Stars and Commons (Friday Devotional)

 

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

- Matthew 20:25-28

Over the past week, thanks to a thoughtful gift from a few church members, I’ve rediscovered an old obsession: baseball cards. Whenever I get a spare minute lately, I find myself digging through old boxes of 1991 Topps, 1992 Donruss, and 1998 Upper Deck cards, reminiscing about players long since retired and admiring these cardboard snapshots of their careers.

For the hardcore collector and the casual hobbyist alike, there’s a natural process that develops when you’re sorting through your cards: you start separating the collectors’ items (rookies, stars, etc.) from the so-called “commons,” i.e. the workaday ballplayers whose careers last just a few seasons before they faded into obscurity. Where the stars’ cards wind up behind a plastic slab or in a binder or at least in a box marked “GOOD CARDS”, the commons are tossed haphazardly to the side, waiting to be hauled up to the far corner of the attic or sold in the next garage sale.

In life, just as in baseball card collecting, we tend to sort people based on their perceived value. This person is wealthy, that person is working class. This person is brilliant, that person is ordinary. This person is influential, that person is insignificant. In our own minds, we mark people as stars or as commons.

But Jesus commands his disciples to see people a different way—and indeed, to see ourselves differently too. Rather than exalting the powerful and lording over the lowly, Jesus calls us to identify with the least of these, to achieve greatness through service and exaltation through humility. Our calling is not to judge people by their earthly castes, but to transcend those categories in Christian love.

Jesus didn’t give his life as a prize for the elite, but as a ransom for many. So if we want to be his disciples, we do so not by tossing the world’s “commons” aside, but by loving, honoring, and helping them. For in the kingdom of God, there are no stars, only servants.