THE UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE OF REJECTION
“We don’t want you here. Go away!”
I was a teenager on vacation with my family at a hotel on South Africa’s East Coast. Enjoying the freedom that my parents gave me in this protected environment, I’d been hanging out with the pack of young people which had inevitable formed. But, in spite of my best efforts to fit in, I found myself looking into the disdainful face of this girl who wanted me gone. I doubt I will ever forget the feeling of being so completely rejected and worthless. Thankfully, I was not the only ‘reject’ in that place. My vacation was saved—and improved—by the other outcasts who welcomed me enthusiastically into their group.
Mother Teresa was right when she said:
The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.
My experience—which was insignificant compared to the rejection suffered by so many people in our world—gave me a tiny glimpse into the truth of Mother Teresa’s words. And I know I’m not alone.
We all know the grief of rejection. Some of us have just heard that our spouse no longer loves us. Some of us have children who have left home and broken ties with us. Some of us have old friends who suddenly want nothing to do with us. Whatever the specifics, or the degree, rejection is a universal human experience.
But we all experience the opposite too: the sense of deep belonging, acceptance, and love. When I was at university, I found a place in the Student Christian Association where I was welcomed and included in spite of my awkward social skills and my opinionated, in-your-face nature. Almost forty years later, many of them remain my friends even though we’re scattered across the world.
THE MATRIX OF FRAGMENTATION
In 1999 the movie, The Matrix, caught the imagination of a generation. It gave voice to the feeling, shared by many of us, that the world we live in isn’t really real. It’s like a matrix—a way of seeing, believing, behaving, and relating—that holds us prisoner and from which we can’t escape. The values and priorities that drive us, the attitudes we have toward ourselves and others, the actions that fill our days are all shaped and controlled by the systems that govern the world in which we live. Usually we don’t even realise it; we go through life imagining that this is just the way it is, that nothing can change, and all we can do is make the most of it.
Many of us have a nagging sense that this can’t be it, that there has to be more to life than what we’re experiencing. We look around us and we can’t help but feel that there has to be a better way of organising society. We look within us and we can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a healthier way to live. We long for a world where no one tells us who our enemies or friends should be, who we can or cannot love, where we don’t have to just accept the way things are, and where we—and everyone—can do more than just survive.
But in most cases, we just can’t see the matrix and we don’t know how to break out until someone shows us the way. And that brings us to Trinity—the divinely named heroine who searches Neo out, leads him to freedom, and reassures him when he’s uncertain about what’s real and what isn’t. Trinity believes in Neo and welcomes him into the community of outcasts who are working to change the oppressive world in which they live. When Neo dies in the matrix, it is the love of Trinity that brings him back to life and that opens his eyes to finally see the matrix for the computer program it is.
As followers of Christ, we too have a Trinity who is significant to us—the one from whom Carrie-Anne Moss’s character got her name. And that Trinity is the focus of Christian worship around the world this Sunday.
THE PROBLEMATIC TRINITY
For many Christians, the doctrine of the Trinity is the toughest part of their faith. You don’t have to go far to find memes on the internet that highlight the absurdity of taking it literally. It isn’t logical and it’s almost impossible to explain. As Richard Rohr writes:
Trinity leads you into the world of mystery and humility where you cannot understand, you can only experience.
The writer of Matthew’s Gospel, after making his case that Jesus is the true Messiah who brings God’s Reign into the world, ends his narrative with these words:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. Jesus came near and spoke to them, “I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age. (Matthew 28:16-20 CEB).
This is the closest the Bible gets to a description of God as Trinitarian. But the writer was not trying to define God for his readers. He was not creating a clear doctrine by which to include true believers and exclude all others. He was not concerned about things like orthodoxy and heresy. Rather, he was describing Jesus’ final words to his disciples as he commissioned them to continue the work of building a community that would embody God’s love and justice.
It is always good to remember that all language—even biblical language—for God is inevitably metaphorical. By definition, God is beyond our capacity to understand and so, whenever we speak of God, mystery, metaphor, and humility are essential. We make a mistake if we try to use the doctrine of the Trinity to count the ways that God reveals God’s Self and limit them to three. A trinitarian view of God is not about defining who is truly Christian and who isn’t. But it does offer some intriguing possibilities for how we can live and love well.
TRINITARIAN LIVING
In Matthew’s Great Commission, the disciples are instructed to make disciples of all nations and to baptise them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Making disciples is not about forcing people to become adherents of the Christian religion. It’s about inviting them to embrace the principles, priorities, purposes, and practices of God’s reign of love and justice. To return to the metaphor of The Matrix, it’s like Trinity’s work of asking the right questions, connecting with people’s sense of being on the outside, and drawing them into a new community of authenticity and love.
Baptism is not a ritual of exclusion. It is a ritual of welcome, of belonging. When we baptise someone we are saying to them that God loves them and they belong in the family of God. When I was in pastoral ministry, I would always place whatever vows needed to be spoken after the act of baptism, especially when baptising infants. The reason was to confirm that our belonging in God’s divine community of love is conditional on nothing. The vows we make are our commitment to live into and share the belonging that is already ours.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Sacredise Your Life! to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.