The Club of the Rejected (Mark #39)

A long time ago, back in another lifetime, I was romantically pursuing the woman who would become my wife. I asked her to be my girlfriend, and she said no.

Her reasoning was that she intended to be a single missionary — and if she was going to be single, she probably shouldn’t date anyone.

We were married seventeen months later. My charm simply wore her down. And the running joke is that since she turned out to be wrong about the single part, we decided to let her be right about the missionary part.

The Letter That Said No

So during our first year of marriage, we began investigating overseas missionary opportunities. One jumped out at us early, and we decided that was the one to pursue. We went through the entire application process, sent everything in, and a few weeks later received a letter.

We eagerly opened it — and discovered we’d been rejected.

I honestly couldn’t believe it. I was stunned. I genuinely thought we were exactly the kind of couple a mission agency would want. We were young. We had energy. We loved Jesus. We were graduating with honors and carrying almost no college debt. I assumed anyone would scoop us up.

It turned out that on a single doctrinal issue, we held our position with an open hand. For them it was closed-handed. To them, it was a deal breaker.

My wife handled the rejection far more maturely than I did. She looked at the letter and said, “If they’re going to be that closed-minded on such a minor thing, we wouldn’t want to work with them anyway.”

That is not how I saw it. I read it as an indication that I was a failure. That I wasn’t good enough. I was furious and frustrated — their doctrinal position had nothing to do with the gospel and wouldn’t have come into play in any of the work we’d be doing overseas.

For them it was a deal breaker. For me it was a heartbreaker.

You Know This Feeling

Have you ever been there? And I don’t just mean rejected by a friend. I mean rejected by an institution.

You tried out for the team. You applied for the job. You tried to get into that school. And then the letter or the email arrived and it said no.

And in that moment you were hurt. Sad. Frustrated. Angry. You couldn’t believe it. You felt like a failure. You felt like you weren’t good enough. You felt left out.

Well, I have good news: you are not alone in your rejection. And I don’t just mean that I’m a member of the club too.

God is a member of the club of the rejected.

God knows how it feels. In fact, today we’re going to see that he’s the founding member.

But we’re going to discover something else — his heart. Yes, God is hurt by rejection. We’ll see him angry and frustrated. But we’ll also see how he loves. Because when you and I get rejected, we typically pull away. God does the opposite. Because of his love, he draws close.

Some of you need to hear that today, because you’re feeling rejected, left out, and alone.

The Parable

In Mark 12:1–12, Jesus begins speaking to the Jewish leaders in parables.

A man plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a pit for the winepress, builds a tower, leases it to tenants, and travels to another country. When the season comes, he sends a servant to collect some of the fruit — and the tenants beat him and send him away empty-handed. He sends another, and they strike him on the head and treat him shamefully. He sends another, and they kill him. And so with many others: some beaten, some killed.

He has one left — a beloved son. Finally he sends him, saying, “They will respect my son.” But the tenants say to one another, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” So they take him and kill him and throw him out of the vineyard.

Then Jesus asks: what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. And he quotes Scripture: the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

And the leaders sought to arrest him — but they feared the crowd, because they perceived he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.

Where This Comes From

Back in chapter 11, the Jewish leaders were trying to discredit Jesus with questions designed to expose him as a fraud, so the crowds would lose interest and things could return to normal. But in trying to trap him they trapped themselves — Jesus offered to answer their question if they’d answer one of his, and they refused. So he declined as well.

There was a power struggle underway. These priests would not accept Jesus’s authority, while Mark has been showing us relentlessly that Jesus is the authority. So Jesus shifts into a parable that exposes the dynamic.

On the surface it’s simply a story about a landowner who plants a vineyard, hires tenants to maintain it, and then disputes with them over the harvest.

And as Jesus starts, nothing sounds strange. In that era it was completely ordinary for a wealthy landowner to lease land to tenant farmers. It was actually a good arrangement — most tenant farmers weren’t wealthy enough to own land, and this was their only path to earning a living and providing for their families. In a worst-case scenario, the landowner would take fifty percent of the crop, and terms were often even more favorable to the farmers, leaving them enough to feed their families and sell at market.

But then Jesus turns the whole dynamic on its head — and this is where the audience leans in.

Normally the power sits with the landowner. He sets the terms; the farmers accept or decline. In this story the tenants behave as though they hold the power. They send the servant away empty-handed, and then start beating and killing the men who follow.

And this landowner is either extraordinarily patient or extraordinarily foolish, because he keeps sending people.

A Story With a Point

Remember, this is a parable — and a parable is a story with a point. Jesus has a point, and that’s what we want to find.

Look at verse 1 again: a man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the winepress, built a tower, and leased it out.

Hold that imagery. Many scholars believe Jesus is deliberately echoing Isaiah 5:1–7, which opens as a song about a beloved friend’s vineyard on a fertile hill — describing how he dug it and cleared the stones and planted choice vines, built a watchtower in the middle, and hewed out a winepress. And then he looked for it to yield grapes, and it yielded wild grapes instead.

You can see the parallels immediately. And Isaiah makes his meaning explicit a few verses later: the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.

The vineyard is Israel. And Israel was producing not good grapes but wild ones — the word could also be rendered sour. God created Israel to live in communion with him and, out of that, to live righteously and be a blessing to the world. Good grapes. Instead the people were rebellious, out of communion with God, and not blessing anyone. Which is why throughout the Old Testament God keeps sending prophets to call them back.

Who’s Who in the Story

So if Israel is the vineyard, God is the landowner. He’s the one who established it.

Which means the tenant farmers are the stewards God entrusted the vineyard to — the priests.

And verse 12 tells us the leaders sensed the parable was about them. They were right. Jesus is highlighting how they’ve been interacting with God — not as faithful priests tending the people and drawing them toward God and rendering to God what is his, but as men holding onto power and keeping it for themselves.

They’re behaving a little like a two-year-old who grabs a toy and announces “mine,” when in fact Mom and Dad bought it and it technically belongs to them. That’s what these tenants are doing. The vineyard is mine. I did the work, so the harvest is mine — conveniently forgetting they signed a lease agreeing the owner receives a portion.

Jesus Is Recounting History

Underneath all of this, Jesus is simply narrating history. Throughout the Old Testament, God sends prophets to Israel to help tend the vineyard and produce good fruit — and again and again they’re ignored, mocked, beaten, driven out, and sometimes killed.

Take Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 20 we find him in stocks while people walk past mocking him — because they didn’t like his message. God was telling them to repent and change their ways, and they didn’t want to hear it.

And do you know who put him in the stocks? The chief priest.

It was the priests who took God’s messengers and beat them, ignored them, pushed them out, and worked to keep the people from listening — so they could keep everything for themselves.

And Then He Tells Them the Future

But Jesus doesn’t stop at history. Notice verse 6, where the landowner says: I have a son. Surely they will respect my son.

That’s exactly what happened. God the landowner sent his one and only Son into the world, into Israel, fully Jewish, to call the people back to himself.

And you know how the story goes. Jesus is killed. It’s the priests who arrest him and hand him over to the Romans, because they sense he’s taking over and threatening their way of life, and they want to keep it for themselves.

So Jesus isn’t only saying, “This is what you’ve done.” He’s saying, “This is what you’re about to do — to me.”

Jesus was rejected. Rejected by the priests. Rejected by many of the people. He joined the club of the rejected.

He Knew It Was Coming

Which is why John writes in his Gospel: He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Jesus knew when he came to earth that he would be rejected. Why? Because before the incarnation, as God the Son, he had been watching humanity do it from the very beginning.

As God the Son, he was there when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and rejected God and his plan. He saw what people were doing in Noah’s day, as Noah built an ark and warned them a flood was coming if they didn’t change — and they kept rejecting God. He was there when Moses stood before Pharaoh demanding that the people be released, and Pharaoh rejected God. He was there when the Israelites were in the wilderness, and Moses went up Mount Sinai, and the people grew so impatient waiting that they built themselves a golden calf to worship.

Jesus watched humanity reject him over and over. So when he stepped into this world and took on human flesh, he knew he would not be received by his own.

And don’t be fooled — this rejection hurts. God is not callous. God is not indifferent. God is passionate about people. And this rejection wasn’t from some faceless agency or a boardroom of strangers. It came from his own creation. And it hurt.

We’re the Reason He’s in the Club

Before we get to the hurt, we have to admit something. The reason Jesus is in the club of rejection is that we put him there.

Yes, we’re in that club with him, which means he fully identifies with us — and I hope that draws you toward him. But we have to acknowledge that he’s there because of us.

When Adam and Eve ate that fruit and rejected God, the rejection gene passed down generation after generation. And it hasn’t weakened over time — if anything it’s grown stronger. So when we look at God, we act more like those priests than we’d care to admit.

We look at the things in our lives and say mine. We do it with our jobs. Our children. Our bank accounts. Our possessions. We grip them and call them ours. And if God dares to suggest we hand something over, we act like a two-year-old: no. It’s my vineyard.

When I Said No

God showed me this in my own heart back in 2008, when he called me to church planting.

I loved my church. I loved my job. I loved the people I worked with. I loved the young adults I ministered to. I loved where my family was and the life we had. Everything was genuinely great.

And then came a day when I sensed God saying: leave all of it and follow me. I’m sending you to plant a church.

And I said no. I rejected it. Because it was mine. My job. My family’s life. My friends. I didn’t want to give it up.

So I acted exactly like those priests. I tried to get rid of the message. I tried to ignore it. I rejected God.

We all do it. And we need to realize that our rejection hurts him.

The Rejected Cornerstone

At the end of the parable, in verse 10, Jesus quotes Scripture: the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Throughout the New Testament, God uses several images for the church. One is a body — you find it in 1 Corinthians and Romans, the body of Christ. Another is family, which you especially see in Paul’s letters where he addresses believers as brothers and sisters, including people he’s never met. It’s part of why we call ourselves a church family.

But there’s a third image, in Ephesians 2: a building.

Now, the church can’t be a brick-and-mortar building — the church is the people of God. A congregation may use a particular facility for its gatherings, but that structure isn’t the church, even though we sometimes talk as if it were. God uses the building image to describe the people: they’re the bricks stacked one upon another, with the apostles and prophets who wrote the Scriptures as the foundation.

And the cornerstone — the single most important piece — is Jesus.

In ancient construction, a cornerstone was exactly what it sounds like: a stone set at the corner from which everything else was measured. Get the cornerstone wrong and the whole building comes out crooked. You have to get it right, and then you build off of it.

That’s Jesus. Everything begins with him. Remove the cornerstone and there’s nothing to build on.

And notice what Jesus says: the stone the builders rejected.

So many of us are busy constructing our lives — stacking up the stone of earning money, the stone of retirement savings, the stone of possessions, the house, the spouse, the kids — assembling everything we’re told we need in order to have the right kind of life. And in that process, we reject the cornerstone.

It Hurts Him

And when we reject Jesus, it hurts.

Look at the landowner’s response in verse 9 when they kill his son: he will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. He’s angry. He’s planning retribution. It hurts.

I don’t think we appreciate that our rejection of the cornerstone — our rejection of God and his plans for us — genuinely wounds him.

But Here’s Where It Gets Remarkable

When we’re rejected, it hurts. We get sad, angry, frustrated. And what we typically do is withdraw.

A guy asks a girl out and gets told no — rather like me — and he withdraws from her, and from dating generally, for a while. A young woman applies to a college or a job, gets turned down, and pulls back from friends and family for a few hours or a few days. An aspiring author submits a manuscript to publishers, collects the rejections, and stops submitting entirely, because they can’t take another one.

I recently caught up with a pastor friend whose church is going through some changes — good changes, but some people don’t like them. And in resisting the changes, a few have said things making clear they’re rejecting not only the plan but him. He admitted he’s been withdrawing from people in his own church, because it hurts.

That’s our natural response. Rejection arrives, and we retreat.

Not God.

He Draws Near Instead

Even though it hurts him, God does not withdraw. Even though it frustrates him, he draws near.

Look right here in chapter 12. In verse 12 the leaders leave — so frustrated by Jesus that they walk away. And what happens next? They come back. There’s another conversation. Jesus doesn’t withdraw from them. They rejected him, and he stays engaged through the rest of the chapter.

Or later in Mark, Peter rejects Jesus by denying him three times. And in John 21, after the resurrection, Jesus goes looking for Peter — who has gone back to fishing, convinced he’s failed as a disciple. Jesus seeks him out and restores him.

But the greatest example is this: when sinful humanity rejected God, God the Son took on human flesh and entered the world. He stepped toward us.

Weak, Sinful, Enemies

Paul traces this in Romans 5, and I want you to notice the progression.

He begins by saying that while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Some people encounter weakness — an infant, an elderly person, someone with a disability — and instinctively step back. They don’t know how to handle it. Others are wonderfully warm and step toward it; they light up around a baby, they volunteer at the senior center, they move toward someone who’s struggling. But plenty of us withdraw.

Then Paul says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That’s harder. When you encounter someone’s sin, you often flinch. You learn what they did and think, really? — and you want to pull away. That’s the engine behind cancel culture: we discover what a public figure has done and we want them gone. If it’s a close friend or family member you might push through. But raw, ugly sin makes people want distance.

Not Jesus.

And Paul isn’t finished. He says that while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.

Now it’s genuinely serious. An enemy is actively opposed to you, working against you, possibly desiring your destruction. When you encounter someone like that, your first instinct is not to offer a hug or suggest coffee sometime. Your instinct is to get away, because this person means you harm.

Not Jesus.

While we were weak, sinful enemies entirely opposed to God, Jesus Christ came to us — took on human flesh and went to the cross to die in our place.

Our rejection hurt him deeply. It hurt him so much it killed him. And he did it willingly, because he loves you.

Correction Isn’t Rejection

When God moves to correct you, it isn’t because he’s furious with you. It’s that he sees you the way you’d see a small child playing with burning logs or wandering into traffic. He’s trying to pull you out, because he loves you.

God does not banish you for the ways you’ve rejected him. He isn’t sitting there devising punishments. He’s working in you — shaping and crafting and honing you into the image of Jesus.

That is the heart of God. And it’s why we come to the communion table, recognizing that Jesus Christ went to a cross for our sins.

Wherever You Are

If you’re not a follower of Jesus and you’ve been rejecting him, take this moment and give your life to him. Most people, when the truth of the gospel lands, simply pray — confessing what they’ve done against God, recognizing that Jesus died on a cross for them, and saying: Jesus, because you gave your life for me, I now give my life to follow you.

Your rejection has hurt him. But your rejection is hurting you more. God loves you. He wants you. He desires you. You are part of his vineyard, and he is drawing you toward himself.

Many of you already follow Christ — but lately you’ve been rejecting him. You’ve sensed God asking you to give something up and you’ve been saying no.

I want you to know God loves you. Yes, your rejection hurts him, and it hurts precisely because he has something better for you. Had I not eventually listened and obeyed, I would have missed out on all of you.

So if God is asking you to release something — a job, money, a planned vacation, something in your schedule — take this moment and deal with him honestly. Confess it. Repent. Express trust.

And some of you are doing wonderfully right now. You and God are close, and it’s genuinely good. Then take this moment simply to thank him — the founder and member of the club of the rejected — for coming after you, and for allowing a rejected one to enter his presence and discover you’re no longer cast out. You belong to him.

Father, work in us. For anyone who has never given their life to you, surround them as they confess and follow Jesus, and let them sense your presence powerfully. For the one who needs to confess how they’ve been rejecting you even while knowing the gospel is true, surround them with your love — remind them you want to work in them, that you are not repelled by any of it, and that you are drawing near. And for the one who simply wants to worship, fill their heart with your love and grace and joy.

Because Jesus, even though we rejected you — the cornerstone of our lives and our faith — you still drew near to us. Thank you for forgiving us when we act like those priests, and for making us your children instead. Amen.