Servant Leadership

29^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle B

IS 53:10-11

Heb 4:14-16

Mk 10:35-45

There is a principle of leadership that is popular today called servant leadership. Robert K. Greenleaf first coined the phrase in his 1970 essay, "The Servant as a Leader." As a servant leader, you're a "servant first" – you focus on the needs of others, especially team members, before you consider your own. It is a management style that, while it does have a kinder, more moral focus, is still ultimately intended to get better results from managing people. The focus is still on the bottom line, not necessarily the well being of the employees. There are entire institutes and training programs that people pay thousands of dollars to attend to learn the simple principle that people follow leaders who do not lord it over them, who put their interests ahead of their own.

I find it funny and a bit ironic that all the references I’ve read on servant leadership make it seem like it is a new innovation, almost revolutionary, when the idea goes back 2000 years. Jesus was the ultimate people leader, after all. He stated many times that the Son of Man came to serve, not to be serve. He said that the first among you must serve the rest. He washed his disciples’ feet at the last supper and told them to do the same to one another.

There’s a lot of talk these days in the Church about clericalism. Pope Francis keeps talking about it as being at the core of the crisis in the church today. He talks a lot about leaders being too interested in power and prestige, in enforcing strict rules on their people rather than humbly meeting their everyday needs with compassion and understanding. They need to get out of their nice houses and smell like the sheep. Francis thinks that clerics at all levels have lost sight of the type of servant leadership Jesus talks about in today’s gospel. This has led them to believe the rules don’t apply to them, that they can do horrendous acts without consequences, and that this attitude is what has been at the center of the scandals that surround us.

I have a bit of experience in this. It’s hard sometimes to remain humble as a cleric in the Catholic Church. People tend to put clerics on a pedestal. Luckily, permanent deacons aren’t thought of the same way priests and bishops are. I think many people are still trying to figure out who we are and what we do. But still, people defer to us. They call us by our titles and see us serving at the altar, preaching and working with the poor and the sick, and so we are given a certain level of respect that I didn’t get before I was ordained.

Priests are given even more deference. Maybe it comes from the respect that was drummed into us as children. When I was in grade school the pastor would come by our classroom once a week, and we all had to stand up when he entered the room and politely listen to him. Our parents spoke of the priests respectfully, and we all seemed to recognize that these guys in black were special in some way. Some seemed grave and serious, others had a sense of peace surrounding them. There were so few of them compared to us, they dressed differently, and at Mass, they were up there and we were down here. The awesome ability to transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ gave them an aura of the divine.

So, I think we the people have something to do with clericalism, too. It’s we who set up those pedestals oftentimes, and put our priests and bishops on them whether they like it or not. It can be hard to remain humble when people treat you as being special. Just like celebrities start to believe their own publicity, clerics can get caught up in the prestige and trappings of the vocation at the expense of smelling like the sheep.

The way the church is organized has a lot to do with the style of leadership priests have, I think. The pastor of the parish really has a heck of a lot of autonomy. He is the ultimate decision maker, the one with all the authority and responsibility. And just like in the business world, it is easy to become autocratic when given all that power. I think also the frustrations of leading a parish, trying to get things done through so many volunteers, many of whom seem to do nothing but complain, can lead to a more dictatorial style of leadership.

And it is even more difficult for the bishops. Bishops have all the authority and responsibility in the diocese. They are very visible, they preside at all the major liturgies and functions, they’re quoted in the press. And in most dioceses, the people rarely meet or spend time with their bishop outside of the confirmations he performs. We view them oftentimes more like politicians than shepherds, and sometimes they act like it, too.

I believe that most clerics feel called to servant leadership and truly strive to serve rather than dictate, but just like James and John in today’s gospel, we sometimes seek power rather than service.

Poor James and John, they go to Jesus asking for positions of power and they get suffering instead. They practically demand that Jesus give them the most prestigious positions among not just the apostles but all of humanity. What hubris. And instead Jesus gives them a choice. Can they accept the baptism of suffering and death that Jesus has accepted for himself? They have no idea what he is really referring to. They do not know what this baptism is, but they figure, if they say yes they’ll get what they want, so they agree. So Jesus says, ok, you’ve got it, but sorry, you don’t get the good stuff you asked for. You really aren’t as important as you think you are.

But then, if you think about it, Jesus did give them what they asked for, because he gave them the same thing he had. Jesus, the greatest servant of them all, was willing to give so totally of himself that he would take the sins of all humanity upon himself, and suffer and die to wipe them out. His total emptying of himself, accepting the ultimate humiliation of dying on a cross for the salvation of the world, actually made him the greatest person who ever lived. By accepting weakness he was made so powerful that he triumphed even over death itself. He was offering James and John that same power. By humbling themselves they would gain eternal life.

Jesus smacked James and John pretty hard, and their fellow apostles didn’t like their attitude much either. But he did it out of love. He used their arrogance as a chance to instruct them in how they should all behave. We are called to do the same with one another. It has been my experience that whenever I get a bit arrogant and self-important, God sends something my way to knock me down a peg or two. It may be the loss of some important position I was expecting to receive, or the failure of one of my initiatives. Many times it is one of you taking it to me, sometimes none too gently.

Clericalism isn’t just for clerics. The people can also be arrogant and condescending to their clerics and to one another. This group feels they know the really proper and true way to worship. That group thinks they know more theology than the priest or deacon, and they tell him so. Most don’t give the priest a thought other than when they see him on Sunday. They are quick to complain and gossip but rarely try to get to know him or ask him what his intent was behind what he said or did. When was the last time you thanked your priest for his dedication to your wellbeing and salvation? When was the last time you told him you were moved by his homily rather than write a nasty letter to the bishop about one you didn’t agree with? When was the last time you invited him over to your house for dinner to get to know him?

We are all called to be servants to one another. Just as our leaders are called to serve us, we are called to serve them. Not out of some misplaced awe of the hierarchy but out of love for them and appreciation for what they do. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every member of the church truly lived the life of a servant? Wouldn’t it be great if we could put aside all the power trips and prestige-seeking and condescension towards those we disagree with and just concentrate on modeling Jesus? What would the world be like if we could all forgive one another as we have been forgiven?

As St. Paul said, it is when I am weak that I am the strongest. The most influential and revered saints in history have been the most humble. And throughout our history, whenever the Church has been in crisis, that’s when we see our greatest saints. We just celebrated the feast of one of them, St. Francis of Assisi. As it says in the prayer attributed to him:

O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.