Toppling the Velvet Rope

Toppling the Velvet Rope--August 26, 2016

"An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. But Jesus, aware of their inner thoughts, took a little child and put it by his side, and said to them, 'Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest.' John answered, 'Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.' But Jesus said to him, 'Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you'." [Luke 9:46-50]

Jesus would have made for a terrible bouncer. He just has this way of letting in all the riff-raff and making the proud and puffed-up so-and-sos wait in line behind them.  Jesus would have been a real troublemaker with the velvet rope.

Seriously, Jesus has this way of redrawing the lines, moving the barriers, and unhooking the rope lines that keep people out.  It's throughout the gospels, and it's here in spades in this scene from Luke's Gospel.  When the disciples start bickering with each other about their own personal greatness, Jesus doesn't weigh in by crowning one of the twelve as his chosen VP.  In fact, Jesus rejects their whole debate by rejecting the very notion of "greatness" as the disciples had been defining it.  There they are trying to rank themselves in line in order of importance, like would-be guests trying to get into a nightclub, and Jesus' responses isn't to rank the disciples himself, but to knock over the velvet rope altogether and to say, "You're acting like a bunch of little kids--and by the way, one of these little kids is what real greatness looks like." Jesus is not impressed by greater money, greater intellect, greater experience or references on the resume, or who's got more Facebook friends (well, he wouldn't have cared about that if they had social media two millennia ago). All the usual marks people use to compare themselves to others and rank themselves higher than others in their own minds just don't matter to Jesus, so he has no problem putting children ahead of the grown-ups in line and, for that matter taking outsiders who name the name of Jesus and including them on his "team" even if the rest of the disciples get upset that he doesn't share their brand-name.  Jesus just knocks down the boundaries of rank or side, and he leaves them down.

And he isn't satisfied with just knocking down the velvet rope himself--he is on a mission to get each of us to knock them over, too. He is working to change our hearts when we slide back into the old thinking of ranking greatness and keeping out the people we want to label as the riff-raff.

That's a bigger deal than we might realize at first. It means that being a Christian is not simply a matter of believing certain facts about Jesus; it means coming to adopt Jesus' positions and view of other people as our own, too.  To be a Christian is not simply to say, "I love Jesus with all my heart," but to let Jesus then bang around in our hearts and start knocking down the walls and rope lines in there.  To be a Christian is to love and trust Jesus enough to let him change the way we see other people, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we love everybody else around us. 

It is quite possible to recite orthodox Christian doctrine and still be stuck in the old mindset of ranking your greatness against others'.  You can even turn Christianity into subject of facts to be memorized and mastered--and still have missed the point of what Jesus is saying in these verses.  Jesus is not satisfied to get us all reciting the Creeds while still being jerks and narcissists talking about how "great" we are.  Jesus won't rest until he's broken open our old picture of what "greatest" and "least" are, and until we see the delightful divine comedy, the sheer hilarity, of knocking over the barriers and welcoming in the left-out. 

Now think for a moment: if we really were done with all the posturing to make ourselves look "great" or "greater" than somebody else, if we really didn't have to do any of that nonsense anymore, how would your day be different?  Live like that today.

Lord Jesus, where our hearts are still putting up boundaries and lines to rank ourselves, come knock down all the barriers we have set up.  Make us to love the left-out the way you have loved while we were left-out.