Today’s lessons ask us to meditate on questions leadership, on questions of authority and power. Luckily these are just Biblical themes. We don’t have any worries about leadership or people in power these days, do we?
Let me say at the outset, I can’t tell you what the Bible thinks a particular presidential candidate should or shouldn’t do. The Bible wasn’t written with prophecy about how the Supreme Court should function. If we go to the Bible with questions that specific, we’ll usually be disappointed. But the Bible can tell us a great deal about leadership.
And when I speak of leadership today, know that there is formal leadership, like the leadership of David, leadership that comes with a title and a role. There’s also informal leadership. Jesus’ leadership in the scripture is less formal. He’s not recognized really as an office holder. His followers are fisher people and commoners. And yet, they exercise leadership.
David the King?
Let’s turn first to David. This is a transitional moment in the Hebrew Bible. God didn’t want to give the people a king, but the people insist. Saul was the first King over Israel, just before David. Before Saul, the people had been lead by a series of “Judges.” In the days of the judges, simply, the best leaders served, women included, and Kingship, full authority, was thought to rest not in a person, but in God.
But, as they are prone to do, the people grew restless with God. They begged Samuel, the last judge, to anoint for them a formal king. They want to be like the other nations, they say. God allows the plan to go forward, reluctantly. And they get Saul.
There are scholars who wonder whether the way Saul’s story is told is about trying to make David look better. And still, David’s flaws are as documented by the text as his successes. We could talk for a long time about the unlikelihood of David’s rule. His relationship with Jonathan raises eyebrows. His successor, Solomon, is born to him by Bathsheba, a woman he forced to marry him. On top of it all, He’s a musician. And who can trust a musician? Yet this unlikely David is the great king of Israel.
Several years ago now the New Yorker published an article about King David, based on the archeological record, which asked whether calling him “King” was appropriate at all. There’s almost no evidence of a great empire for Israel in the period. David was likely just a local tribal leader, a small time sheikh, a much lesser figure than we imagine. The territory he controlled was a backwater, desert mountains without many resources.
The theologian Wil Gafney an Episcopal priest and Black womanist theologian, likewise writes that we in the western church have a difficult time understanding concepts of government from ancient Israel/Palestine. Because our understanding of what a “king” looks like is shaped by white masculine European systems of dominance. We imagine David like a King of England or France. We can’t really conceive of the more tribal, familial, and interdependent reality of royalty in the ancient near-East.
Wil Gafney’s questioning of our images of power, asking us to know our own biases, should make us think twice about what the Bible is saying about leadership. When we first meet David, after all, the Bible tells us “God does not look at things like humans do.”
What is Biblical Leadership?
Sometimes the unlikely, the flawed, make great leaders. Maybe leadership, real leadership is about acknowledging that at times all of us get it wrong. Today even the egotist St. Paul tells us he has a “thorn in his side,” some flaw, some imperfection that he prayed God would take away. God refused, Paul tells us, so that Paul can know that “power is made perfect in weakness.” Mandy, remember that as you step into your role as the rector of St. James in Taos, “power is made perfect in weakness.” And you’ll do just fine.
You’ll do fine because you know that, following the story of David, leadership is about showing up, with all of who we are, and asking “how can I serve?” Great leaders don’t have some false picture of perfection. Great leaders are not those who lord their titles and genealogies over their subjects. Rather, they seek to shepherd, to safeguard, to care for the people they are entrusted to lead, especially the most vulnerable. And when great leaders mess up, they ask for forgiveness.
I like to point out a prayer in the marriage liturgy to couples in premarital counseling. You can find the prayer on page 429 of the prayer book. It reads “Give them grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours.” Give them grace WHEN they hurt each other, not IF, WHEN.
Jesus Goes Home and a Ministry becomes a Movement
There is familial tension, familial hurt at play for Jesus today. Jesus doesn’t have the pedigree his neighbors and kin expect from the messiah, the anointed leader of God. He’s Mary’s son. He’s from here. He can’t be anyone special, can he? More than just their questions, we hear that the people of his own town are “repulsed” by Jesus and that Jesus is “appalled by their unbelief.” These are some of the strongest words of rejection we have in the Gospels. This visit to his hometown is more than just an opportunity for a proverb. There’s pain, and yet, watch what happens next.
Jesus, doesn’t dwell on the hurt. Instead, he takes the first step toward making his ministry into a movement. (Maeve today is being invited to be part of the movement, for justice, for healing, for love).
In this first sending, Jesus commissions the disciples to heal, to exorcise demons, to preach God’s love. As Jesus sends his disciples out, he talks to them about shaking the dust off their sandals.
Now remember, Jesus has just been rebuked in his own home town, but even a hurting Jesus won’t allow his disciples to condemn those who won’t listen. Jesus says simply, “shake the dust off your sandals.”
Isn’t it so easy to tear others down? We live in days when there are ready-made divisions. We live in days where outrage counts as currency. Our days are not so different than those of Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t prepare his disciples for a fight. He asks them to move on. There’s too much Gospel work to be done.
The New Presiding Bishop’s Relational Jubilee
Just ten days ago, our church elected our next presiding Bishop. Sean Rowe, the bishop of Western Pennsylvania and Western New York. Bishop Rowe used his inaugural address to say, “we must find ways to become beloved community where we can disagree with one another without shaming, or blaming, or tearing each other apart. Let’s use our anger at injustice, and instead of turning it inward toward each other, use it to bring God’s reign.” Bishop Sean went on to call for a “relational jubilee” a time to “let go of the resentment, the anger, the grudges, which have weakened the leadership in this church in these pandemic years.” He lamented how the energy that goes into this resentment saps capacity for doing God’s work in the world.
I found that level of honesty from the Presiding Bishop-elect sobering. If I’m being honest, at every level in the church, and I would include the level of this congregation, I have found the last four years have been years with an uncommon levels of bitterness and of anger. We could use some freedom from this infighting. I think Bishop Sean is right. We could use some jubilee.
If this is ringing true for you, I think there is a question today for you from Jesus. How will you practice forgiveness? How will you reconcile? Let me also say, if your anger is focused on me, please give me a chance to make amends. I am happy to set time to talk. We can invite others, if it helps. But let’s not allow bitterness to stew. Now one benefits from stewed bitterness.
We are, Jesus tells us, brothers, sisters, siblings. I also realize, I haven’t been here very long, and I may not be the focus of some of the frustration in this parish. If there is reconciliation to be done, I’d be happy to help.
It’s a simple invitation today from Jesus. If the villages are unwelcoming, shake of that unwelcome. If they are unkind, if they are cruel, shake it off. Walk forward. There are more people to heal, more people to love, more people to include. Don’t allow the bitterness of a few to drag you down. Shake it off.
I may not be able to tell you specifically what the Bible thinks our President or our Supreme Court should do. That’s not how the Bible works. I do believe our Scripture helps us to deal with the anxieties of our days. Jesus invites us to shake that dust right off of us. There is work to do, to proclaim God’s love for all people, to heal, to bind up, to build.
My sisters, my brothers, my siblings, leadership isn’t perfection. If you meet the perfect leader, run the other way. The greatest leaders in the Bible are often the most fully human. Leadership, in the Bible is about our willingness to join, with all our imperfections, in God’s ongoing movement. God’s movement of love that always seeks to raise up the unlikely, to lift up the lowly, to set people free. May God give us the grace to walk this way, imperfectly, together.
Mike Angell 