Barriers

According to a recent story, Pope Leo XIV ran into a wall of sorts when he tried to change his contact information with his bank in Chicago.

About two months after the Chicago-born cardinal became Pope Leo XIV and moved to Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home. The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost and said that he wished to change the phone number and address the bank had on file.

The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.  Then, the woman on the line told him it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to a branch in person.

“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that… I gave you all the security questions.”

The bank employee apologized but stood firm. The pope tried a different tack. “Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” She hung up.

Look, if the Pope can’t break through the impersonal walls the rest of us run into every day, what hope do we have?

Technology has given us tools to erect barriers.  Oh, they don’t seem like barriers at first. But they prevent us, over time, from making meaningful contact with other human beings.

Don’t talk to a customer service representative about your delayed flight, use their chat.

Don’t talk to a pharmacist about your prescription, just type your info into the check-in screen.

Don’t send someone personal birthday greetings, Facebook can do that for you in a click.

Each of these may be more efficient (that is up for debate), but they are not relational.

Faith communities, in all their forms, are first a relational enterprise.  Efficiency (although often invoked by church board members who, with good intentions, believe “the church should operate more like a business”) is not a value that Jesus modeled.

His model, through the gospels, is one of being relentless relational.

Jesus goes to people rather than waiting for them.

The call of Matthew (Luke 5:27–28) — Jesus walks past a tax collector’s booth and simply says, “follow me.” No prior relationship, no credentials checked. He initiates a relationship across a social boundary that most religious teachers would have treated as a wall. It’s the same with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10). Jesus spots him in a tree and invites himself to dinner before Zacchaeus has done anything to merit it.

Jesus notices the overlooked individual in the crowd.

The woman with the hemorrhage (Mark 5:25–34) — A crowd is pressing in on him. He’s on his way to answer an urgent request from a synagogue ruler, and yet he stops everything to ask, “who touched me?” His disciples think the question is absurd. He insists. The point isn’t only about healing; it’s that she must be seen and named, not just cured anonymously in the crowd.

Jesus takes conversation seriously as a form of care.

The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) — Jesus breaks through three taboos simultaneously (gender, ethnicity, moral reputation) and then stays in the conversation despite the woman’s deflections, gently redirecting, refusing to let her change the subject from herself. He doesn’t lecture; he draws out. The conversation is the ministry.

Jesus allows himself to be moved.

“Jesus wept” (John 11:35) — This phrase is easy to sentimentalize, but notice the surrounding verses. He already knows he will raise Lazarus. He weeps anyway. The relationality isn’t strategic; it’s participatory. He enters grief rather than managing it from a safe distance.

Jesus personalizes encounters even under pressure.

Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52) — The crowd tries to silence him. Jesus, headed toward Jerusalem and whatever awaits him there, stops. “What do you want me to do for you?” He asks the question even though the answer seems obvious. The asking itself is relational; it honors the other’s voice.

Jesus uses meals as primary ministry space.

The practice of table fellowship throughout the Gospels, with tax collectors, sinners, Pharisees, disciples, and crowds on hillsides, is relentlessly relational. Meals in first-century Jewish culture weren’t casual; they encoded belonging and honor. Jesus uses that cultural grammar deliberately, making inclusion at the table a form of proclamation.

Jesus stays present in the face of failure and denial.

The charcoal fire breakfast (John 21) – This is one of the most carefully constructed relational moments in Scripture. Jesus doesn’t address Peter’s betrayal directly. Over a charcoal fire that evokes the charcoal fire where Peter denied him, Jesus now feeds him, then asks the same question three times. He rehabilitates through persistent presence, not through a speech about forgiveness.

For all the good-hearted attempts to “keep the church relevant,” may I suggest that we have all we need? People in all manner of social locations are starving for, yearning for, someone to see them, hear them, talk with them, care about them, break bread with them, remain present in the face of their failures.

We don’t need greater efficiency.  We need an absolute commitment to follow our Savior into breaking down barriers and being relentlessly relational.