Easter 4

Who were the most outstanding leaders in the 20^th century?

Time magazine did a series of profiles some time ago on the men and women who it considered to qualify for this title. Allowing for some American bias, I wonder if we would all guess their top 20?

Winston Churchill was there, and FD Roosevelt – two of the leaders who led the allies to victory in WWII. There is also Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II. Margaret Thatcher is in, and also Mikhail Gorbachev.

There are also some who seem to come from the dark side of leadership- Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler.

(in case you were counting, that is only 12- come back to me afterwards with your guesses for the other 8!).

We need leaders for purely practical reasons- we delegate the running of our governments or other organisations to them- we have just appointed one to lead the new joint benefice. But great ones do a lot more for us- they inspire, they motivate, they somehow make us see what it means to be ‘British’, say, or perhaps- who knows? ‘Christians in the Cheddar Valley’. They help us to define who we are. In the past year, no-one has demonstrated that more forcefully than the new American president. Barrack Obama won the US election partly because he gave Americans a new vision of themselves, which inspired and united them.

But of course leaders are also limited. Even the best may be vain; they are occasionally mistaken; they are blind to faults in their own cause. They ultimately disappoint us. So why do we so easily believe in each successive secular Messiah? Barrack Obama cannot live up to the expectations he has provoked. And yet part of us still hopes against hope that he can, and will.

Our expectations of these leaders come from our yearning to be led- to be taken to the places where we will be safe and our deepest wants will be satisfied. And in the end, this need cannot be met by any human leader.

In our Gospel this morning Jesus uses one of the great images of God’s leadership- the Good Shepherd. It was a familiar one to his hearers- they would have all known what we call psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet shall I fear no evil… surely goodness and mercy will follow me, all the days of my life”. These are perhaps some of the most beautiful words to be spoken about God’s relationship to his people.

We listen to the voice of God because it speaks truthfully to our deepest need. It tells us that we are loved, that at some deep spiritual level we are safe. To be Christian is to hear this voice through the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ- although there are ‘other flocks’ who come to God in other ways. We are indeed the sheep, who are learning to recognise and follow His voice to find fullness of life.

But if we stop there, we have only grasped the half of it. In the epistle this morning, John writes- “the Son of God laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for one another”.

This is altogether more challenging! This is to see Jesus not just as a leader, perhaps one among others, but also as example for all leaders- and for us. Let us look at what he says more carefully.

When Jesus says ‘I am the good shepherd’, his audience is the Pharisees, one of the groups that stand in the Gospels for the mis-leading of the Jewish people. And he contrasts the good shepherd with the hired hand, and in a previous passage even more strongly with a sheep-stealer (‘all who have come before me were thieves and robbers’). His message to contemporary Jewish leaders is harsh- you are not representing God’s leadership to his people. I am.

Why do people lead others? What is their motivation?

Some do it simply because it is a job they are paid to do. But this is really a form of self-interest- we would call such people managers rather than leaders. You don’t rely on a manager to stand at his post when the money runs out.

Others lead because they can see ways of turning it to their advantage, either to enrich themselves, or to satisfy their own egos. These are the sheep-stealers. Some of those leaders we mentioned earlier were definitely in this category- some stole a whole nation. This was perhaps one of the temptations of Jesus, when the devil shows him the world and says ‘all this is yours if you fall down and worship me’.

But there is another motive for leadership- and that is compassion. In Matthew’s Gospel we are told ‘when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’. Leadership inspired by God is for the sake of the led. And Jesus drove this message home repeatedly with his disciples, urging that ‘the first shall be last, and the last first’, illustrating this by himself washing his disciples’ feet.

How well do the ‘great’ leaders measure up to this standard? Well having recently read his biography, Mahatma Gandhi is a personal favourite of mine. He is remembered here as one who presented himself at Buckingham Palace in a loincloth, and led non-violent protests against British Rule in India.

But in India he is still a kind of saint. He captured the hearts of ordinary Indian people by examples of self-sacrificing leadership.

Gandhi’s fight for ‘untouchables’ is just one illustration of his style of leadership.

Traditionally in Hindu society there has been a group known as dalits, or untouchables- no caste Hindu may touch them, or touch anything they have touched, without becoming polluted. They do the dirty jobs that no caste Hindu will do, and live apart from them.

From the 1920s Gandhi had become famous in India, but lived in a commune or ashram, in very primitive conditions. One year he admitted an untouchable family to the ashram. The Hindus were in uproar. Gandhi’s solution, as the leader of the community, was personally to take on the job of cleaning the ashram’s latrines- in so doing, himself becoming, technically, an untouchable. He shamed fellow Hindus to follow his example- and the untouchables were accepted.

You may still be thinking, really this leadership idea only applies to special people! But I don’t think this is true. We all take responsibility for others at some time or another. These others may be children, or patients, or old folk. They may indeed be animals. And where some other person or creature is dependent on us for their wellbeing, this can teach us something of the nature of God’s love for us. If we serve those dependent on us with compassion, we will in some sense represent God to them, as Christ represents God to us.

And where else can we expect to find Christ, except in other people?

Easter 4

Amen