“But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.”

One of the “advantages” of being a certified teacher in Florida is that I get to take “graduate” level courses in education to retain my teaching certificate.  Even though I haven’t officially taught classroom education since I moved into international student ministry, I keep the certificate current as an employment safety net should I need it someday.  I use the quotations in the first sentence above deliberately to show sarcasm, because the courses I take are anything but an advantage or graduate level stuff.  Oh, I admit many contain some helpful content and some of the latest research, but I — and I assume most others still in the educational circuit — could do fairly well without the blather of these courses.

For example, one course I took was on teacher stress and burnout in the classroom.  In our first session the instructor asked us to break into groups and construct our own definition for stress.  After doing that, each group’s spokesperson (guess who was our group’s? — me) read their carefully crafted definition.  Then the instructor gave what the “experts” had agreed on.  Know what it was?  “A negative emotion that causes a physical response.”  Excuse me?  That’s it?  I mean, that could be true for a whole flotilla of other negative emotions too.  It was so generic, so vanilla.

Well, one of those emotions that could easily fall under that definition is despised.  People who despise something or someone are neither neutral nor dispassionate. Despise means to regard with intense disgust, contempt or disdain.  It means to scorn and to loathe.  A fire burns inside when people despise.  And usually the fire spills out and burns more than what the despiser originally intended.

One prophetic description of Jesus, Psalm 22:6 speaks of him being despised: “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people”.  Though the prediction is about him, despised really reveals more about the people than Jesus.  Sure, he is the one on the receiving end.  But only indirectly does it say something about him, which we will see shortly.

To better get a handle on despised, consider some other places it is used in Scripture.  In Genesis 25:34, we read that Esau despised his birthright, something that was unique and had massive implications for the blessing of the family’s descendants.  Fresh back from a hunting trip, Esau was dehydrated, famished and exhausted.  After a quick bargaining session, he traded it to brother Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew and bread.  Something generational — if not eternal — for a temporary meal.  Such trades don’t occur unless one is stupid, shortsighted, lackadaisical or just plain foolish.  Or all of the above.

After raging against them 40 days, the Philistine warrior Goliath had the Hebrew army rattling in its boots (well, sandals).  So when David emerged to fight, Goliath despised him, because sending out a ‘child’ disrespected him.  He angrily cursed him and predicted David’s death.  We know what happened as a result.  Later on, David’s wife Michal despised him for dancing in the street (2 Samuel 6:16), and David himself despised God’s word when he called for Bathsheba and had Uriah killed (2 Samuel 12:9).

After the 70-year captivity Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem despised the Jews and Nehemiah for rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls (Nehemiah 2:19).  Persian emperor Xerxes was concerned that wives hearing of Vashti’s insolence would similarly despise their husbands (Esther 1:17).  Nobleman Haman was anything but when he despised Mordecai so much that he built gallows in his back yard for him (3:6).  Even the priests in Malachi’s day despised God’s name, table and food (1:6,7 and 12).  This after having a centuries-long track record to refer to of disobedience and punishment for not honoring and obeying him!

Numerous times God told Israel that he would have the nations despise her if she went astray, which she did…often.  Her failures shout the impotency of mankind to live up to his revelation.  Enter Jesus into human history.  Those who despised God despised him too.  They represent us all, sort of God’s real time test case.  Dying for us anyway (Rom. 5:8) magnifies his gracious and forgiving character.  We would have been right there with them shouting against him, belittling him with our invectives, shaking our fists at him, despising him.  In light of his gift of life to you, what do you do to honor him all the more?