No Velvet Rope--February 1, 2023

No Velvet Rope--February 1, 2023

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters; not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God." [1 Corinthians 1:26-29]

When you have nothing to prove, you are truly free.

And the community of Jesus is meant to be a gathering of people who have nothing to prove... and nothing to be ashamed of.  That simultaneously makes us free--and binds us together in love.

It seems like everywhere else in our lives, we are forced to preen and posture ourselves to make ourselves acceptable, or to attain some status of belonging.  We learn it early on in school, as kids fragment into cliques and castes of the cool and the uncool, the trendy dressers and the unstylish, the athletic and the clumsy, the popular and the wallflowers, and a host of other lines.  As we get older, the particulars may change, but the impulse to make ourselves seem "impressive" is the same old routine.  Whether it's the level of education you attain, or the amount of money you make, or the neighborhood you live in, or whether you share the politics of your coworkers, or whether you look, act, or think the same, we end up still trying to fit in like we are back in middle school trying to avoid being ostracized before the big dance.  And ironically, in the attempt to fit in with whatever clique, class, or caste we think we want to belong to, we end up more alienated and cut off from other people because we fear they'll take our spot in the club.

And you can play that game, I suppose, but--truth in advertising--it's always a losing one.  No matter what the variable--class, education, power, influence, wealth, ethnicity, or whatever else we come up with--just when you think you have "arrived" among those of the preferred status, the game invents a new status, a new VIP level, a yet more exclusive elite, and you don't measure up anymore. It's like we're all living out the old Dr. Seuss story about the Sneetches, all vying to have stars on their bellies, until everyone does, and then the status symbol becomes having no star.  It's all one terrible, desperate game, and nobody who plays it can come out on top; the house always wins.

But... you don't have to play.  That's the open secret that the followers of Jesus are meant to be shouting from the rooftops.  You don't have to play the old games of status.  God has already chosen to include people of every stripe, category, and class, and deliberately lifted up the ones regarded as "nobodies" by the world.  This is part of the sheer brilliance and beauty of God's choice to make a community defined, not by status or sameness, but by grace.  And the apostle Paul recognizes that this is not an accident, and certainly not a flaw--it is exactly how God has intended the community of Jesus.  God has chosen the ones labeled "nobodies" and regarded as "nothing" by the So-and-Sos to show how empty the status of "So-and-So" really is.  God has created a community in Jesus where you don't have to be from the "right" background, or tax bracket, or pedigree, or educational level in order to belong.  It is Jesus' claim on us that makes us belong, and not our ability to fit into anybody else's cookie cutter mold.  We are bound to each other, then, because of Jesus' love for us, which takes away any grounds any of us have for bragging that we "got in"... and it removes any reason to have to envy anybody else, either.  There is no secret VIP section, no first-class seating, no velvet rope.  There is only a welcome to all of us on the grounds of God's grace in Christ.

And like I say, once you "get" that--once it becomes clear you don't have to play the game of reaching for a certain status to fit in--you are truly free. And in the very same moment, you realize you are tethered to everybody else through love because they are no longer your competition vying for a limited number of spots on the team, but members of a family you have been brought into by the power of that love before you even realized it.

This is God's alternative to the world's stupid game-playing.  We are what it looks like to build a community on the genuine kind of love that doesn't need to impress, boast, or envy, because it is just done with all that nonsense.  We are a glimpse of what it can be like not to have to worry about fitting in or measuring up.  And we have been from the beginning.  When we forget that and turn the church into one more exclusive club defined by your money, your ethnicity, your education, or your social class, we betray the beautiful vision God has intended for us and turn Christianity into a religious version of the Sneetches.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  The question really is whether we will dare to believe what the Gospel already says: we don't have to prove anything to anybody, and we don't have to be ashamed of where we've come from or who we are.  

Today, let's live as people truly freed from that tired old losing game, and step into the ways love holds us together.

Lord Jesus, enable us to let go of the need to acheive a certain status, and to trust your claim on us as we are.