Day 2: Jesus is Condemned

When I returned to college for my sophomore year, an unsightly, stuffed plastic garbage bag greeted me outside my new dorm room. Startled and confused, I peered inside and found it contained forgotten belongings I had loaned to one of my few close friends from freshman year. The bag, left at the door without a note or a word, deeply unsettled me, but I should not have been surprised. Weeks earlier, I had received a biting letter from this friend outlining all the ways I had failed her that summer. The letter and bag conveyed one thing: utter rejection. More rejections followed that year – the Homecoming committee I didn’t make, the summer job I couldn’t keep, the young man I admired who chose someone else – but none were as painful as the one from a friend I had tried so hard to love well.

Surely, the sting of rejection burns our hearts like little else. It cuts straight to the soul, spurring a torrent of lies: I am unloved. I am unacceptable. I am unchosen. From the junior high cafeteria to the corporate boardroom, rejection is a common element to the human experience. Yet, few rejections wound as deeply as those from the people we love the most and expect to love us in return.

Surprisingly, paradoxically, the grace that rescues us from the pain of rejection –the only balm that soothes and heals its deep scars – comes through a divinely appointed rejection. Isaiah prophesied of Jesus, “He was despised and rejected,” and we see this most vividly in the moment of Jesus’ condemnation.

As Jesus stood before Pilate, He faced rejection from the very people He had come to save. Pilate, convinced of Jesus’ innocence – “I find no guilt in Him”–gave the Jewish leaders and crowd a choice: In honor of the Passover, he could release Jesus or the criminal Barabbas. The Jews chose Barabbas, and so God’s Chosen People rejected His Chosen One.

When Jesus’ friends heard this, they likely experienced the bitter agony of seeing a loved one rejected and suffering greatly for it. They did not yet know that Jesus’ gut-wrenching rejection ultimately meant their–and our–holy acceptance. Isaiah also wrote, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Perhaps, at His condemnation, Jesus bore for us the grief and sorrow of our most intimate, painful rejections. Through His rejection, we are beautifully, redemptively, eternally chosen.