St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost (October 22, 2006)
Liturgical Color: Green
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
"True Leadership"
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the inspiring presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In my work with the Synod Outreach Team a few years ago, I grew to be very concerned about how leadership is often misunderstood and misused in the Church. I became almost obsessed with this matter of leadership, and those concerns return to me as I consider today's gospel reading.
It is a well-known passage, one that depicts the disciples, yet again, as rather dull in terms of their ability to understand Jesus.
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to [Jesus] and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."
James and John, it would appear to us, are amazingly bold! They get right into Jesus' face and tell him that their interest in him lies in what he can do for them. It's hard to imagine how Jesus controls himself enough to ask them:
"What is it you want me to do for you?"
Their request is as bold, rude, selfish, and insensitive as is their statement of the desire that Jesus be their personal genie:
"Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."
It is no surprise to any human being reading this story that the request is about power and glory. People imagine that life is a game, and power is the objective. It's an old and recycled story.
Everybody wants power. Since the dawn of history, human beings have been trying to move up the scale of importance. The clincher used by the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve was "when you eat of [the tree of good and evil], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5).
Henri Nouwen says that ever since then, we have been tempted to replace love with power. "The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led." This is a theme running through the Bible, through human history and through our own psyches.
We should not be surprised nor excessively judgmental, then, with James and John. Although their brashness may not be our style, the motive underlying their request is not strange: "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." Shared glory; honored positions, closeness to powerful people-these are popular means of gaining a sense of identity. If we can't be the glorified or the honored guest or the one with the power, then being close by is the next best thing. Some of the glory will make us shine. Some of the honor may spill over onto us.
So thought James and John. And Jesus tries yet again to infiltrate the thick cloud of ignorance surrounding these two beloved disciples:
But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."
When they persist in their stupidity, Jesus moves from the metaphorical to the concrete. He stops talking about baptisms and cups-sacramental images for the sufferings he will undergo on the way to glory-and he talks about the heart of the matter.
When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
Real power and true leadership, Jesus instructs, are very different concepts viewed from God's perspective. They are not about domination or control; they are about service and love-the giving of all that we are and have for the sake of the mission and ministry that Jesus has entrusted to us.
One of the things that I celebrate about the way the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is organized is its commitment to being "inderdependent." Our common ways of thinking about power, authority, and leadership tend towards the hierarchical and authoritarian. However, rather than imagining that there are levels of authority beginning "at the top" with the national bishop and then "moving down" through regional-synodical bishops, pastors, lay workers, church presidents, councils, committees, and members; our church sees all authority as coming from the giftedness of each person by God. We talk, therefore, about our "interdependence," recognizing that we all need one another and our sharing of gifts for the sake of God's work in the world. No one is more important than another. No one may wield unquestioned authority over another. All authority centers in God in Christ and the gospel—not in human status, prestige, or position.
This kind of gospel-centered institutional structuring is exceedingly difficult to effect. Everyone wants to know who is ultimately in charge—who will take the final responsibility and the blame for decisions and their consequences. It requires a radical shift in our spirit and sensibilities to understand truly shared power and authority-true interdependence. We continue, on occasion to experience leadership and power as being "lorded over" those in "lower" positions.
In working with the synod, I even prepared a paper intended to assist us in working through issues related to the nature and exercise of authority, called "Partnership in Christ."
I won't bore you with the details. What I do want to share is a definition of leadership. It comes from the book I mentioned last Sunday. It's called "Church in the Round" and is authored by Letty Russell. Here's the definition.
Leadership is the "care and development of relationships and purpose."
Let me repeat that. It is the crux of my message this morning.
Leadership is the "care and development of relationships and purpose."
Does that sound like anything current in the boardrooms or government halls of America? I don't think so.
But at its essence it does express the kind of leadership through service (care and development) that our Lord invites today. I likewise invite you to see how servant leadership—leadership defined and expressed in care and growth for and with others for the sake of the gospel—might inform the way you operate wherever your life is lived: in a household, family, congregation, business, club, or at leisure. And as we look to Commitment Sunday for our capital campaign, I invite you to consider how your own interdependence within this congregation—your own power and giftedness—can be utilized for the sake of the benefit of all.
When we exercise interdependent leadership, we affirm the gifts of every individual, we call everyone to choose to utilize those gifts for the sake of mission and ministry, and we simultaneously acknowledge that the result is the work of the Holy Spirit—not of our own. We do not demand compliance or participation. We invite prayer and soul-searching about personal giftedness, and the guidance of the Spirit as to how each person's gifts might best and most generously be offered freely in gratitude—given back so that they may be multiplied.
I believe strongly that God's will is done less fully whenever command and control are exercised. Certainly in the church, we might work to express the fullness of partnership in Christ suggested in today's passage, where all come humbly and in love to offer the gifts that each brings for the benefit of all. No one person has all the gifts, nor all the information.
In the larger church, this means that congregations are equal partners with the synod and the national church, each doing different things and bringing different gifts to bear on our common purpose of serving our Lord and the gospel. In the congregation, this means that each member is an equal partner, each bringing unique gifts of God into the fellowship, for the benefit of everyone.
And let me just say that I am deeply impressed with how much this is already true at St. Thomas. It has been expressed so beautifully in the work of many dozens of us in so many ways. For today's focus, I call your attention to the vision and wisdom of those who called this congregation to long-range planning in January of 2004, to the determination and courage of the members on our Long-Range Planning Committee, to the sensitivity and consultative work of our Sacred Space Design Task Force, to the careful and considered planning of our Capital Campaign Committee and Steering Committee, to now the involvement of four dozen members in the beginning phases of the Capital Campaign.
There has been, throughout, a deep caring that looks to the heart as well as to the gospel-to relationships and to purpose. For one without the other leads either to a turn inward that becomes lifeless and undirected or to a careless plunge into a future that leaves a wake of maimed and ill-used human beings in its path.
It cannot be denied that not everyone supports any particular aspect of our long-range plan or of our plans for strengthening our ministry, but it also cannot be denied that those who have been led by the Spirit to take on the myriad and challenging tasks of planning for mission have acted with appropriate attention to both of the essential aspects of Christian leadership-the care and nurture of both relationships and purpose.
I publicly congratulate all of you for your excellent and true leadership. We cannot over-value the willingness you have shown in giving your time, talents, and riches to this godly work. And we all know that careful, consultative, and interdependent decision-making is still fraught with personal and communal risk. We may have taken wrong turns. We may have left someone behind. We might not have done everything we could to seek the guidance of God in prayer, scripture, and conversation. With any decision, there are passionately held and differing points of view. Despite all efforts at consensus, there will be persons who do not feel that their point of view has been taken adequately into account.
And yet, I hope and trust that there is now among us a dedication to taking together what I fully trust is a God-led leap forward in mission and ministry. I am simply astounded at what God has done among us. I can't wait for you to hear just how much progress is already being made towards our goals to enrich our ministries with children, youth, Spiritual Growth Group mission, and hospitality for continuing and new members. I had no idea how generous God would lead our members to be. Indeed, I had no conception of how richly blessed our membership is!
As I close, let me offer a few reminders. In Christ, we do not lord authority one over another. In Christ, we engage as we are chosen or gifted in whatever needs to be done for the sake of relationships and mission. We seek not that our ideas or our will be honored, but yearn for what God wills. We come to offer our gifts, not looking for what Jesus can do for us, but for what we can do together for the sake of Christ's mission in the world. And when it is done, we acknowledge that God was thereby glorified, even if we experience it more as suffering and others as joy. It is Christ who is served, not we ourselves.
Remember what the disciples said? "Do for us whatever we ask of you." And their faith was found wanting.
Their image of power and the world's image of greatness is hierarchical, with the greatest at the pinnacle of the pyramid and God hovering over the top. The closer one gets to the pinnacle, the closer one is to greatness and to the image of God. Success, upward mobility and being served are signs of faithfulness to a hierarchical god.
The way of Jesus—true leadership—calls us in another direction. Nouwen writes: "The way of the Christian...is not the way of upward mobility in which the world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross....It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest." Giving our lives "as a ransom for many" involves making ourselves available and vulnerable to others in response to the One who laid down his life for us. It is offering our total being—our hope and our despair, our doubt and our faith, our fear and our courage, our ambition and our humility, our poverty and our riches.
May we make these offerings of ourselves more freely and more fully each day, that we may truly "Celebrate God's Mission" and "Strengthen our Ministry." Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts
and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal
life. Amen.
