Servant leadership is not command and control, nor does it mean to “lead from behind.” Good leaders can generate leadership in others. Greenleaf proposed that a true servant leader would enable followers to "grow as persons" and "while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants."1
e.g., A supervisor and a nurse did a re-enactment when a patient was going to have an operation on her thumbs the following day. The patient said they didn't work properly, and slowly pulled back her sleeves to show the very limited movement of both of her thumbs—together with the deep, thick scars which covered her arms and hands. The patient said that she had burned herself on purpose and had been in a psychiatric hospital before.
For training purposes, the supervisor suddenly handed the nurse a wine glass that happened to be on a nearby shelf. The "director" asked the nurse to "lose" her thumbs by tucking them into her palms.
It was uncomfortable and difficult to hold the glass.
The nurse said, “I was amazed how difficult it was to have any grip and to hold the glass securely or with any stability, quite apart from trying to drink from it: and it soon became very painful. I explained this to the group and that I wanted to have someone take the glass away from me. However, the supervisor encouraged me to stay with it for a bit longer... Until it became almost unbearable and then the supervisor said, "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?"
I immediately "heard" the words of Jesus in Mark's gospel: the Scriptures were opened to me.
The nurse was able to effectively direct the care for the patient and became a better leader in the process. 2
This is the cup of sacrifice that God requires to help me to serve others in a new spirit so that others can really be heard and understood by me and can say that I had "been there with them" which makes all the difference. 3
To drink the cup is based on family dining. The head of a family poured out in cups how much each person at the table is to drink. E.g., historically, the daily ration established by Congress for the Navy included "one half-pint of distilled spirits," "or in lieu thereof, one quart of beer." Today, U.S. Navy ships are bone-dry.
The cup is a metaphor for one’s portion in life, what one has been given to drink. It can sometimes symbolize happiness, for example, the overflowing cup of Psalm 25 and the cup of salvation in Psalm 116:13 or it can be a cup of suffering as Jesus teaches which was needed to correct the Jewish people’s expectation that the Messiah would only be a triumphant victor, but not that he would also enduring the glory of the cross.
We all must drink from the chalice of self-sacrifice, renouncing our own illicit desires, our evil inclinations, or our own exaggerated desire for comfort, while at the same time embracing what sacrifices life asks of us, whether material or physical or moral, social or spiritual.
To drink the cup means can you accept the destiny intended for you by the Father; to be baptized in this mission adds a decree of intensity. -The Priest magazine, Sept. 2024, pg. 92
Once you accept the cup. Then your path to glory is by your service.
e.g., Mark 10:45 from our Gospel, “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." This example is so important that it is included as part of the homily in the Roman Catholic rite for the ordination of a priest.
The ransom is a payment of a debt that we are unable to pay on our own. Jesus sells himself as a servant to liberate us from bondage.
The Catechism says, “The Eucharist commits us to the poor” (CCC §1397), for “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17, cited in CCC §1396).
This means that the Church is formed in and by a love that is intrinsically ordered to service, that is, the self-emptying sacrifice of Christ, who took the form of a servant and was obedient in that service to the point of death on the Cross. The Eucharist therefore creates what Benedict XVI calls a “sacramental mysticism” which is irreducibly also a “social mysticism”:
This sacramental “mysticism” is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants. As Saint Paul says, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17). Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own (God is Love, §14). 4
James and John asked to sit at the right and left of Jesus in Christ’s glory, because Jesus was popular: great speeches, and healings, lots of fans. It was so easy to be caught up in all this greatness. They said yes to drinking the cup without knowing all that this entails.
Then they caught Jesus’ dream—
the dream of bringing a lost world to God. They saw Jesus lay down his life in order to make this dream a reality. If they were going to drink of his cup, they knew they must be willing to be willing to make such a sacrifice themselves. 5
The path to glory is by service.
1. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader, pg. 7
2. Practical Theology, January 1, 2009, Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?: A Reflection on the Significance of Pastoral Supervision in Health Care Chaplaincy, by
Deborah Ford.
3. Practical Theology, Deborah Ford.
4. John Cavadini, McGrath Institute for Church Life, Notre Dame University.
5. King Duncan, Your Dreams Are Too Small, Sermons.com
