Brief synopsis of the readings: The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah warns about shepherds who mislead and scatter their flock. He promises punishment for those who drive the sheep away and will instead gather the flock and will appoint a shepherd who will gather them. This shepherd will be raised up from the shoot of David and will reign and govern wisely. This is the name he will be given: “The Lord our justice.” Mark’s Gospel describes Jesus and his disciples gathering what the disciples have done. Jesus tells them to come to a deserted place. When they do, crowds of people followed them. Jesus had pity for them and began to teach.
As I read these readings during the week the word “leadership” kept coming into my mind. I think we are constantly asking the questions of what we look for in choosing our leaders and how we evaluate (and ultimately decide to follow) those we chose. I’m reminded of one of those mass emails I received a few years ago that listed funny job evaluations; one of them evaluated a junior army officer and said this: “His men will follow him but mostly out of morbid curiosity.”
Most of the people who read this, I assume, live in a country where we choose our leaders through the democratic process and the question of leadership comes into closest focus at the ballot box. We directly choose those who lead in our political world. But those among us who are Catholic may incorrectly assume that questions of leadership do not affect us.
We have heard for years that “the Church is not a democracy” and that the Holy Spirit chooses those who lead us, from the Pope down to our parish priests and deacons. With all due respect, I’d like to challenge that view. Even if we don’t choose our faith leaders, we are evaluating them all the time. Even though the Catholic Church still forbids artificial birth control, American Catholic couples use birth control in numbers that mimic the population as a whole. The Church currently believes the priesthood is reserved only for celibate men while a scary majority of Catholics disagree.
In the last few years Pope Francis has spoken directly and forcefully on climate change and the moral imperative to address this. Many conservative Catholics, including a few presidential candidates, have vocally disagreed with him.
This raises a point that I believe goes to the heart of the reading in Jeremiah: How does a leader lead? Anyone in a leadership role, not matter how small, knows that a good leader does not dictate and expect others to follow, if only because it won’t work. There’s an old adage that a leader with no following is merely taking a walk. In my brief time as a Catholic priest I recognized that tension. By virtue of my ordination and position as a priest I knew that people took my words seriously. I knew that if I asked someone to do something, most of the time they would. I knew that I had a great deal of power over couples who were planning their marriage or coming to baptize their child.
But I also knew that my power was not absolute. If I came across as heavy handed or power hungry they would leave and never come back. There were times when I needed to navigate the churning waters between what my Church valued and the needs of the person or people I met with. One couple came to me for marriage. In that area there was a rule that they needed nine months of preparation before I could marry them, but they asked to be married in five months. The groom owned his own home and the bride lived in an apartment whose lease was up in five months. They didn’t want to move in together before they were married but they couldn’t afford for her to sign another year’s lease.
I had two choices: I could have held strong to the nine month policy, or I could determine that they made a cogent argument to marry in five months. I decided to make an exception with the understanding that they made all of their appointments on time. They did and have been married for nearly 20 years now.
I tell this story against the backdrop of the reading from Jeremiah. The mark of a leader is one who gathers and protects, one who carries a vision for the community and translates it into action. The phrase “servant leader” can become a cliche but there is truth to it.
A true leader is one who commands respect instead of demanding obedience. The mark of a true leader comes down to this: does the flock follow and are they better off for doing so? Even a cursory look at history will show examples of poor leaders. Some were never able to attract a following and they are easy to overlook. More dangerous are those leaders who were able to attract a following and led them into destruction.
Perhaps the best example of this from the last century was Adolph Hitler. He came to power in a country that was suffering from a horrific depression while forced to pay unfair reparations for their role in World War I. Hitler was able to play to the German population’s well placed fear for their future and their ill placed desire to blame the Jews. He found an easy scapegoat that initially gathered people, but ultimately led to their defeat. The Germany of 1933 would never have chosen the Germany of 1945 but that’s what happened when they chose to follow an evil leader.
Jeremiah lived during a time when not everyone who felt called to leadership was indeed called to lead. The promise of Jeremiah wasn’t that poor leaders would never attempt to lead, but that God will choose a “righteous shoot to David.” Jeremiah was harkening back to the “golden age” of Jewish history: when David was King of Israel.
As Christians we all look at Jesus as that righteous shoot and the Gospel bears that out. Last week we saw the disciples going out on Jesus’ command to evangelize. Here they are reunited with Jesus and Jesus calls them to “come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” Alas it doesn’t work as the crowds found them and Jesus began to teach them. He recognized that they were “like sheep without a shepherd.”
I think we need to look at these readings from both sides: as a follower and as a leader.
As I spoke about earlier, we have the ability in this country to choose our leaders and the campaign for our next president is in full swing. What should we look for? Clearly we should focus on those who recognize the role of servant leader, who envisions a community where all benefit. We should not focus on those who use their power for their own gain or their own agenda; on those who use power to divide and ensure their group benefits at the expense of others.
And we need to look at this from those times when we are called to lead. This happens to all of us at some point. We are the leaders of our families, our neighborhoods, our coworkers, and others. These readings call us to lead in such a way that our followers find our leadership compelling. Where our appeal to the better angels of our nature causes others to stretch and reach beyond what they thought they could do. Where our appeal empowers everyone, not just us. We are called to lead as if we were a “righteous shoot to David.” Because we are.