What does Jesus, in this parable, teach us about facing rejection?
Jesus begins the parable with a rather whiny and spoiled child, perhaps a young man, but still a child, asking his father for his inheritance, so he could leave the family. This was a tremendous insult in ancient times. One did not humiliate and insult a father like this. The son is not only rejecting his father, but he is also rejecting his entire family and all that he has been taught and raised with. In many ways this could be seen as both a rejection and a betrayal.
Knowing his son would have to learn the hard way, the father divides his estate and gives the son his allotted share. Rejection and betrayal, however, often lead to loneliness and alienation. The son squandered all he had and ended up broke, starving, and alone. He was forced to work with pigs which made him unclean and untouchable according to the customs and faith. And yet, while we so often focus on the suffering of the prodigal child, let’s not forget that the father’s heart broke every single day over and over while his son was gone…worrying, praying, hoping one day the rejection and separation would be over.
For his part, the father is amazing in this parable. His exploitive, dirty, cruel, and wasteful son comes crawling back begging only to be a hired servant, knowing he is unworthy of any more based on his hostile and hateful treatment of his father. Expecting the worst and having learned his lesson, the son goes home. But his father welcomes him with open arms—with love, forgiveness, and the biggest, happiest party he can put together. His father’s exact words were, “He once was lost but now is found.” The son is no longer full of his anger and rejection, and the father’s broken heart is mended.
But there’s still a bit of rejection to deal with in this family. The older brother, who has faithfully served and worked with the father, feels rejected, unappreciated, stuck in a thankless place while his messy brother gets a party simply for showing up after a long walk on the wicked side. He’s mad. He addresses his father hatefully, refusing to say the customary greeting of “Father,” and filled with anger and pain at feeling rejected by the father. The father tries to calm him down with a gentle address. “Son…” he begins softly. He then reminds his older son that everything is his. His years of service and dedication will pay off not in a short party, but in receiving literally everything. The parable ends, and we aren’t told the older son’s reaction.
What do we do when we feel rejected, unwanted, and even alone in this world? We go back home. For some of us, home is a place. For others, home is the presence or memory of a person we love. For some of us, home is where we feel ourselves in the presence of God, for we are always at home with God. We also must live in grace and not in anger. Consider the reaction of the father. He could have angrily cast the son back out. He could have accepted the offer and made his son a servant. But this was his son, and he loved his son. When we love someone, we find a way to both hold them accountable and give them grace. For the son, accountability was letting him go and fail. He learned his lesson, and he learned it with hard consequences. When his father dies, he receives nothing, and he will either have to find work elsewhere or pray that his brother is more forgiving.
That welcome home, that grace which reconciles and reconnects has to be based on accountability and repentance. Letting an unchanged betrayer or rejecter back into your life is not grace…it’s foolishness. They don’t learn and grow, and you aren’t safe. If the son had come back still filled with pride and demands, the father would have been right to say no to him. Jesus often said, “Go and sin no more.” He said, “You must be born again.” He called upon repentance and a new way before people could be reconciled. It’s a fair and right request. A person who has wronged us must change before we let them back into our lives.
If you are the prodigal son, remember that there is love and forgiveness with the father. God’s grace is welcoming, restorative, and healing to a deeply wounded soul. If you are the older brother, remember that a welcome home for the lost one doesn’t undo all the good and all the strength you have lived with. All that the father has is yours, and God will be generous and merciful unto you. But be like the father in life. When his problematic son came home, humbled, grown up, wiser, and completely broken by the world he chose to live in, his father welcomed him with love and open arms.
Facing rejection in life is hard. It brings us to a place of deep and bitter sadness. It leaves families, lives, and relationships broken in a way that may never be the same. But we believe in a God of lavish welcome, a God who heals brokenness, and a God who can give rest for weary souls. When rejection becomes the narrative of life, God is still the author of grace which redeems, restores, and makes whole the broken places we live in. So go home, and find new life and new healing in God’s loving grace.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/5207007689363865