Christ, the Servant Leader

This weekend we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, observed on the last

Sunday of each liturgical year. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 with his

encyclical Quas primas (“In the first”) to respond to growing secularism and

atheism of his day. He recognized that attempting to “thrust Jesus Christ and his

holy law” out of public life would result in continuing discord among people and

nations. This solemnity reminds us that while governments come and go, Christ

reigns as King forever.

It seems to me that it also reminds us that while we seem to progress as human

people, there is always more to do to bring others along. The very familiar Gospel

today, Matthew 25 gives us some concrete examples how.

I’m not sure about you but whenever I read or hear that Gospel, I hear in my head

the words of that song, Whatsoever you do … to the least of my people, that you

do unto me. It’s hard to get that song out of your head when you hear it … and

perhaps that’s the point. The catchy melody reminds us that in every day we can

respond to those around us, and by doing so we respond to Christ. In those

moments we have the simultaneous opportunity to be both leader and follower …

in other words, a servant leader.

All professing Christians agree that a Christian leader should be a servant leader.

Jesus couldn’t be clearer:

The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority

over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the

greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who

serves. (Luke 22:25–26)

We know that there’s not always agreement on how servant leadership should

look in each situation. Sometimes servant leaders wash others’ feet, so to speak,

but other times they rebuke, and even discipline. Sometimes they serve at their

own expense, but other times they issue strong imperatives, but all in the spirit of

following Christ.

We also know that there are other factors that muddy the waters for us in aspiring

to be better servant leaders. To begin with, all of us are sinners, which means

even at the height of our maturity, we will still be defective servants. I can still

vividly see the first moments of Pope Francis’ pontificate when he was asked who

is Jorge Mario Bergoglio? And he responds, I am a sinner. This is the most accurate

definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner the Pope said.

Add to this the fact that most of us have not yet reached the height of our

spiritual maturity.

Add to this the fact that different temperaments, experiences, gifts, and callings

influence both how we tend to serve, and how we tend to perceive that

leadership.

So, determining whether or we are acting from a heart of Christlike service

requires charitable, patient, humble discernment. It’s not simple and it’s a lifetime

process. There’s no one-size-fits-all servant leader description. The needs and

contexts in our community and in the wider church are vast and varied and

require many kinds of leaders and gifts. It is natural that each of us is drawn to

certain kinds of leaders but remember that our preferences can be unreliable and

even uncharitable standards at times.

The readings in the days of November have focused our thoughts on the end

times … that is, getting ready to meet the Lord. And the Gospel today is poignant:

What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' And

these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

So, in the days, weeks, months, or years that we have left on this earth, in this life,

let’s recommit on this last day of our liturgical year, to work harder at being better

servant leaders. And while there are many ways, here are a few to consider:

1. A servant leader seeks the glory of the Master.

And our Master is not our reputation or our ministry constituency; it is God. A

Christlike leader is a follower of Christ and demonstrates over time that Christ —

not public approval, position, or financial security — has our primary loyalty. How

can we better seek the glory of God in our life?

2. A servant leader sacrificially seeks the highest joy of those s/he serves.

Whatever our temperament, gift mix, capacities, or sphere of influence, the

servant leader will make necessary sacrifices to pursue people’s “progress and joy

in the faith,” which results in the greater glory of God. What sacrifices can we

make to help others seek the highest joy in their life?

3. A servant leader will forgo his/her rights rather than obscure the Gospel.

Saint Paul said it this way in Corinthians: I have made myself a servant to all, that I

might win more of them. What did this mean for him? It meant sometimes he

abstained from certain foods and drinks, or refused financial support from those

he served, or worked with his own hands to provide for himself, or went hungry,

or dressed poorly, or was beaten, or was homeless, or endured disrespect inside

and outside the church. And he decided not to marry. This was all before he was

martyred. Paul’s servant bar may have been set extraordinarily high, but servant

leaders will yield their rights if they believe more will be won to Christ as a result.

What are we willing to forego for the sake of Christ and the Gospel?

4. A servant leader is not preoccupied with personal visibility and recognition.

Like John the Baptist, a servant leader sees himself as a “friend of the

Bridegroom”, and is not preoccupied with the visibility of his/her own role. The

servant leader doesn’t view those with less visible roles as less significant, nor

does s/he covet more visible roles as more significant. The servant leader seeks to

steward the role s/he’s received as best as possible, and gladly leaves the role

assignments to God. Are we preoccupied with personal visibility and

recognition?

5. A servant leader anticipates and graciously accepts the time for his/her

decrease.

All leaders serve only for a season. Some seasons are long, some short; some are

abundant, some lean; some are recorded and recalled, most are not. But all

seasons end. When John the Baptist recognized the ending of his season, he said,

therefore my joy is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.

Sometimes a leader is the first to recognize his/her season’s end, sometimes

others recognize it first, and sometimes God lets a season end unjustly for

purposes a leader can’t understand at the time. But a servant leader graciously

yields the role for the good of Christ’s cause, because his/her identity and trust

are not in his/her calling, but in Christ.

Honestly, no earthly Christian leader is the perfect incarnation of these five

fundamental marks of servanthood. Jesus alone bears that distinction. Most of us

are imperfect servants trying to the best of our ability to be faithful.

Perhaps that’s our promise today – to God and to one another – to take some

time to reflect on our own servant leadership – and to use all that we have each

day being better at it!

RSM

Corporal Works of Mercy Fall 2023 Homily Series: Sheltering the Homeless

I bet that at least one copy of the Bible may be found in almost every household in the United States and some other countries too. The Bible may be inscribed with gold lettering onto a leather-like cover, with gold leaf adorning the edge of each page or it may be just a very simply produced book. Whatever the format, it’s an outward display of the reverence with which Christians hold what’s inside—God’s very Word. Scripture has authority over all people, but believers are those who freely acknowledge and submit to its authority and try their best to follow its teachings.

Our Catholic faith tells us that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and as such, it is a Catholic Christian’s ultimate authority. Because it is inspired truth, we search the Scriptures for all wisdom as it teaches us how to live an obedient life in sync with the example of Jesus himself.

Knowing God gave us the Scriptures, we are called to yield to its authority. The Bible’s authority and inerrancy form part of our Christian doctrine, along with our sacred tradition and the teaching of the magisterium. Scripture is how God speaks to us today and in the absence of the physical Jesus, we try our best to obey His commands through it.

The Gospel today seems to suggest that the parable of the two sons is very handy as a moral tale. However, as it is given, Matthew’s Jesus is not just using the parable as a nice moral tale that parents can employ one day to make their kids feel guilty for not taking out the trash or making their beds. Within the context, the parable is about authority and how one ultimately responds to it.

The distinction between the two brothers turns on action versus word. Jesus and his adversaries agree that only one son does the will of the father, the son who says “no,” but goes nonetheless into the vineyard to work. Actions speak louder than words.

Jesus uses this exchange to expose what the leaders of his day really thought about John. The chief priests’ and elders’ failure to believe and respond to John reveals the truth about where they stood, and thus which brother they actually represent.

Jesus’ authority, in contrast, is affirmed by the integrity of his words and actions, as well as by its outcomes: gathering and restoration, healing and cleansing, release from demonic powers, restored sight, table fellowship with sinners, and preservation of the least ones — all examples of the “fruit” of repentance.

Apparently, “believing” entails making a decision about what kind of power is legitimate, Jesus’ power or that of the Judean leaders. Only Jesus manifests a form of power that requires us to change our minds about the source, nature, and fruit of true power.

This weekend we continue our Fall preaching series … the corporal works of mercy and focus on our fourth theme: sheltering the homeless.

We know that the corporal works of mercy are charitable deeds that provide for the bodily needs of others, and standing at the top of the list of critical bodily needs are food and shelter. The fourth corporal work of mercy is to shelter the homeless, also known as to harbor the harborless.

In the Gospel of Matthew 25, it corresponds to, “I was . . . a stranger and you welcomed me”.

A roof over one’s head provides protection from the elements as well as safety and security.

Shelter comes in a wide variety of forms depending upon the time in history and the geographic location: caves, tents, thatched roof huts, igloos, teepees, log cabins, house boats, apartments, barracks, dormitories, shacks with tin roofs and palaces.

It is a terrible problem to be without adequate housing, and one of the most striking examples is the Holy Family. Mary and Joseph could not find shelter when they went to Bethlehem: There was no room for them in the inn. Accorded no mercy, their substandard shelter was a stable or a cave. When they fled to Egypt, again they were without shelter, and it is presumed that through the tender mercy of Jews of the Diaspora, they were given a place to stay. They eventually settled in Nazareth and enjoyed a permanent home.

There are so many in our world who lack adequate housing: victims of disasters, the poor,

the unemployed, the foreclosed, the disabled, military veterans, abuse victims, the mentally challenged and, today, thousands of refugees.

And we know that there are many charitable groups that serve the homeless, even the homeless here in Summit. It is surely a corporal work of mercy to volunteer or offer donations to these organizations and/or to do the person-to-person work.

Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless are all works of mercy. Mercy begins at home. It is as simple as parents providing shelter for their own children to welcoming an aging parent or a sick relative into one’s home. Where is mercy in our life? In our home? In our parish? What can we do better?

Our series today asks us several pointed and fundamental questions:

1. Do we accept the authority of the Scriptures? If so, are we compliant with the command of Jesus to give shelter to the homeless?

2. Or are we like the brother, who in response to the Father’s command says “yes” and then does not follow through – just walks away.

Someone once said that the Word of God is not a book of suggestions, it is deliberative and directive code for life. This week we are all challenged to examine our life to see how we are compliant with the Lord’s call to shelter the homeless.

Saint Joseph is the patron of the homeless. Let us call out to him for his intercession to help us this day.

RSM

Corporal Works of Mercy Fall 2023 Homily Series: Clothing the Naked

The corporal work of mercy, to clothe the naked, seems rather straightforward. One would think that it simply means to give clothes to someone who doesn’t have any. While that certainly is an aspect of this work of mercy, it does not paint the whole picture. Jesus challenges us to be much more active than that.

Both Jesus and the Church ask us to “clothe” the naked and not simply drop off our excess wardrobe at a thrift store or the clothing box in the Memorial Hall parking lot, which surely is good to do. God wants us to be active in our works of mercy and to touch the lives of individual people, each in our own way and in the capacity that we all can.

But of course, the hard question is how? We get one insight as we read the Gospel today – in the familiar story of the landowner and the workers.

We are usually tempted to see the landowner in God-like terms because he is powerful, he hires workers all day long and pays them all equally, and he declares his own goodness and justice. We should remember, however, that at the end of the day, the workers are all as vulnerable and powerless as they were at the beginning of the day, except that, we will see, they have lost their dignity and probably their unity. The injustices are intensified, not overturned. Day laborers constituted a limitless and disposable fuel — bodies to be burned up — that made the ancient economy run.

Today, our world is again full of such bodies, who make our clothes, produce our food, and assemble our electronic gizmos, yet never gain enough traction to be able to join the world of consumers. There is a fascinating book on the topic entitled The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler if you want to read more on this. Today’s parable thus pulls back the curtain on the ways our own world works, as it would have for Jesus’ audience.

It is true that, at one level, the landowner treats the workers with equality. He goes hunting for workers throughout the day, and they keep showing up until the very end. It is the landowner’s dream market. He pays everyone what they had agreed to be paid and, in the case of those hired at the end, even more than they might have expected.

All this apparent justice is, however, cast into question by the landowner’s actions and words from the point the payments begin to be made. He stipulates that those hired last will be paid first. Why? This arrangement serves no evident purpose but to make his gesture of “equality” evident to those who worked all day. If the goal is really to create equality among the workers, the landowner could do so without making a public display. Apparently, he intends to provoke a reaction.

He uses his interaction with first-hired, last-paid workers to declare his own justness and goodness. After all, he is paying those who worked all day just what they had agreed to be paid. He is also only doing what is his right “with what belongs to me.” The implicit message in these words is that it all belongs to him, including the workers, with whom he can do what he pleases.

He addresses one of them as “friend,” … which sounds nice … but we should hear it pronounced with a sneer. In Matthew, “friend” is consistently employed ironically:

· Matthew 22:12, a king uses it to address a man he is about to have bound hand and foot and booted into outer darkness because he had come improperly dressed to the wedding feast.

· Jesus himself calls Judas “friend” as he comes to betray Jesus in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:50).

The landowner’s apparent graciousness and justice are, in fact, viciousness in disguise — a pretty package with a bomb in it. He has been “generous,” but only with some and in a way that means to incite “envy.” We should hope that this is not the way God acts.

I bet over the years, in homilies and reflections, you have only heard the preacher make this landowner into a God-figure. So often, we think that the power figures — whether kings, landowners, or fathers — represent divine authority. Clearly, in this passage and in so many others, we need to dig deeper. The parable teaches us to read our world critically and to look behind the facades – there is usually more, sometimes much more, to the story.

So back to our theme of clothing the naked … it’s a real call for us NOT to be like the landowner, NOT to presume that everything belongs to us, and NOT to use people for our own advantage. Instead, it begs the opposite.

One of the most famous modern-day examples of someone who “clothed” the naked was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Each morning she would go out into the streets to find men and women too sick to care for themselves. After carrying them back to the hospice, Mother Teresa would bathe, clothe, and feed them. She believed everyone deserves to be treated with great dignity and actively helped the poor in her community for the rest of her life.

Obviously, not all of us are called to minister to the needs of the homeless in Calcutta. That is why Mother Teresa would often say,

Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces, and in your schools. … You can find Calcutta all over the world if you have the eyes to see.

Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society — completely forgotten, completely left alone.

When we search out the “naked” of our local community, and we do have them here in Summit and our surrounding communities, we shouldn’t only be looking for those without clothes. We should also look for those who are rejected, alone, and forgotten. They, too, are “naked,” without friends or family, stripped of all meaningful human relationships.

There are numerous people in our community, and sometimes even in our own family, who are stripped of everything in their lives. They often feel invisible and think that no one cares about them. It is our duty as Christians to comfort, console, and “clothe” them. We may not have to give them actual clothes, but we certainly can give them our love, time, and presence.

What can you do today? What can we do as a parish? This is not Calcutta, but there is surely a need all around us …

RSM