True Leadership Series

2nd Sunday of Advent Cycle C

“Lead, or follow, or get out of the way.” This bulldozer philosophy of leadership sat prominently on the desk of sports-and-media maven Ted Turner. Almost a century earlier, another notorious anti-Catholic, Havelock Ellis, wrote a sneering thought about leadership: “to be a leader of men, one must turn one’s back on men.” As the culture of power and death sees it today, leaders have to be tyrants without hearts or they can’t get anything done.

The primary task of young men and women is to learn how to relate to others. But today they can easily get the idea that leadership is attained through manipulating others or buying votes, and that leadership is employed through the raw exercise of power over others. For a long time we the United States has been known as the most powerful nation on earth. But this nation seem to make progress only when it exercises its military muscle: twice in the Persian Gulf, multiple times in the Balkans, and off and on in Africa and other areas of the world. The phrase “negotiations failed” has become a commonplace, and the United Nations a byword for long-winded and ineffective speeches and resolutions. Can we blame the young if they are getting the idea that might makes right?

These same young people, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court, now study in a government school system in which the faculty must write their lesson plans with extreme caution. They have to watch their words when teaching the interconnections of religions and churches with the foundation, governance and history of our nation. Most principles of leadership and government are derived from the Bible and religious tradition. But now, stripped of their divine source, principles like faithfulness, compassion, chastity, modesty, temperance and justice are held by those in control to be sectarian opinions being swept away in the name of tolerance and progress. Our children and grandchildren now hear that when we oppose evil and abusive actions, quoting the Scriptures or the Fathers of the Church, we can be accused of hate speech. They see the successful leader not as a teller of truth, but as a master of verbal spin, as a manipulator of reality. Leaders who stand up for unchanging principles of right and wrong are reviled in the secular press, and are put down, defeated, even evicted from their public offices.

Today’s Gospel reminds us that weak, cowardly and conniving leaders are not inventions of the 21st century. Look at the political and religious authorities in Luke’s account –Tiberius, Herod, Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas. Every one was corrupt and tyrannical. Who was the exception? A man with no real power: John, son of Zechariah, John the Baptist, preacher of the unspun truth. “Repent,” he cried, “and be baptized to show your willingness to reform.”

True leadership begins with an unvarnished understanding of and proclamation of the truth. And the truth is this: if we place any leader before God, we are lost. Any leader who does not adhere to the moral truths engraved in every human heart, any leader who embraces or tolerates injustice and avoids promoting goodness, no matter what the polls say, no matter what the editorials say, is leading us like lemmings over a cliff. Only God can lead us with joy in the light of His glory. Only mercy and righteousness characterize His ways, and the ways of leaders worth following.

Let me share with you an action plan that will make you, in St. Paul’s words, “partners in the Gospel.” First, let’s all examine our consciences to find out if we have the mind of Christ, or if we have sold our convictions out to political correctness. Are we willing to accept the murder of unborn babies “in certain circumstances?” If so, we are not thinking and voting as Christ would. Do we believe that sexually abusive acts between so-called “consenting adults” are not damaging to those adults and the community as a whole? Are we willing to accept those who delude themselves that this chronic sexual abuse is love, that it is worthy of being ennobled as marriage? If so, we are turning our backs on justice, and on Christ our Leader. Do we accept the glib lie that the poor are just lazy, and that they do not have a human right to adequate health care, housing, clothes and food? How does that square with Christ our Leader, who will judge us on how we care for the poor and marginalized?

We must put on the mind of Christ before we can lead others.

Second, let’s put our mouth where our mind is. When the talk around the office cooler gets dirty and abusive or gossipy, don’t participate, and don’t walk away. Ask your co-workers if they’d like their sons and daughters to hear them in such conversation. Challenge them to consider if they’d invite Jesus into that conversation. Because when they expect you, a child of God, to put up with it, or join in it, they are asking Jesus to validate their injustices and verbal violence.