Sunday, April 09, 2006

Copy the Servant Leader

A sermon preached by Dr. Jon Burnham at Batesville Presbyterian Church on April 9, 2006

 
        Walk the streets of Damascus, Syria today and you see posters of the face of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Go inside a restaurant or hotel and his portrait will be staring at you from the wall. After a few days there you get the uneasy feeling the ruler is always watching you, aware of what you are doing. We in the West accomplish the same thing with different technology. We use screens instead of framed portraits. Watch Fox News or CNN awhile and notice the recurring images of  President George Bush. The practice of projecting images of the ruler is nothing new. It dates back at least to the time of the Roman emperors.
       Caligula is one Roman emperor who was obsessed with projecting his image across the populace. He wanted to show his political dominance and to convince the people of his divinity. Caligula would dress up in elaborate costumes as various gods and goddesses. Perhaps one day he would dress as the majestic Jupiter, ruler of the gods. And another day he may appear dressed as the god Mars, the god of war. The ancient author, Suetonius, who wrote Lives of the Caesars in 121 A.D., tells us that Caligula ordered the most famous and admired statues of gods to be brought from Greece. He then had their heads removed and his own likeness installed. He established a temple to his own divinity where his golden statue was dressed daily in the same clothes he himself wore (Caligula, 22.3-4).                                                                                                                  As you may imagine, Caligula was not popular among Christians in the years 12 A.D. to 41 A.D. The early church wanted to carve out their own identity within the Roman Empire.  So they wrote a hymn that described their leader, Jesus Christ, as being different than the Roman Emperor, Caligula. This hymn, which Paul quotes in Philippians 2, presents a stark contrast between Caligula and Jesus Christ:

5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
7but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross, 
(Phil. 2, NRSV)

The humility of Christ stands in stark contrast to Roman rulers such as Caligula. When Roman rulers such as Caligula or Pontius Pilate entered a city after a war campaign they made a strong impression. They would trot into a city riding a noble white charger. Their bodies would be covered with gleaming armor. Behind them marched mighty armies. The armies forced along a procession of humiliated captives and lavish displays of the spoils of war. In contrast, notice how Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He borrows a humble donkey and leads a procession of scruffy fishermen and loose women laughing and dancing in some peasant street theater along the same route Pontius Pilate might have used in his procession of might.

Jesus was not obsessed with his image. He did not worry about appearances. The irony is that only a small percentage of people in the world today have ever heard the name Caligula. Yet billions of people today bow their knees in worship of Jesus Christ. In the lyrics of the early Christian hymn:

9Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
10so that at the name of Jesus
   every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue should confess
   that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father
. (Phil. 2, NRSV)

The greatest of all became the servant of all, just as he instructed his followers: "Whoever would be greatest among you must be the servant of all." Whoever wants to be the leader of people must be the servant of people.

Jesus' idea of servant leadership has become popular in business circles in the last 25 years. The modern concept of Servant Leadership started with Robert Greenleaf, who published his essay, "The Servant as Leader" in 1970. The "servant leader" concept of business leadership prizes collaboration, trust, empathy, and the ethical use of power. The purpose of leadership is to better serve others not to increase our own power. The leader tries to help others develop their full potential. The servant leader concept applies to all aspects of our lives – home as well as work.
        Whether it is a mother running a business or a father washing dishes, servant leadership is strong leadership. When Jesus told his followers to humble themselves, he was not telling them to be wimps. He was not telling them to be spineless. Who among us could admire a coward? Jesus was no coward, and he would not want his followers to be
cowards either. Only a brave man or brave woman gives his or her life for something noble, something lasting.
       When Dave Maurer was about seven years old, a strange man moved into his neighborhood.  The man had a disfigured hand and a lame leg.  His physical differences caused quite a stir among the neighborhood children.  They came up with all kinds of stories about how he had injured his hand and leg.  At all costs, they tried to avoid their new neighbor.
       But one day, the lame man came by and invited the kids to his house. Not wanting to appear "chicken," Dave and his friends accepted. They were as scared as puppies when they walked into his house. They expected the lame man to pull out a monkey brain or electrodes or some other weird object. Instead, the man brought out some pictures to show the boys.  They were glossy photos of a dashing young Navy pilot posing in front of a shiny, silver jet.  He told them the story of his Navy career, and how it was cut short by a horrible crash landing during a storm.                                                                       From that day on, Dave reports, the neighborhood boys treated this man as a hero.  They brought their friends to see him.  And they never tired of his story.  As he writes, "The wounds and injuries we once shunned took on an entirely new dimension once we understood the story behind the scars." (Dave Maurer, Out on a Whim, Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2001, pp. 141-144.)
       They were the scars of a strong man who had made a heroic sacrifice. The same kind of sacrifice that Christ made on the cross of Calvary. Servant leadership is a call to sacrifice. It is a call to lay down something important--not for your own gain, but for the gain of all.
      Today, in this room, Christ is looking for people who will live strong, sacrificial lives. Christ is searching this congregation for people who will be servant leaders in our community, in our state, in our nation. Not weak people. Not spineless people. But people willing to live heroically and at the same time sacrificially.
       Here is your cross: Jesus is calling you to stand up and be counted for justice and righteousness. Jesus is calling you to do the decent thing, the loving thing, even when it might make you unpopular. Jesus is calling you to give, to share, to sacrifice--even though we live in a me-first society. Jesus is calling you to be a servant leader in a world where there are far too few heroes. Forget Caligula and Pontius Pilate. On this Palm Sunday we will heed Christ's call. We are strong enough to say "Yes" to Jesus Christ's call today. We will copy the servant leader in the Holy Week that lies ahead.       

Thanks be to God.                                                                                                                  

Amen.