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Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: Mark 14:27-46
The Crosses of Lent
The Cross of Rejection
Mark 14:27-46
This morning, I want to note the contrast between Jesus’ Palm Sunday (Mark 11:1-10) and Garden of Gethsemane experiences.
The conversation must have seemed strange, but then much of what Jesus was saying in those last days before going to the cross seemed odd.
It is one thing when someone for whom you have no connections or feelings rejects you, but it is quite another when it is someone close to you.
I don’t care if your child is three years old or thirty-three years old, when your kid cries it breaks your heart, and you will do anything to rescue your child.
At that moment Jesus felt that God had literally turned his back on him. Jesus felt totally forsaken, totally deserted, totally forgotten, totally rejected, and totally abandoned.
However, the lack of sensitivity demonstrated by his closest friends pales in the face of the blatant rejection he experienced when Judas betrayed him with a kiss.
Judas must have really been ticked because he immediately went and arranged to betray Jesus for the legendary “thirty pieces of silver.”
But when we think someone likes us or even loves us and they reject us in some way that just doesn’t seem right. It hurts.
I wonder if it might be a spiritually healthy and life-giving thing to extend forgiveness to those who have hurt us.