"Moral Leadership" | Liz Harlan-Ferlo | October 20, 2024

My youngest child started preschool this year. The preschool is in a beautiful 1928 brick building constructed specifically for children, and near its entrance is a wide and gracious carpeted staircase with handrails at both child and adult level. Every afternoon, I pick my daughter up and we wind through the hallways full of children's art.

At the staircase though, I brace for her exclamation as we begin to descend– especially if I dare to step in front of her:

"I'm the leader. No mama, I'm the leader!"

Being the leader is sacred to the heart of every three-year-old. They want to be in charge, and of course, control-seeking makes sense in the life of a toddler, when there is very little else in the world that they do control. A little older, and she'll get her chance in another classroom to be the line leader. Maybe you remember that role: being the first, the one that others follow. What more heady feeling is there than that?

Being the leader is kid-speak for being the most powerful.

Leadership has been the topic of our Sunday morning forums at 9:00 for the past few weeks. We invited Portland mayoral candidates to reflect with us on moral leadership and how it affects their plans for governing the city. Many of them have spoken about compassion and about collaboration. They've told stories of family members who shaped them, and sometimes even about church, and we have sat in the Morrison Room or over zoom and scrutinized them.

Are they the person who should have power? Are they the perfect leader?

It is tempting to want a highly-polished person or a person who looks like us, someone who has a forceful and highly-principled stance, someone with a willingness to come in and just take over. We are highly suspicious of their connections to the wrong kinds of people, their excessive parking tickets, or their baggage of business speak.

What kind of leader might they be?

The gospel story today is also about leadership and about power. Disciples James and John are looking for a guarantee. They say to Jesus, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." Or as a kid might say: "I want to ask you something, and you can't say no. Promise not to say no."

I imagine Jesus in this moment as kind of a weary parent. He doesn't say, "How dare you speak to me like that?" He asks, "What is it that you want me to do for you?"

He does that because he loves them. John and James are some of his first disciples, ones who has been there through it all. Along with Peter, they are effectively Jesus's inner circle.

Peter, James, and John: that's who's present when Jesus tells the synagogue leader's daughter, "Little girl, get up," and she rises, healed from her deathbed. Everyone else has to stay outside that room, but Peter, James, and John get to come in and see the miraculous happen. On the mountain of the Transfiguration, it is Peter, James, and John who witness the blaze of light, and they will be the ones Jesus takes into the Garden of Gethsemane to keep him company before his arrest.

So what is it exactly that James and John are asking for? Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory. Sitting at the right hand is a familiar image to readers and listeners of the Bible. It is scripture-speak, that it indicates great honor and power. Power, another way of saying, "I'm the leader."

James and John want reassurance. They want to know that their sacrifices, which have been considerable, will be worth it, that when Jesus's ship comes in, they too will share in the treasure.

But as he usually does, Jesus flips everything on its head. Jesus's leadership is a great reversal: he arrived into the world as a weak baby, not a triumphal sovereign. He breaks Sabbath laws, he advocates clowning when faced with brutal oppression, and he is about to allow the violent occupying government to subject him to a humiliating and brutal death.

Jesus doesn't say no to James and John, not exactly. He responds that they will have power like him, but his power is in the baptism and the cup, by which he means suffering and a martyr's death. Likely, this is not what they were hoping for when they ask the question.

Now this passage in Mark is grouped with ones we've been hearing the last few Sundays, because Jesus in them is trying to get his followers to understand what to expect, to understand how the kingdom of God and how his own leadership, his kingship, is different.

He says, "You know that among the Gentiles, those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants over them, but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all." That is not the kind of slogan that works well on a yard sign.

Like James and John, we too yearn for reassurance from our leaders, and often we approach it like a transaction. If I give you my vote or, even more so, my money, what will you do for me and my people in return? How will I get my share of your power?

But this is not how God works, and it's not how the kingdom of God works. Righteous leadership, moral leadership, is not about that kind of exchange. It is about shared flourishing, it is about trust, it is a covenant made with love at its core. It is about shared values in the bedrock, even if the strategies that grow up from the soil are different than what we ourselves might have thought to plant.

In the next few weeks, you will hear over and over that a vote has precious value, and yes, it does– but a vote is not sacred, not in a way we understand sacredness here.

A vote is of the world, it is not of God: and often, we regard a vote as the ending of a relationship that we have evaluated the options and decided whose approaches we prefer. And after we do our little task, then the leader must well do the rest of the stuff.

But a vote is actually the beginning of a shared work together. As one of our forum visitors pointed out, Portlanders can tend toward a culture of ideological purity. Then we feel we must somehow suss out who the most righteous person is, who most aligns with our very being, and if we don't, we will somehow have betrayed ourselves.

The amount of pressure this puts on our choices can blind us to the simplest aspect: who is it that is going in the direction we want to go?

We don't need to choose a leader who exactly mirrors our personal moral vision.

We don't need to choose a leader who exactly mirrors our personal moral vision, because we already have one.

When we prayed this morning's collect, we named our task: preserve, oh God, your works of mercy, that thy church (that's us) may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of thy name.

That is to say, through Jesus's example, it is the consistent continuing echo of God's works of mercy that we are called to. Not just voting for works of mercy, or even voting for those we know recognize them, but acting them over and over. Doing the dirty fingernails work of love.

So what does that mean specifically?

Acts of mercy, works of mercy: what is the platform?

I was hungry, and you gave me food.

I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink.

I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.

I was naked, and you gave me clothing.

I was sick, and you took care of me.

I was in prison, and you visited me.

We have a leader with deep moral vision.

Now we have to follow him. Amen.