Outcasts of the Synagogue

        In the 16th chapter of John Jesus gives us the purpose for the metaphor of the vine and the branch found in the preceding chapter 15.  Jesus tells His disciples, in 16:1, me skandalisthete, "do not be offended".  It is the source of the word "scandal" in English. Don't be scandalized. He goes on to tell them that  they will be cast out of their synagogues and those who kill them will, get this, "think they are doing God a service". It is clearer in the Greek. "They think they are bringing to God a offering of service"! How twisted. It reminds me of that old story by Bret Harte called "The Outcasts of Poker Flat". In it is a great line that connects me to this type of activity. The proper people of Poker Flat were casting some "improper" citizens out of their town. Harte said it this way;
      "It (PF) was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as
        lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it.
                                           A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons."
        Americans love the outcasts, the underdogs, the outsiders. We are drawn to the persecuted and those that "rage against the machine." We are the "huddled masses", pilgrims from "distant shores" that the woman, the New Colossus, standing light in hand rising Lazarus like, the" Mother of Exiles",  besides the golden door, beacons us to "breathe free".   So Harte's story fills our breasts with righteous indignation as we see our outcast heroes and heroines walk to their death and away from the "storied pomp". 
        But Jesus did not want His disciples to have this romantic "I've been rejected", "I am an outsider", "I am a rebel, a pilgrim, persecuted for God" attitude, the "homeless tempest tossed" "yearning to be free". He knew freedom did not belong to a demographic or a topographic.  He knew freedom belonged to the truth. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (8:32)." So He turned His story another way. 
         His instructions were that when the disciples were casted out they were to have a different attitude. They weren't to go huddle in some lonely canyon and die or look for some "teeming shore". Their attitude came from the desire to abide with the Father's love. As the vine abides in the branch so they should abide in God's love for people.  Our father does not exclude people, he includes, even when His son is rejected and killed "outside the gate". Nothing could do greater harm than for the disciples to become conditioned to being rejected. Fear of rejection wounds the spirit. And when our spirits are wounded the first thing we do is wall off to keep from being hurt again. Christ was warning his disciples not to do this. Putting a wall up stops the flow of love. Christ put his finger on the source of the problem when He said "they will think they are doing service to God", and in a strange way the offended party blames God for the offense, first and then others. The vine is separated from the Branch and it dies. Feeling offended is one of the greatest deterents to our Father's love.
           In a sermon from  his book "This Week, Volume X" entitled The Fear of Rejection, John Stevens said it this way;
                                       "There is perhaps no greater drawback to the Body-of-Christ 
                                         ministry than the fear of rejection. When that fear becomes a
                                         conviction to us, we think that no one really cares about us. 
                                         The fear of rejection is Adamic in human nature. God does 
                                         not deal with rejection; He deals with inclusion".
        If the disciples could keep from being offended by abiding in His love, then they could be free. Christ wanted the disciples to be free from the fear of rejection from others but also from within their own group. Again Stevens said:
                                             "With this removal of fear will come a great deal of freedom.
                                              No longer will anyone say in his heart, “I must do what
                                              those in authority tell me to do, because if I don’t,
                                             I will be excluded;  I will be put out there in the outer circle someplace.        
                                             More and more we will realize that there is neither
                                             an outer circle nor an inner circle.
                                             We are all one, and that oneness will become more evident."
         It is interesting that after chapter 16 Christ's launched into his prayer to the Father for the oneness of His disciples. He prayed for their oneness with the  Father, Christ and among themselves. Just as important  he prayed for you and me (17:20). Our oneness is the key to world evangelism (17:21).  
         In our day not offending is big. People have to be Politically Correct, PC, or there is trouble because the "love of many has waxed cold". We are not victims as Christians.  We should not offend but we should never be offended. He prayed for us not to be rapture out to some safe haven (heaven) but that we should be send into the world to towns like "Poker's Flat" (17:15). The real path to the true freedom, safe harboring, abiding with our Father,  lay in the words of Christ, me skandalisthete. 


Taken from the sermon "Healing the Wounded Spirit".