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(Read this series from its beginning here.)
Let’s start with this phrase, “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
Many human societies have been built on rejecting or scapegoating an individual or group victim. Human societies frequently unify by joining together against a common group to be afraid of. They then accuse that group of being responsible for society’s stresses and conflicts: the age-old, “Us versus Them.” When this social dynamic is active, rejecting a “stone” becomes the “cornerstone” of society, and these communities’ histories, legends, and myths say their deities are always on the side of those who are doing the rejecting. Often the gods are also demanding that the victim be sacrificed/rejected by the larger community. The Jesus story turns this dynamic upside-down.
Jesus, the community formed around Jesus’s teachings, and their God are being rejected, and the victims in this story are innocent (cf. John 11:50). In the Jesus story, we’re seeing this social dynamic from the perspective of the person or group that is feared and thus united against to have removed.
This is how “the stone that the builders rejected” becomes “the cornerstone.” We begin to see that our deities are not demanding the rejection of those we fear, but God actually stands with those we are rejecting. Jesus, the central figure of this story, is the one being feared and rejected by the privileged and elite. He isn’t leading the community in their rejection of someone else.
This change of perspective has the potential to help us form new ways of shaping human communities. It has the potential to give birth to humans who root their communities in equity, justice, inclusion, love, compassion, and most importantly—safety, especially for those who are marginalized and rejected. And every time a community chooses to center the voices of those they once expelled, they demonstrate a new way.
Maybe others have chosen to reject you. Perhaps you aren’t educated. Maybe you don’t have the privileged skin color. Maybe you aren’t included because you don’t have the privileged anatomy and physiology. Possibly you don’t belong to the approved income bracket. Perhaps you’re not from around here. Maybe you don’t have the correct socially constructed gender identity and/or expression. Maybe you don’t fit in with heterosexist society because of who you are or whom you love.
The good news is that all of this matters to the God of the Jesus story. If you’ve been rejected by others, your voice is centered in God’s just future. Those who have been rejected in unjust social structures are the cornerstones of the human community the Jesus story announces. Your rejection uniquely qualifies you in the shaping of a human community that rejects the fear and rejection of those deemed different or other. Whether your rejection has been social, political, economic, or religious, you can choose to allow your own rejection to transform you into being among the last people on the planet to treat others as you’ve been treated.
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