The Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
Follow the Leader: A Sermon for July 7, 2024
The Episcopal Church of St. Martin
TEXT OF FULL 8am SERMON
We’ve probably all been hearing a lot about a crisis of leadership in our world today. People don’t trust leaders, and honestly, a lot of the time that makes sense to me. I’m just not sure how new it is. Leadership has never been easy.
In today’s Gospel we see people rejecting the leadership of Jesus. They take offense at him and then reject his message out of hand. They say it’s because of who he is and where he’s from. The people in Nazareth say they just can’t trust someone they have known since he was a child, or at least they can’t take him seriously. To them Jesus is a working stiff, a hometown boy who was never expected to amount to much, the son of a carpenter whose brothers and sisters are all perfectly unremarkable. They ask, essentially, “Who does he think he is?”
I’m generally perplexed by the response of the congregation that day. It might help some if we knew precisely what Jesus was preaching that day in the synagogue. In general, though, his message tends to be pretty simple: care for the poor, feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed, and heal the sick. Oh, and love. Love one another. Turn the other cheek. Pray for those who persecute you. That kind of thing.
It doesn’t sound controversial, on the face of it, but we know that in fact this message can be very threatening to people in power, and those who find it expedient to support them. The message of Jesus is, in a word, subversive. That can certainly be a challenge to those who are discerning whether to follow him or not.
And yet however much the people in Nazareth that day disliked Jesus, however unsettling they found his message, what I find hardest to understand is how they could discount not just his words but his actions. They admitted he had wisdom and power. They had apparently seen or heard about his ministry, his acts of healing and liberation, his exorcisms and miracles. And still that wasn’t enough. That has always puzzled me, because it’s so much easier to dismiss someone’s words than their actions. And Jesus’s actions are pretty remarkable.
This kind of kneejerk dismissiveness and disdain is all too familiar in our current political and cultural climate. If you’re lucky enough to be unfamiliar with this dynamic in your own life, just go to Facebook and follow one online argument to see exactly how this plays out: people on all sides talking past each other, assuming things about the morality and intelligence of someone because of their political persuasion, or a celebrity they follow, or a movie they like. The vitriol, the reactivity, the instant cancelling of another human being: these become such a habit that they spread to other areas of life, metastasizing and infecting our family dynamics, our neighborhoods, our schools, and of course our churches.
Last week I had very little time to attend to our nation’s current leadership crisis because I was busy attending to the controlled chaos that is the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. It was my first time at General Convention and there was certainly a lot of talk about leadership there, in large part because we were going to be choosing leaders for both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, basically the people who will shape the next decade or so of our church.
In addition, many of us have been pushing the church to show leadership by supporting climate change initiatives, telling the truth about injustice at home and abroad, and repenting of ways we have contributed to inequity and oppression. And I think that these efforts succeeded in many ways; nobody got everything they wanted, but most of us did not go home feeling that the work had been in vain.
When it comes to watching how that decision-making plays out on the ground, though—well, wow. It was a lesson for me in the sausage-making side of church politics. While I can’t quite claim to have witnessed shady deals in smoke-filled rooms, that doesn’t mean that the whole legislative process didn’t sometimes remind me of an episode of The West Wing, or even House of Cards. Democracy is messy, and democracy in a church that is hierarchical in structure and founded on the ideal of apostolic successions is arguably even messier and more complicated.
As expected, one of the highlights of General Convention was the election of our new presiding bishop, the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe, who will be in that leadership role for nine years, God willing. He is replacing the very charismatic and beloved Michael Curry, whose term ends later this year. I don’t know Sean Rowe personally, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about him in his 17 years as a bishop, including that he has a great ability to respond to change with adaptive leadership. Seeing him in person just after his election, as he spoke to House of Deputies, gave me a strong sense of his humility, focus, and generosity of spirit, which are also great attributes in a leader.
One of the things many of us have adored about Bishop Curry has been his emphasis on love as the heart of what it means to be followers of Jesus. His leadership style is charismatic and exuberant, and yet he has taught us a lot about following, not just about leading. People want to follow him because they feel confident that he is following Jesus. To my mind, this is the paradigmatic way to be a leader in the church—to be an exemplary follower, steeped in prayer and brimming with love.
These are early days yet for our Presiding Bishop-elect and it’s clear that his style is more subdued and straightlaced than Michael Curry’s. Some people may not feel as inspired by his words or his personality. But his first act as a leader was a bold one: as reported by the Episcopal News Service, he decided to “forego the traditional installation service in Washington National Cathedral in favor of a smaller, simpler ceremony in the chapel at the church’s New York headquarters.”
This is a great first step toward doing something about climate change rather than just talking about it. It also signals, more subtly, that he wants the church’s resources to not be so centralized and top heavy. Not everyone is happy with his decision, of course, but again, that is how it always is with leaders. I am excited to see how Bishop Rowe will continue down this new path he is charting, and will be praying for his health, his family, and his success.
Leadership has never been easy. We all have a responsibility to choose to either support the leaders we have or to work hard to raise up and even to become the leaders we want to see in the world. As Christians, we are all ultimately following Jesus—not in lockstep, but in the ways that are most authentic and lifegiving for whoever it is God made us to be. We can’t rely on leaders, secular or religious, to do all the work for us. We’re all baptized into ministry, ordained to be messengers of the Gospel, bearers of the Good News. When work together, taking our turns as leaders and followers, we know that the Spirit, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Amen.