Leadership: Self-Giving Service
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 151
Jesus is giving a lesson about leadership and authority. He is telling us to claim no source of authority except God. Authority in the Church does not come from goodness, power, intellect, appointment by others, succession, longevity, or family. It may come through these things, but never from them. Authority is a gift from God, and is to be used in service.
God does not take lightly the abuse of power by those who are anointed to be servants of the people of God. Through Malachi, God promises to make their blessings into curses. He makes the priests contemptible and base before all the people. We even see this today, where the abuse of power by some clergy has brought contempt upon the whole Church. Jesus says it would be better to have a millstone put around your neck and be cast into the sea than to sin against one of his little ones.
That abuse of power is the problem in the first reading. When the Persian empire allowed the people of God to return to their homes, they were not allowed to appoint a descendant of David as their ruler, so priests assumed a leadership role. Godly leadership is self-giving in the service of others. Like the Pharisees in the Gospel, they were self-serving and self-promoting.
Christ is always self-giving and serving others. He says he did not come to be served, but to serve. He washes the feet of his Apostles. From his first miracle at the wedding in Cana until he ascends to heaven and sends his Holy Spirit, he is giving to us. He gives us his very flesh and blood as true food and true drink. His Eucharist is the new mana, a gift from God that we must bow down to receive, but that gives us life.
And his mother is the same. When the angel tells her she will give birth to the Messiah, she does not take this as something earned, or to be used for her own benefit. Her first action as mother of or Lord is to go into the hill country of Judea to serve her kinswoman Elizabeth. At Cana, she brings others joy by pointing them to Jesus, the source of all joy. At her apparitions, she assures us of her motherly love and constant intercession before the face of God. Saint Paul emulates her, sharing his very self with the Thessalonians, like a nursing mother gives of herself to her children.
And speaking of mothers, Jesus says that there is none born of women greater than John the Baptist, and what do we see from him? Not self-promotion. He is not on LinkedIn humble-bragging about how he’s the one foretold to make ready the way of the Lord. No, he says, “I must decrease, and he must increase.” He points everyone to Jesus.
Self-promotion is the work of the Devil. It’s real Satanism. Rarely is it explicit worship of a fallen angel or literal human sacrifice. It is always manifested in hatred of the person and work of Christ, in self-worship, and in using others to benefit oneself.
True leadership, Godly leadership, is self-giving in the service of others.
Christ is our master. Christ is the one who judges us. It doesn’t do any good to pursue the favor of others if we lose the favor of Christ. Our master says “the greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
These instructions have special significance for those called to positions of leadership in the church, society, and the family, but they apply to everyone.
We can all be a leader, even with no one following. God desires to exalt each of us to the pinnacle of holy sainthood, and the path to glory is to serve like the Blessed Virgin and John, by pointing others to Christ. It is to be willing, and even to seek to be humble – because humility is truth, and the truth is a person, who is Christ. To the degree we seek to become humble, we seek to become Christ, who is always self-giving in the service of others.
