Executive Director of Interweave
….But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.— Exodus 1:8-2:10
When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples,"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" Simon Peter answered,"You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."—Matthew 16:13-20
“Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Jesus asks his disciples. He’s introducing a conversation about leadership. “Son of Man” and “Messiah” — don’t think these are just theological terms. To give you a fancy word, they are theo-political, terms about leadership that will lead the people to some better form of God-shaped, God-breathed, God-inspired common life.
Questions of leadership are in the air today, as the Anglican Communion struggles with its divisions, as Russia, Europe and America redefine their relations, and as the Presidential campaigns settle in for the last lap. Just when you’ve gotten caught up on your sleep from watching Michael Phelps win gold after gold, you may be about the plunge into one or both of the party conventions. At so many levels in our world, beset as we are by multiple crises, the question surfaces: Who are the best people to lead our church, our community, our world toward a better future?
Questions of leadership were just as intense in Jesus day. The Romans now occupied half the land of Israel and ruled the other half through surrogate kings, the descendants of their puppet, Herod. People were divided about who best embodied God’s will for Israel: the high priestly party of Sadducees who dressed like Greeks and collaborated to keep the peace? the Zealots, who would take up arms to liberate Israel from pagan oppressors? the Essenes out there near the Dead Sea, who were abandoning a society they saw as hopelessly corrupt, waiting for the angelic armies to kill the unrighteous? or the party of the Pharisees, who wanted to avoid confrontation with Rome and create a holy people through intense obedience to the commandments?
Jesus may not be running for President in his day, but he is promoting himself as the leader Israel needs—at the very least the leader of a religious-social-political movement to change things for the better. His message, concerns, and mission are not purely religious, but concern what we call “the common good.” Get out of your mind that stock Christian sermon about how the Jews were “expecting an earthly messiah” but Jesus came “as a spiritual leader.” That’s just plain wrong. Read the Gospels if you don’t believe me. No, Jesus did not come to be a military leader to throw the Romans out, but his concerns were deeply earthly. They didn’t kill him for kissing babies. They didn’t kill him for saying be kind to people. They killed him because he was a threat to the existing social and political order. They killed him for political reasons, because he led a movement to change the way things were being done.
Since these lessons deal with leadership—Jesus’ leadership qualities, and the subversive leadership of those Hebrew midwives who, by their guile, saved the Hebrew boy babies—it’s worth pondering what some of the major marks of leadership are in the Scriptures. What are the marks of a good leader, a God-shaped leader?
There are three characteristics I see:
- A vision of the possible good, with the shrewdness to pursue it effectively.
- Authentic enfleshment of that vision in both life and methods.
- Seeking to reconcile as many people as possible around that vision of possible good.
Contrary to popular belief Jesus not an idealist, but a hard-headed realist. What he proposes are not ideals to be lived up to but real-life challenges to be lived into. His way is hard, but all the other alternatives are harder.
Take his insistence on a non-violent approach to the Roman occupation. “Turn the other cheek,” as Gandhi saw, is a political strategy for an oppressed people. It’s addressed to the hot-heads who want to retaliate for every Roman insult. “If the soldiers slugs you,” Jesus is saying, “stand tall, maintain your dignity, look him in the eye, and turn your other cheek to him as well. If he makes you carry his shield and spear for a mile, go an extra mile. If you fly off the handle, you’ll die, and your whole village may be pillaged.” On other occasions, he clearly opts for assertiveness, as when he overturns the tables of the money changers in the Temple, a symbolic act of judgment on the Temple leadership. He’s a shrewd strategist, looking to maximize the good in specific situations. As it turns out, his lead was not followed. The hot-heads took over three decades later, and led Israel into a suicidal revolt against Rome, leading to 2000 years of exile for the Jewish people. Jesus’ was is hard, but the alternatives are much harder.
Or take the call to implement the prophetic legislation of the year of Jubilee, which calls for the complete remission of all debts every fifty years. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” is not just about our emotional injuries and debts, but about the Jubilee. This is designed to keep a pre-mercantile class-structured society from slipping into a permanent class of indebted poor and land-owning rich, to reset the balance every two generations. It would be hard way, but the alternatives are much worse for the common good.
Or take forgiveness of injuries and love for the enemy. Desmond Tutu saw that this was the only practical way forward for South Africa. The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions promoted confession and reconciliation, rather than grudge-bearing and retribution, and helped save South Africa from a blood-bath. A hard way, seldom chosen, but easier in the end.
This is all in the service of the possible good, just like the marvelous female conspiracy against Pharaoh’s genocidal order in the Old Testament lesson. The Hebrew midwives shrewdly outfox Pharaoh in great style: “Lawsy mercy me,” they say, “we just can’t do anything. Those Hebrew women are just so lively.” And Pharaoh’s daughter hides a Hebrew child in the shadow of the palace and gives the young Moses protection.
Authentic enfleshment of the vision.
A leader leads by example not by force.
Sun Tzu - Leadership - Encouragement
Secondly, Jesus walks his talk. He embodies the vision he presents. He is the Way he invites others to journey down. I don’t think this means he was humanly perfect, at least not in the way usually mean that. “Perfect” people don’t usually get invited back to dinner after one experience of them. Looking for perfection in a leader is foolishly romantic, but seeking some real measure of authenticity, some core of values that shines in their decisions and behavior, a moral message and moral backbone is not only reasonable, but essential.
Humanly speaking, Jesus of Nazareth was a genuinely good person, who delighted in the good, loved the good, and gave his heart, soul and finally his life to increase the good. He may well have made mistakes. Good leaders do. I can’t imagine Mary never had to correct the young Jesus, nor that he never regretted anything he ever said or did. When we say he was without sin, we mean he never failed to respond to God’s call in his life; he didn’t swerve the from the path of his service, not that he never had change his mind, apologize to another person, or reconsider an action. God’s goodness had captured his heart, and won out over all opposition.
Part of his genuine goodness was because he dared to face his own dark side. We need leaders who know, and are able to navigate, the dangerous waters of power. In the wilderness temptation tale we see Jesus facing leadership temptations—the temptation to offer quick fixes and illusory solutions (turning stones to bread), the temptation to get drunk with power (offer of all the kingdoms of the world), and the temptation to let power make you feel invulnerable (jumping off the temple). Jesus faced his own power temptations and illusions honestly, and repeatedly, not just at the beginning of his career.
We get authentic leadership when leaders know themselves this way. The temptations of power—delusion, isolation, a sense of being above the law—are gigantic. It’s a wonder any of our leaders make it through unscathed. Just think of the kamakaze dives some of our leaders have made recently. At least John Edwards had the grace to acknowledge he was fell into such narcissistic isolation he thought he could “do anything” and get away with it.
Look for leaders who know their own clay feet. Look for leaders—and look to be a leader if you are one—who has bested the temptations of power and is a servant of the good.
Seeking to reconcile people around the vision of the good.
Finally, in their pursuit of the greatest possible good, Biblical leaders rally as many people as possible around a shared vision of that good. Who knows, for example, how many women those Hebrew midwives inspired in their campaign of active resistance to Pharaoh’s policies?
New Testament scholars have a terrible time locating Jesus in the wide spectrum of first-century Jewish thought. Some say he is a maverick Pharisee. Others see in him an example of the “ascension” mysticism of the Second Temple period. Still others cite similarities with the radical Essenes, and, even though Jesus is clearly committed to a non-violent movement, some scholars see connections with the Zealot movement. Jesus also has some clear personal connections with people close to the high priestly Sadducees he criticizes so strongly. Parallels to Jesus’ teaching can be found in each of these segments of first-century Judaism. So, the scholars fight with each other about which segment he “really” belongs to.
I think we can’t pin down Jesus because, well, he’s a politician. Seriously, I think Jesus is reaching out to all these segments of Jewish society to build a coalition of devotion to God’s way of just and compassionate community that will be as big a “tent” as possible. That’s why you find one part Essene, and six parts Pharisee, and half a pint or more of Zealot and sixteen parts of the prophetic heritage they all share in common.
The clearest sign of this, for me, is the make-up of his “cabinet,” his council of Twelve. He’s got Judas Iscariot, who may well be from Judea and connected with the powers that be in Jerusalem. He’s got middle class businessmen like the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John. He’s got Matthew, a former tax-collector for the Roman occupation government. And he’s got Simon the Zealot sitting across from Matthew the collaborator—men who ought to be at each other’s throats brought together around the possible good, but he’s brought them together.
And the early Church expanded that vision. Not only did it have all these different kinds of Jews gathered around Jesus’ vision of God’s will for human community, but began to include non-Jews as well. Yes, they squabbled about it, but the vision of bringing diverse people together prevailed.
Looking for leadership
Through the fog of American politics it’s hard to discern leadership. We might have harbored hope for a real debate on the pressing issues of our century, and as yet we aren’t getting it. But we’re yearning for good leadership and hoping to find it—leadership that helps our community, our church, our nation face the real and pressing challenges before us in this century.
It’s not my place—nor the place of the pulpit—to tell you who to vote for. But it is my place as a Christian and a priest to urge you not to separate your faith from your political decisions, and to make sure your vision of the good is informed by Christian values as your continue to grow in understanding of them. It is our job as Christians to discern the good as best we can and follow it, and to elect, or to be in our own localities, leaders who embody it.
So as we plunge from the Olympics to the Democratic and Republican Conventions and the last leg of this endless Presidential campaign, I hope you will resist succumbing to the fog-making elements. American political campaigns have had their share of mud-slinging and slime since the 1796 election. I’m sure this crowd is intelligent enough not to be taken in by the barrage of attack dog commercials that poison the atmosphere. Guard yourselves against the poison.
More subtly, please don’t make your decisions simply by voting for your “team,” whether it’s the “red” team or the “blue” team. Observers have pointed out that the viciously polarized politics of the last two decades, a polarization that seriously cripples the Federal government, has intensified “team loyalty” among strong partisans. The common good is too precious to squander over a competition that evokes our most primitive tribalistic passions.
What leader is best suited to cooperate with the energies of the realm of God, the kingdom of just and compassionate community Jesus taught, lived, and gave his life for? And, in the realm of your own life, whether your leadership is in family, work, church, community or beyond, what kind of leader do you need to be to embody those energies best?
The world is shaped by our answers these questions.
© 2008 The Rev. Robert Corin Morris
Posts
