Rejected

Mark 2:17

When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

G. Campbell Morgan was one of 150 young men who sought entrance to the Wesleyan ministry in 1888. He passed the doctrinal examinations, but then faced the trial sermon. In a cavernous auditorium that could seat more than 1,000 sat three ministers and 75 others who came to listen.

When Morgan stepped into the pulpit, the vast room and the searching, critical eyes caught him up short. Two weeks later Morgan’s name appeared among the 105 REJECTED for the ministry that year.

Jill Morgan, his daughter-in-law, wrote in her book, A MAN OF THE WORD, “He wired to his father the one word, ‘Rejected,’ and sat down to write in his diary: ‘Very dark everything seems. Still, He knoweth best.’

Quickly came the reply: ‘Rejected on earth. Accepted in heaven. Dad.’”

As Jesus sat at a dinner table at Levi the tax collector’s house, the Pharisees were losing their minds! They looked down their noses at the group of outcasts of Jewish society, and asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?”

Jesus overheard what they said and set them straight. Jesus let the “religious” folks know that he was here to reach the people they never would. Jesus came to be a physician to spiritually sick people, not people assured of their own goodness.

Jesus came for everybody, including the people in the margins: the outcasts, the hurting, the poor, the people who didn’t dress or smell right. Jesus came for all of us.

So, remember that though the world may reject you, you are accepted in heaven. Jesus came for people just like you and me.

Today’s Readings: Job 19; Mark 1,2

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