"Cambodia: The Stone Rejected "
by Dr. Michael H. Browder

May 3, 2009

When I was a kid, I was very poor. I’m not now, but I was then. The only way I had any spending money was picking up coke bottles off the side of the road. We would start walking toward the store a mile away, and hope that there were enough bottles in the ditch to buy a coke and a candy bar. As I remember, each empty bottle (that wasn’t broken) was worth 2¢. A coke was 10¢ (up from 5¢), and a candy bar was a nickel. (My favorite was the Babe Ruth bar.) You could still buy peppermint balls 2 for a penny.

When we lived in Quinton, my brother (Boog) and his friend Kim Isgett had a real scam going. Kim’s father owned a country store. He would take Charlie with him around to the back of the store. And they would gather up used bottles that had been turned in. Then they would take them around to the front of the store and turn them in for money to buy candy. They ate a lot of candy in those days.

There was a time, during my childhood, when we lived near the county dump. Sometimes, when we went to drop off our garbage, we would find some-thing that we thought was valuable, and we brought it home. It’s like we always say at the rummage sale: “Your trash may be someone else’s treasure!” I remember that, one time, my father found an old bicycle frame. He took it home, painted it, and put on new wheels. And voila! My sister had a new bike!

My experience collecting coke bottles as a kid taught me that sometimes things which had been discarded can turn out to be valuable. Maybe that’s why I grew up to study archeology. After all, archeology is the field of learning about ancient peoples by studying their garbage. Did you ever think about that? Archeology is the study of garbage. You should have seen my trying to explain this word to my translator in Cambodia. They did not understand the word archeologist. How do you explain that to somebody?

So, archeology is the study of garbage. Now occasionally, when you dig through that garbage, you find something valuable. Maybe you find an artifact that tells you something new about the people’s lives. Maybe you find a buried object made out of gold or jewels. Sometimes you find a buried house, or even a buried city. When I was on the dig in the Holy Land, back in 1973, we found an object of gold and a whole buried section of the city. You can go to Caesarea Maritima today and walk through it.

I thought about these things while I was in Cambodia, because I took time to tour the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is hundreds of acres of ruins of Buddhist temples. Some of them have been restored. But some of them are just piles of stones. When I saw these great mounds of stones, and the beautiful temples that had been reconstructed, I thought about our scripture from Psalm 118: “The stone which was rejected, has become the chief cornerstone.”

Of course, this was one of the most popular scriptures to Jesus’ disciples, because it is a prophecy of the Messiah. It is a symbol of the fact that Jesus was rejected. He was crucified. He was buried in the ground like garbage! But God raised him up and made him Lord of All.

Sometimes that which we, and the rest of the world, think is garbage is actually something very precious in the eyes of God. Just like the archeologist who takes the buried garbage of ancient worlds and reconstructs precious monuments: God is the archeologist of the human soul. God, in Jesus Christ, takes people who are lost and rejected, people who are thrown away like garbage, and molds them into his own precious family.

Are you that person who has been rejected? Are you that person who is lost? Oh my, there is good news for you! All those who will come to Jesus Christ, even the lost and rejected, he makes them his own precious children.

I learned in my travels that Cambodia is a whole nation of people who have been lost and rejected. They have been conquered and tossed around like a football among the powers of Southeast Asia. They have been conquered by the Chin-ese, the Vietnamese, the French. But their most hated adversary is Thailand.

The name of the city where Angkor Wat is located is called Siam Reap. This name means, “the place where we defeated Siam (Thailand).” The name is very ironic, because the Khmer people of Cambodia very seldom defeated Thailand. This city was named was one of the few times. (This reminds me of Virginia Tech and U.Va. people talking about Duke basketball: “Yea, we beat Duke in basketball one time. I can still remember it!”)

Some of the worst suffering of the Cambodian people came during the Pol Pot regime of the late 1970’s. Approximately 2 million people died, in a population of 7 millions. Hundreds of thousands were killed instantly including women and children, even infants. They were shot, bludgeoned, hatcheted, even thrown against trees. Others were tortured, starved or simply died in prison. It was a terrible genocide. It was the subject of the 1984 film “The Killing Fields.”

Today, the lowest people in Cambodia are the people who live at the dump. They scrounge through the city garbage hoping to find something that can be sold for a few cents: Bottles, aluminum cans, occasionally something more valuable. When I was at the dump, I took a picture of a pair of rubber sandals. They were filthy, but they were still intact. This is a treasure. Those sandals could be washed and sold for a couple of bucks. That could feed a whole family for a day!

I have another picture of people digging through the garbage: men, women, children! Barefoot children! Sometimes naked. Can you imagine children living like this? Having to pick through rancid garbage at the dump, to keep their family from starving.

The United Methodist Church is at work in Cambodia. That’s where Clara Biswas, our covenant missionary from First United Methodist Church is loc-ated. One of our most important churches is located next to the garbage dump in Phnom Penh. The people who live in this neighborhood believe that things of value can be found in the garbage. We United Methodists believe that these people themselves are valuable. Just as Jesus, who was crucified and buried, was raised up by God, so Jesus Christ means to lift up these people, buried in garbage, and give them hope, and new life, by the grace of God.

Not only is there one big new church, but we have lots of schools all around the neighborhoods, with courses to train people, especially the children, and give them a better life. We have small churches, even in the poorest streets, where people are learning about the grace and love of God, and the salvation of Jesus Christ.

These people were rejected, like the stone in our scripture today. But they have been reclaimed by Christ, and they have been made a precious jewel in his kingdom. I preached this same sermon at the church in Phnom Penh. Afterwards, I asked our teachers, who were hosting me, if the people in the worship service could relate to this scripture and message. They answered, “Yes, Mike, more than half of the people in the congregation, even our leaders(!), started out as children picking through the garbage in the dump. They could really identify with what you are saying. And God has turned their lives around.” The stone, which was rejected, has become the most precious stone in the house.

Today we are coming to receive Holy Communion. Communion is a valuable symbol of the things we have talked about today. It is about Jesus’ suffering and rejection, but it is also about his salvation and victory. Jesus died for all the rejected. He died for all the broken-hearted. He died for you, and he died for me. But he died to give us hope. He died to give us salvation. He died to give us a new life. It was true for our psalmist. It was true in the Gospel. It is true for our brothers and sisters in Cambodia. And it is true in our midst today.

Lord Jesus, we remember how you were despised and rejected. How you were thrown away and buried like garbage. But God raised you up. And now you live and reign in victory. You died in love. And your love goes out to each of us who is lost and rejected. Dear Savior, we know that your heart is touched to reach out to the most rejected people of this world, including the children scavenging the dump in Cambodia. Lord, let us be co-workers with you in lifting them up and giving them a better day. Like our Savior Jesus, let the least of these, who have been so brutally rejected, become precious cornerstones in the Kingdom of God. Amen.