Sermon for 3 Lent, Year B

March 18-19, 2006

(Read Lessons)

St. Luke’s Church

The Rev. Eric M. Williams

The Gift of Leadership

Third in a sermon series on spiritual gifts

Where have all the leaders gone?

         We hear this complaint all the time, don’t we.

                  There is tremendous nostalgia for the “great men” of the past,

                           charismatic leaders who were energetic, effective,

                                    and above all decisive.

These benevolent dictators rose up in every field,

         from politics to business to religion.

                  They gave us a sense of security and comfort,

                           and now they seem to be in short supply.

                                    Why is that?

The 20^th century saw a tremendous backlash against that type of leadership.

         During World War I these great leaders of Europe

                  sent over 100,000 boys to their deaths for no apparent reason.

Then very un-benevolent dictators arose—

         men like Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler—

                  and we witnessed the true dark side of charismatic leadership.

Back at home our trust in great leaders was eroded by

         the war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights struggle,

                  not to mention Watergate, Iran-Contra Gate, Whitewater-gate,

                           and seemingly endless economic scandals like Enron.

The kind of trust once given freely to leaders is almost completely gone.

         We are a more cynical bunch these days,

                  and it is hard for us to trust the great charismatic leader any more.

In a sense, though, we have never stopped longing for that kind of leadership.

         In his excellent book, Leadership without Easy Answers, Ronald Heifetz says,

In a crisis we tend to look for the wrong kind of leadership.  We call for someone with answers, decisions, strength, and a map of the future…in short, someone who can make the hard problems simple….Instead of looking for saviors we should be calling for leadership that will challenge us to face problems…that require us to learn new ways.[1]

As it is, we set up our leaders for failure.

         One moment we are setting them up on a pedestal;

                  the next we are tearing them down.

Look at the NFL as just one example.

         There the myth of the great leader has persisted.

                  We look back at great coaches

                           like Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers.

However, today the average life span for a head coach in the NFL

         is only 4.3 years.

                  Our own local team, the Buffalo Bills,

                           has had five coaches in the last ten years.

The Super Bowl winning Pittsburgh Steelers, by contrast,

         won with the coach who has the longest tenure in the NFL today,

                  Bill Cowher who will begin his fifteenth season this Fall.

And business is no different in this regard.

         Several articles indicate that the average tenure for a CEO today in America

                  is moving from 40 months down to 30 months!

                           That is a remarkably quick hook.

The risks are great for these old-style leaders, but so are the rewards.

According to Business Week, the average CEO of a major corporation made 42 times the average hourly worker's pay in 1980. By 1990 that had almost doubled to 85 times. In 2000, the average CEO salary reached an unbelievable 531 times that of the average hourly worker.[2]

Clearly something is very wrong with this picture.

         This type of charismatic leadership is not working very well any more,

                  but we continue to invest ourselves and our resources in propping it up.

Against this I want to look at another kind of leadership trend,

         one which I think makes much more sense,

                  and one which I believe is a more Biblical approach.

Let’s look for a moment at the leaders in our Scriptures today.

         First there is the greatest of all the Hebrew leaders,

                  a man who combined all the roles of leader into one.

                           He was prophet, priest, and judge and law giver.

I always imagine Moses as Charlton Heston

         and I therefore imagine him as a natural born leader,

                  a man with no doubts at all,

                           confident and able to wield tremendous power

                                    over the rest of the Israelites.

Yet, if you read the book of Exodus, that is not the case at all.

         Moses was a man forever caught in the middle.

                  He was called by God to be a leader

                           even though he had no qualifications and no particular skill.

As a young man, he suffered from stuttering and could not speak clearly.

         The Bible records that the people he led were never very submissive.

                  They challenged his authority continuously.

                           This “stiff-necked” people drove Moses nuts.

They whined about the desert and wanted to go back to slavery.

         They whined about thirst until God provided water from the rock.

                  They whined about hunger until God provided manna from heaven.

                           They whined about manna until God provided quails.

Yet Moses became over time, and despite his real limitations, a real leader.

         Not because he was popular, which he was not.

                  Not because he was the most gifted or talented of his people.

                           He was a leader because he was God’s mouthpiece

                                    and God’s faithful servant.

Again and again, it was Moses who climbed the mountain

         and returned bearing God’s word to his people.

                  It was Moses whom God used to keep the people together

                           and to keep them on track as they made their way to Canaan.

Moses did not have all the answers.

         Moses did not make all the decisions.

                  But he kept the people in touch with the One who did.        

In the New Testament leadership is defined, of course, by Jesus.

         But it is a radically new kind of leadership.

                  Oh he could be a “take charge” kind of leader.

                           Just look at today’s story of the cleansing of the temple.

                                    You don’t get much more direct than that.

Yet what is interesting is how seldom he really did “take charge” of anything.

         People expected him to exercise that kind of political or military power,

                  but he kept telling them the leadership he was teaching them was different.

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."                    Mark 10:42-45 

Servanthood, sacrifice and self-denial define leadership for Jesus and the church.

         Leadership must be grounded in love—love of God and one another.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.  I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.                                                                                                    John 15:12-17 

 Jesus spent his earthly ministry, not giving orders,

         but teaching, training, his disciples to be leaders in this new way.

Then after he was gone he empowered them

         with the gift of the Holy Spirit

                  so that they could lead the church into the future.

And that is the key.

         Leadership is a gift from God to be used in the service of God.

                  There are skills involved which can be learned,

                           but true leadership always involves speaking and acting for God.

Here is a good definition of leadership from a resource of the Methodist Church.

The gift of leadership is a visionary, and forward looking gift that enables people to stay focused on where God might be leading us as individuals, congregations, and communities at any given time.  Leaders look more to where we are going rather than where we currently are, or where we have been.  Leaders motivate others to work together in ways that help them achieve more together than any could on their own.  Leaders provide examples of how we should order our lives to honor and glorify God.[3]

Nearly all of us are called upon to exercise leadership in one area or another.

            With the call comes the gift.

                        May we be led to use that gift wisely and skillfully.

                                    Most of all may we remember to use it lovingly and sacrificially

                                                in the service of God and our fellow human beings.

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