Leadership in the Age
Grace, mercy and
peace be unto you from God who is Creator, Christ and Comforter. Amen
I have been so thrilled with the Narrative Lectionary,
having longer readings from the main lesson of the day…until this Sunday! Ugh! There
really isn’t much narrative to go on…and so…what to do?
Well, it never hurts to be reminded of context! Jesus has in been in Jerusalem several days after
his Triumphal entry – which we will read and remember next week on Palm
Sunday. Jesus, in Jerusalem during his
last week of life, keeps going to the Temple to pray, to teach, to worship as
any Rabbi of his age would do. We are in
the preparation days for the Passover in this text, and everyone who can make
it is journeying to Jerusalem, to celebrate that historical moment when God
opened the Sea for Moses – and their ancestors escaped from slavery in Egypt –
by walking on dry ground to freedom!
We’ve already seen in Mark Chapters 11 and 12, that Jesus
has had encounters with all of the religious leadership: the chief priests, the elders, the Scribes, the
Herodians, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees – and has been able to show them
that he truly is one sent from God to bring about a new understanding of the
Kingdom of God!
And, just what is this understanding? God is love and God sees and welcomes
everyone into God’s love. There is no
hierarchy – the rich are the same as the poor in God’s eyes of love. Those who have much are to use what they
have to care for the lost, the least, the last and the little.
This is radical stuff Jesus is teaching. And he not only teaches, he feeds people… and
gives them…not only physical food, but spiritual food as well…making body, mind
and spirit whole. He heals people of
diseases and casts out demons. He sent
his disciples to do the same! Huge
crowds are following him – for as many reasons as we can imagine!
And, Jesus is no dummy.
He sees what is going on as he teaches in the Temple and encountered
those in authority. They are threatened,
frightened, and angry.
And we’ve seen what happens when people get threatened,
frightened and angry just this past week in the news. People get hurt. People die.
We know that is just what those leaders are planning, plotting
and scheming to do…to get Jesus killed.
He tries, once again, to warn the Disciples and followers
that his final days are coming…and no matter how impressive the stones are of
the Temple, one day, they too will be disrupted and the Temple will be no
more. Bad things are going to
happen. People will be afraid and
anxiety will go through the roof.
Sound familiar?
As I was thinking about this text and the upcoming two
Sundays of Palm Sunday and Easter, and as I have been watching the political
process here in the US, I can’t help but hear Jesus, “Keep alert, Keep awake,
Keep alert!” as something we should be doing as well.
We hear people making all kinds of big promises – and people
making fun of each other in a political arena.
We are scared as a country.
We get sensationalist news reports and are on high alert for
terrorists. We are buying guns to arm
ourselves against the “bad guys,” whoever they may be.
Our country’s anxiety is high – so high that we, as
individuals and as a nation, aren’t thinking with the whole brain we have been given. We cower in fear behind locked doors. We don’t know our neighbors. We stick to people we know and refuse to get
to know others who are not like us.
We are in a societal regression. Rabbi Edwin Friedman from his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of
the Quick Fix shows five signs of societal and family systems regression
as:
1) Reactivity: the vicious cycle of intense reactions of
each member to events and to one another …and in American society today an
intense quickness to interfere in another’s self-expression, to overreact to
any perceived hurt, to take all disagreement too seriously, and to brand the
opposition with ad hominem personal epithets. . . this hardens hearts and
leaves little room for forgiveness or balanced accommodation. (64-65) …there is
a lack of playfulness all around.
2) Herding: in chronically anxious America [we experience] the effect of…adaptation to the least mature, to those who are most unwilling to take responsibility for their own emotional being and destiny. Its influence on leaders is several-fold. It discourages them from expressing “politically incorrect” opinions and encourages them to play it safe generally; it undermines excellence by encouraging society to organize around its most dysfunctional elements; it forces leaders to engage in countless arguments that are dilatory (negligent); and it makes it more difficult for leaders to be clear, much less decisive. (70)
3) Blame displacement: an emotional state in which [society] focus(es) on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny.
4) A quick-fix mentality: a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change…the desire for a quick fix throughout the greater American family evidences a search for certainty, a penchant for easy answers, an avoidance of the struggles that go into growth, and an unwillingness to accept the short-term acute pain that one must experience in order to reduce chronic anxiety. (87)
5) Lack of well-differentiated leadership: a failure of
nerve that both stems from and contributes to the first four…The major
regressive effects on leadership of chronic anxiety…in the greater American
family are these:
Leaders lack the distance to think out their vision clearly.
Leaders are led hither and yon by crisis after crisis.
Leaders are reluctant to take well-defined stands, if they have any convictions at all.
Leaders are selected who lack the maturity and sense of self to deal with sabotage.
These are in stark contrast to the major principles of leadership mentioned earlier that were characteristic of the great Renaissance explorers, (and before them, to Jesus – even in the light of his immanent death).
The capacity to separate oneself from surrounding emotional processes;
The capacity to obtain clarity about one’s principles and vision;
The willing to be exposed and to be vulnerable;
Persistence in the face of inertial resistance; and
Self-regulation in the face of reactive sabotage.
Leaders lack the distance to think out their vision clearly.
Leaders are led hither and yon by crisis after crisis.
Leaders are reluctant to take well-defined stands, if they have any convictions at all.
Leaders are selected who lack the maturity and sense of self to deal with sabotage.
These are in stark contrast to the major principles of leadership mentioned earlier that were characteristic of the great Renaissance explorers, (and before them, to Jesus – even in the light of his immanent death).
The capacity to separate oneself from surrounding emotional processes;
The capacity to obtain clarity about one’s principles and vision;
The willing to be exposed and to be vulnerable;
Persistence in the face of inertial resistance; and
Self-regulation in the face of reactive sabotage.
It’s not easy today to be a person who follows Jesus – there
is so much out there that wants to pull us from his message of love and
acceptance. He was able to keep to God’s
plan for himself and our world because he stayed centered in God and focused on
his mission to share God’s love for everyone!
So must we, or we will be blown about by every wind of doctrine…scared
by every war and rumor of war…frightened to share God’s love with the world…and
forget
Who we are as God’s beloved children and Whose we are as
those saved by grace and What we are to do; which is to: share God’s love with
the world, stay focused by worship, prayer, and study, stay alert as members of
the body of Christ, and be generous because of God’s amazing generosity to
us!
It’s a lot, dear sisters and brothers! Remember!
We are never alone! Jesus is with
us!
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen
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