It took the writings of a Japanese novelist named Shusaku Endo to impress on me
that the phenomenon of reversal lay at the very heart of Jesus' mission.
In a country where the church comprises less than one percent of the population,
Endo was raised by a devout Christian mother and baptized at the age of eleven.
Growing up as a Christian in prewar Japan, he felt a constant sense of
alienation and was sometimes bullied by classmates for his association with a
"Western" religion. After World War II ended he traveled to France, hoping there
to find spiritual soulmates. Again he faced persecution, this time on account of
race, not religion. As one of the first Japanese exchange students in an Allied
country, Endo found himself the target of racial abuse. "Slantyeyed gook," some
called him.
Rejected in his homeland, rejected in his spiritual homeland, Endo underwent a
grave crisis of faith. He began visiting Palestine to research the life of
Jesus, and while there he made a transforming discovery: Jesus too knew
rejection. More, Jesus' life was defined by rejection. His neighbors laughed at
him, his family questioned his sanity, his closest friends betrayed him, and his
countrymen traded his life for that of a terrorist. Throughout his ministry,
Jesus gravitated toward the poor and the rejected ones, the riffraff.
This new insight into Jesus hit Endo with the force of revelation. From his
faraway vantage point in Japan he had viewed Christianity as a triumphant,
Constantinian faith. He had studied the Holy Roman Empire and the glittering
Crusades, had admired photos of the grand cathedrals of Europe, had dreamed of
living in a nation where one could be a Christian without disgrace. Now, as he
studied the Bible, he saw that Christ himself had not avoided "disgrace." Jesus
was the Suffering Servant, as depicted by Isaiah: "despised and rejected by
men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide
their faces...." Endo felt that surely this Jesus, if anyone, could understand
the rejection he himself was going through.
Yancey. Philip. The Jesus I Never Knew. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1995, p. 157-158.
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