On this solemnity of Peter and Paul we celebrate the gift of leadership in our church. As we celebrate, we remember that leadership in the Christian community must be in service to the love we see and recognize in Jesus. Christian leadership is a servant leadership. To lead as Jesus is to serve as Jesus.
Today I don't want in any way to neglect St. Peter but I do want to emphasize St. Paul. Today begins "The Year of Paul". Pope Benedict has asked us to take a full year - to get re-acquainted with Paul, the man who, next to Jesus, is the most prominent person in the New Testament. Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 13 are letters attributed to Paul. More than half of the Acts of the Apostles is devoted to Paul's conversion and his missionary journeys to spread the gospel of Jesus. Paul has much to teach us about being a Christian leader.
When we think about leadership, a whole field of words and ideas come to mind - like "power", "authority", "hierarchy". Whether in the church or secular state, in the home or workplace, a leader needs power, authority and their practical arrangement in some kind of hierarchy to do the work of leadership for a community. Even the servant-leader needs them to do service for others.
In the gospels Jesus shows us a style of leadership that re-defines power, authority and hierarchy. We get a glimpse of that when we look at the basic training he gave the apostles as future leaders in the new community he wanted to establish. He sends them out, often in pairs, and tells them: "Take nothing for your journey. Neither staff nor haversack nor bread nor money. Let none of you take a spare tunic." [Lk 9, 3] He is sending these future leaders into a situation where success is questionable and vulnerability is certain - where they will have to learn to rely on other people and on God. A different kind of leadership is being modeled here - where the leader's power, authority and hierarchy come from vulnerability and practiced interdependence.
The gospels show pretty clearly that the apostles flunked basic training. Luke tells us that even at the Last Supper they start to fight about who's the greatest among them. Jesus patiently continues with their training. He says to them: "… who is greater - the one who eats at table or the one who serves the meal? Is it not the one being served the meal at the table? But I am among you as one who serves." [Lk 22. 25-27] Jesus claims for himself all the authority, power and hierarchy of a table-waiter! A different kind of leadership is at work here.
I mentioned Paul as a Christian leader. Yet he often had prickly relationships with the communities he was trying to lead. He had an especially difficult time with the Christians in Corinth who challenged him. "Who are you, Paul, to tell us how to live like disciples?" Listen to Paul's response. He rises above any sense of personal insult and looks to what God is doing in the lives of these Christians, even as they are challenging him. Paul writes to them: "…you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." [2 Cor 3, 3] This is a leader who does not insist on himself - a leader who actually turns the other cheek and works hard toward reconciliation. We all have much to learn from Paul during this year, including how to be Christian leaders.
We have much to celebrate as we consider the kind of leaders God raises up in our church, in our homes and communities. Let us always pray for our leaders, called to lead and serve as Jesus. And may we also live lives worthy of Paul's description of us: "you are a letter from Christ … written with the Spirit of the living God … on tablets of human hearts." God is writing His life on to our lives.
